John Emerson, frequent commenter and proprietor of the one and only Idiocentrism (investigating the historical nooks and crannies no one else dares enter), sent me a link to this story at ChinaSmack, pointing out that:
This newspaper is not only interesting in itself, but every story and every letter to the editor is there in English and Chinese. Just hover your mouse arrow and the Chinese will pop up. The translations are idiomatic and very carefully done, as far as I can tell, and are a convenient way to build vocabulary, including slang in the letters. (E.g., 装 B "being a pretentious cunt").
What a great idea! I hope this sort of thing catches on (though, being a lot of work for little obvious profit, it probably won't). Posted by languagehat at August 31, 2011 08:44 PM
Presumably the B is being used because a lot of PRC software will literally not let you write the word for cunt (which I believe is 傻屄 - shabi in pinyin). Grass mud horse, and all that.
Posted by: afinetheorem at September 1, 2011 12:05 AM傻屄 is 'stupid cunt'.
There are other kinds of cunt. I once heard a woman cursing someone as 笑屄 xiào bī 'laughing cunt', presumably because they were laughing. But it was a long time ago and I could have got it wrong.
屄样 bī-yàng is one I'm not sure how to translate, but it means something like 'cuntishness'. It's a curse on someone for their attitude or actions. Maybe a native speaker could explain these things better. There's a fine art to all this.
Posted by: Bathrobe at September 1, 2011 05:52 AMWell, the ChinaSmack site says:
装B = 装屄 [zhuāng bī / zhuang1 bi1] verb. To show off, be a poser, or to act self-righteous, self-important, egotistical. To be a “pretentious cunt”. A popular version on the Shanghainese KDS BBS discussion forum is “IB” or “install B” because “zhuang” means “install” as well as “pretend.” The “B” could be any Chinese character with the “bi” sound like 逼 or 比. It can also be 13 which looks like a capital “B”. In fact, 屄 is the true character but almost never used.
On Steve Jobs, there's:
To this day, three apples have changed the world: One seduced Eve, one awakened Newton, the third one is in the hands of Steve Jobs. These three applies represent three stages: Lust, knowledge, and being a pretentious cunt, steps in mankind’s progress. We have already entered the highest state of inflated desire! Now that Jobs is gone, will you still buy the iPhone5?
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