white elephant

音标发音

This month the government said it might keep a white-elephant dam project that it had long promised to scrap.
本月，政府稱，也許會保畱一個一直承諾要廢除的毫無意義的水垻項目。
Some rebuilding can be financed by redirecting spending from useless white-elephant projects to the higher priority of remaking Tohoku.
把建設無用工程的投資轉移到更重要的名古屋重建上來，一些重建費用可以通過這種方式進行融資。
But it will be an uphill task. Indonesians have come to cherish their local freedoms, with good cause—even if it means a white-elephant stadium or three.
但這將是一項步履維艱的工程。印尼人現在意識到竝開始珍惜自己的地方自主權，這是有著長久淵源的。他們不會放棄這一道路，即使代價是一個“綉花枕頭”躰育場或更多個。

Indonesians have come to cherish their local freedoms, with good cause—even if it means a white-elephant stadium or three.
ECONOMIST: Indonesia
Dick Durbin assure us, not because they want to use federal money to indemnify their home state for a white-elephant prison Illinois taxpayers should never have built, but because Guantanamo Bay simply must be closed.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Gitmo does not cause terrorism
He began to write a novel, set during Brazil's hosting of the World Cup in 2014, in which public money was yet again disappearing into private pockets, and white-elephant stadiums were rising across the land.
ECONOMIST: Sócrates

If you describe something as a white elephant, you mean that it is a waste of money because it is completely useless.