Funny misunderstandings
kencarroll
September 18, 2008, 12:38 AM posted in General DiscussionA reporter has asked me about funny misunderstandings in Chinese from amongst our community. Anyone got any good examples? Obviously the tones can create hilarious mistakes, but I'd like to hear your tone stories or other things.
Recently in a thread here I recall one mistranslation that had something to do with 'concrete'. Anyone remember that one? (I think I recall Henning commenting on that.)
Feel free to offer any examples.
knuterr
September 20, 2008, 03:36 PMUh oh, better start getting my tones right... :)
lucy520
September 18, 2008, 01:39 AMi am lucy ,a chinese girl.i want to meet Foreigners , we can help each other.i have blog at```mixedfriends.com```under the name lucy520. you guys can add me
pchenery
September 18, 2008, 02:08 AMI haven't made any "funny" misunderstandings when speaking Chinese yet. But one of my Chinese friends has a way of coming up with English expressions that are quite amusing.
For example, she asked me: What do you do in times of "blue ruin" ?
It took me a few minutes to figure this out, but I finally concluded that she was referring to situations where you are feeling blue or depressed.
And so I responded..."In times of blue ruin I..."
There was another situation where she asked me about an English movie that she liked. She asked "what was the role of that two lens woman".
Now, I thought "two lens" was really odd. Then it suddenly came to me that she was really talking about the actress who appeared in only 2 scenes in the movie.
Other stuff she said was mildly amusing...such as, "OK, we can go for dinner, but no sexy".
But "blue ruin" is my favorite new English phrase. I'm going to form a new rock band and call it "blue ruin".
tvan
September 18, 2008, 03:36 AMWhen I was first starting Chinese, I learned that TaiTai meant "Mrs." Since XiaoJie seemed to work as a perfectably acceptable form of address to young ladies in Taiwan, I assumed that TaiTai worked as an adequate substitute for Madam. Accordingly, I addressed a matronly lady as TaiTai (I was 25 then); she good naturedly informed me that we were, in fact, not married.
henning
September 18, 2008, 05:31 AMHi Ken,
don't know about concrete, but I think I posted the story about the honest teachers before somewhere (which I cannot dig up anymore). So let me try again:
Long, long ago, before the ages of CPod (1997), we had our wedding banquet in Beijing and we took a flock of friends and family from Germany with us.
Those days my Chinese was in a rather "Lower Newbie" stage. Tones? Unimportant. Grammar? "I Tarzan - you Jane" style is the most efficient way to communicate. Characters? Who wants to learn those? Lists of nouns! That is the cool stuff. Yes, I already knew 挖土机.
The evening after our arrival we were - of course - taken to a restaurant by my in-laws. We were distributed among two tables, both mixed with Chinese and German.
I sat together with my parents and parents in laws while my wife was over at the other table with my friends. So I came into the uncomfortable position of being the one who had the honour to introduce my parents to my in laws. I tried to explain that both my father and my mother are teachers.
"Wo mama laoshi". Everybody on the table nodded their head in earnest understanding. "Wo baba ye laoshi". Again agreement - flooding my intestines with pure proudness.
Then my mother in law asked me: "Ni ne?" And I answered: "Wo bu shi! Wo bu laoshi!". To my amazement everybody took my answer as a joke.
老师
老实
light487
September 18, 2008, 07:17 AMI've mentioned this before in previous posts but it's something happened after listening to ChinesePOD on my MP3 player on the way to work.
I was ordering coffee at a place where I used to practise my mandarin with the people who worked there, and after ordering my coffee (in English because it during the early morning rush) she asked me how much sugar I wanted in my coffee..
I stood there with a blank expression on my face as she repeated her question, "sugar..?". I was trying to work out what "Shu4 ge" meant.. :) Then I realised and told her what I thought she said and we had a little chuckle over it. :)
So it's kind of the reverse of what you are asking.. but still funny in a way.
bababardwan
September 18, 2008, 12:41 PMGreat stories above.I love this topic;the stuff of good humour.I posted my story on a post about a week ago but it was in an old lesson so this might be the place for it.
After one of your lessons I finally understood where I went wrong a few weeks ago at a Chinese restaurant.At the end of the meal I wanted to compliment the staff on a wonderful meal ,and thought I was using the word xi3huan to indicate like.The waitress seemed to perfectly understand me and replied "you want to wash the dishes" which sounded more like a statement than a question.My family were in fits of laughter at this,while I was scratching my head trying to figure how I could have got it so wrong.It was a very large restaurant ,so it was lucky that they let me off the hook this time.Thanks Ken for contrasting the xi3wan3 with xi3huan.Nothing quite like learning from one's mistakes.
gilloustyle
September 18, 2008, 02:35 PMI met with a friend in Xi'an, to go hiking one morning. She was with 3 girl friends of hers, and I was the only guy. So I thought I would say, wow I'm lucky. And I didn't quite remember well the word.. so I tried, and Bang: 我很性欲 came out instead of 我很幸运。It is grammatically incorrect, but they laughed hard.
bababardwan
September 19, 2008, 01:12 AMKen,
ps I still think your qing3wen4/qing3wen3 mixup story is hard to beat.Very funny.
auntie68
September 18, 2008, 01:29 AMThis is not my personal experience, but a friend of mine who is American Chinese told me that when her brother visited relatives in China for the first time, he had the idea that 马马虎虎 （ma3ma3 hu1hu1) meant "Wonderful! Lovely!". Actually, it means "so-so".
So at every meal served to him by his mother's senior relatives, he took the first bite of every dish (the VIP's privilege), watched intently by the entire table, and then pronounced it, "马马虎虎!"
Ouch.
bababardwan
September 19, 2008, 01:25 AMyep,I'd be first in line to buy it.
Actually ,if anyone knows of any already out there,or any websites [the reverse of the chinglish websites ] then I'd love to know.
joannah
September 19, 2008, 07:04 AMDo you mean english speakers messing up chinese? if so try http://hanzismatter.com/
bababardwan
September 19, 2008, 10:14 AMjoannah,
Thanks a lot.Yep,that's exactly what I was after.I had seen plenty of Chinglish sites ,but none where English speakers were messing up the Chinese,though I have heard several tales of funny tatoos.Can't wait till my character recognition improves so I can read the tatoos with Chinese characters which seem to be quite popular now.
joannah
September 19, 2008, 10:20 AMThe incorrect tattoos thing amazes me. You'd think that if you were going to spend a lot of money on a tattoo that was going to be with you for life that you would do your research properly wouldn't you?
sarahjs
September 19, 2008, 01:53 PMJoannah. The hanzismatter website, has to be the best, have been a fan for a while.
shanghaichanges
September 20, 2008, 03:09 PM2:47min the slap in the face got me in stitches XD Who are those guys? They're not the usual faces like Ken and John.
The Rocky exercise bit reminded of that SNL show where they made fun of Arnie.
"Hi we're tone police and we're here (hands clap) to 'tone' you up"
ha ha ha ha, see what I did there? ha ha ha aaaaa.....................
light487
September 20, 2008, 03:35 PMhaha.. great video.. :)
light487
September 19, 2008, 01:18 AMActually.. I think you could write a whole book of short stories on this subject, from both sides of the equation.. and it would be "good value"..
xiaohu
September 18, 2008, 01:07 AMKen,
Actually, while we're sharing...
I was talking with a Chinese friend about going to eat at a local Sichuan restaurant, that, while famous in my area for having wonderful food, is simultaneously notorious for always adding way too much 味精 wèi jīng (MSG), into the food.
So we're talking about what we wanted to go eat, and I was saying I wanted to get some 水煮两样, shuǐ zhǔ liǎng yàng .
For those out there who don't know what that is, it's a Sichuan dish with Cabbage, Meat and Peppercorns swimming in a thick, red and spicy broth.
I was telling her that the food (at this particular restaurant) is delicious, but they always put in way too much MSG, so this time, I really need to remember to tell the waitresses to hold the MSG. 千万不要方味精 (qiān wàn bù yào fàng wèi jīng ).
At least I THOUGHT I was telling her that.
In reality, what I was saying was, 这次我必须记住告诉服务员千万不要方月经! (zhè cì, wǒ bì xū jì zhù gào sù fú wù yuán, qiān wàn bù yào fàng yuè jīng )
I was going on and on like this, and in the meantime she started busting up!
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what I said that made her laugh, I kept asking, "你为什么笑我呢?"
She replied, "这是为什么水煮两样那么红吗？因为月经放得多呗"！
Oh man, was that embarrassing! I'd pull out the old, "Was my face red" cliche', but I think in this case it just might be in particularly bad taste!