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，政府称，也许会保留一个一直承诺要废除的毫无意义的水坝项目。
Some rebuilding can be financed by redirecting spending from useless white-elephant projects to the higher priority of remaking Tohoku.
把建设无用工程的投资转移到更重要的名古屋重建上来，一些重建费用可以通过这种方式进行融资。
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.
但这将是一项步履维艰的工程。印尼人现在意识到并开始珍惜自己的地方自主权，这是有着长久渊源的。他们不会放弃这一道路，即使代价是一个“绣花枕头”体育场或更多个。

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.