遍
biàn
All the way round, start to finish: 遍
The picture Going all the way around a loop, start to finish. Stop halfway and it doesn't count as one. 遍 is one whole run from beginning to end; 次 is one mark for each occasion it happened.
Where the picture shows up in 遍
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one more full round
请再说一遍。
qǐng zài shuō yí biàn
Could you say that again from the start?
The listener waves a rewind, and the speaker goes back to the first word and starts over.
再说一次 is simply saying it once more; 再说一遍 is going through the whole thing again.
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two rounds to the end
这本书我看了两遍。
zhè běn shū wǒ kàn le liǎng biàn
I've read this book cover to cover twice.
Closing the last page and opening the first again to begin the second run.
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three rounds of copying
老师让我们抄三遍。
lǎoshī ràng wǒmen chāo sān biàn
The teacher made us copy it out three times.
A notebook page filled with the same sentence, top line to bottom, three times over.
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round after round
这首歌我听了一遍又一遍。
zhè shǒu gē wǒ tīng le yí biàn yòu yí biàn
I played this song through again and again.
The playback bar snapping back to the start the moment the song ends.
All of it in one picture
The speech rewound is one full run from start to finish, the book reopened is one run, the three sheets of copying are three runs, and the song looping back is one run. 遍 does not ask how often it happened; it asks whether it went whole from beginning to end. So anything counted with 遍 carries the sense of not stopping halfway. A book abandoned at the midpoint, however many times you pick it up, never adds up to one 遍.