Some help with these two sentences

2）私の仕事がなかなか終わらなかったので見かねて山田さんが手伝ってくれた。

2）チンさんを先生として、中国語の勉強会を開いた。

1) I understand the meaning of -kaneru in other sentences, but I can't quite figure out how this sentence would be translated in English...

2) Here I don't really get the meaning at all. Obviously, this として isn't the same as the one in 私は教師として働きます

Help is greatly appreciated.

D,

1）私の仕事がなかなか終わらなかったので見かねて山田さんが手伝ってくれた。

I understand the meaning of -kaneru in other sentences, but I can't quite figure out how this sentence would be translated in English...

I don't think this differs from normal usage of "-kanete". Here it means "unable to sit and look on".

2）チンさんを先生として、中国語の勉強会を開いた。

Here I don't really get the meaning at all. Obviously, this として isn't the same as the one in 私は教師として働きます

Actually, the usage is the same as your example, except that Chin is the object here (i.e. "with Chin as the teacher").

1) About "...kaneru," are you talking about another meaning of the word (a full verb on its own, written with kanji as 兼ねる), where you hold two positions simultaneously, for example?
- 先生は 私達の カウンセラーも 兼ねている。 (Our teacher is also fulfilling the role of our counselor.)

Then this "...kaneru" is a bit different, it means "unable to (do something)," "hesitant to (do something)," etc.

Dave, AK, thanks for the replies.

As for sentence 1, I'm just guessing as to why the speaker said 見かねて. Maybe because he felt embarassed because his work was left unfinished and had to have a colleague help him. Just didn't really get the idea behind saying mikanete.

Everything is clear to me now for sentence 2.

Thanks again.

The sentence 1) is like this:
- I was taking so much time to finish my work, so Yamada-san, unable to sit and look on, helped me.
- I was struggling so much to finish my work that Yamada-san could not stand simply watching (me struggle) and helped me.

The person who "could not sit and look on" was Yamada-san. He/she could not bear to just watch "me" struggling with "my work," so he/she helped.

Oh, now it makes a lot more sense to me! All the time I thought it was not Yamada but the speaker who couldn't sit and look at it.ＡＫさんの説明のおかげで１００％分かってきました。

Thank you!