Please help me to translate these two sentence. (French)
Good night friends! Here are two extracts of an article from a french magazine:

1) Certes, proportionnellement, le nombre de jeunes Français apprenant l'anglais (plus de 5 millions) ou l'espagnol reste sans commune mesure, mais le chinois laisse désormais loin derrière lui le russe ou l'arabe.

2) Le chinois capte depuis toujours les élèves ou les étudiants qui ont les goût du dépaysement et du défi. Il fait, plus que toujours, rêver...

The context is about that the Chinese teaching is gradually getting popular in France. In the former sentence, I'm confused by "laisse désormais loin derrière lui le russe ou l'arabe" (especially the usage of "lui"). As for the latter, I'm incapable of grasping its meaning accurately (especially the last sentence). Please give me a hand. I would very much appreciate your kindness. ^-^Oh my! The title should be "two sentences". How careless is somebody...=_=|||

Question

Please help me to translate these two sentence. (French)
Good night friends! Here are two extracts of an article from a french magazine:

1) Certes, proportionnellement, le nombre de jeunes Français apprenant l'anglais (plus de 5 millions) ou l'espagnol reste sans commune mesure, mais le chinois laisse désormais loin derrière lui le russe ou l'arabe.

2) Le chinois capte depuis toujours les élèves ou les étudiants qui ont les goût du dépaysement et du défi. Il fait, plus que toujours, rêver...

The context is about that the Chinese teaching is gradually getting popular in France. In the former sentence, I'm confused by "laisse désormais loin derrière lui le russe ou l'arabe" (especially the usage of "lui"). As for the latter, I'm incapable of grasping its meaning accurately (especially the last sentence). Please give me a hand. I would very much appreciate your kindness. ^-^Oh my! The title should be "two sentences". How careless is somebody...=_=|||

Answer

In the first sentence, the 'lui' refers to 'le chinois', which is the subject of the sentence. The Chinese language is way ahead of Russian and Arabic - literally, it leaves those other two languages far behind 'it'. In English, you wouldn't need the 'it'.

Answer

- Chinese is way more popular than Russian or Arabic
- Chinese language attracts people who like challenges and traveling. It makes them dream.

Answer

A more "literal" translation would be:

Admittedly, the number of young French people learning English (over 5 million) or Spanish remains immeasurably high, but the number of students learning Chinese far outstrips those learning or Russian or Arabic.

French has always captured students with a taste for *depaysement* (feeling like a foreigner..there is no equivalent in English), or a challenge.  It makes one dream.