Language and Humor Blog » HUMOR

‘Ticket-holding fits’? (lost in translation)

Kevin — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:02:27 +0000

Have you ever been so excited to ride a boat that you had ticket-holding fits? Perhaps, but I don’t think that’s what the translator of a certain Chinese sign meant.

A photo on Leonie Doyle’s blog (Lightlyskipping) shows a sign for tourists in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in Southern China. “To the boat(s) for ticket-holding fits” is the English translation.

The full Chinese is very different from the English, so I’ll save it for below. Let’s just start with the “fits” part. Usually, these bad translations come from the fact that Chinese words, like English words, can have multiple meanings and the wrong meaning can get translated. (Professor Victor Mair sometimes posts about these on Language Log, such as here, here, and here.) But in the Chinese on this sign (assuming the characters are representing Mandarin Chinese and not potentially differing meanings in the local Wu) nothing seems to also mean “fit.”

This seems instead to be a visual confusion of characters:

旅游 (lü3you2, traditional: 旅遊 ), “tour” in “tour group” on the sign and
放好 (fang4hao3), “fit” in the sense of “to place/store (something) well.”

Thus, “To the boat(s) for ticket-holding [tourists]” is probably what they meant.

The full Chinese is:

买好船票的游客（非旅游团队）请由此排队乘船。
mai3hao3 chuan2piao4 de5 lü3ke4 (fei1lü3you2tuan2dui4) qing3 you2ci3 pai2dui4 cheng2chuan2
(traditional: 買好船票的旅客（非旅遊團隊）請由此排隊乘船。)
“Travelers who plan to buy boat tickets (non-tour group) please thus line up to ride the boat.”
(more fully: Travelers who get ready to ride the boat by buying the necessary boat tickets (non-tour group) please thus line up.)

Again, the corrected English is:

“To the boat(s) for ticket-holding [tourists]”

So, the sign tells Chinese readers without tickets to line up and implies that English readers with tickets can go right ahead. I don’t think it helps that they added the “international” symbol for line up / queue up: a woman and a man standing behind another man who has one leg raised as if he’s about to start hopping.

‘The Calculendar Commercial’ video (Rebecca Black – ‘Friday’-Inspired)

Kevin — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:52:38 +0000

Have trouble figuring out the days of the week? You need The Calculendar! (Available in many languages.)

This TV-commercial parody was inspired by the lyrics

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today it is Friday, Friday [. . .]

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes afterwards

from Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” (which was written by adults not by the young singer).

Link to The Calculendar video

Closed-captioning (CC) and transcript available.

You don’t need to watch the original video first, Rebecca Black – Friday (OFFICIAL VIDEO), but here it is:

Link to music video

‘Spot the Ambiguity’ video

Kevin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:23:01 +0000

Steven and Brandon have a misunderstanding. Can you spot the ambiguity?

Link to video

Closed-captioning (CC) and transcript available.

‘The Time That’s Spruced With Pine’ (my video)

Kevin — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:35:24 +0000

After a short, original light-verse poem, hear about Christmas and Japanese New Year’s and learn some Japanese words related to New Year’s.

Link to video

Closed-captioning (CC) and transcript available.

‘Talking to Zoo Animals’ (my video)

Kevin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:26:47 +0000

Here’s my story of talking to zoo animals and imitating their calls. It’s a true story, but I took some dramatic license. I didn’t actually wear glasses as a young child. And I don’t remember the monkeys’ food being invisible.

Link to video

Closed-captioning (CC) and transcript available.

Funny video: ‘Don’t You Just Love Working in an Office?’

Kevin — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 04:24:22 +0000

Youtube videos are not all stunts/cute animals or else (near-)professional content. There are also simple, low-budget amateur videos that are well-written and well-performed, such as katinatreesee’s video “Don’t You Just Love Working in an Office?” She plays a slacker office-worker messing around with the phone and office supplies.

Link to video

‘Language and Humor: First Show’ (My first live-action video)

Kevin — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 04:21:28 +0000

This is the first show of “Language and Humor.” You’ll see that everything goes well until— Actually, you’ll see that it never starts going well.

Could I— Could I have a moment alone, please?

Link to video

Closed-captioning (CC) and transcript available.

‘Logo Teaser Trailer Parody’ (My first online video)

Kevin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 04:15:01 +0000

While I was working on my blog layout recently, my site logo asked if he could have a little time off. I said OK.

Little did I know that he’d gotten a starring role in a movie.

Link to video

Closed-captioning is available. It’s actually a transcript, but it synchs up pretty well until the fast-talking end.

The Force is strong in these GPS voices

Kevin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 04:09:42 +0000

[Obligatory Yoda inverted word order here insert you may.]

The folks at TomTom are selling Star Wars voices for their GPS devices and seemed to have enjoyed the making of behind-the-scenes videos of the recording sessions. The Yoda one has a bunch of funny things in it. The Darth Vader one starts out slow but gets better towards the middle (via The Nerdist and many other vias back to Carscoop).

“Yoda recording for TomTom GPS – behind the scenes”

Link to Yoda video

“Darth Vader recording for TomTom GPS – behind the scenes”

Link to Darth Vader video

As a Dutch company, TomTom is a good choice for at least the Darth Vader voicings, as vader is (I think not coincidentally) the Dutch word for “father.” Any Dutch people out there who predate the prequel trilogy and didn’t get to be surprised by the “I am your father” reveal in The Empire Strikes Back? Now you know the power of the Dark Side. As far as I know, darth is not the Dutch word for “asthmatic” (which is apparently astmatisch, among others).

“Star Wars” is still “Star Wars” in the Netherlands but would translate to the cognate Sterrenoorlogen (ster “star” in the combining form sterren and the plural oorlogen of oorlog “war”).

Buffy (and SNL) ‘much’ much?: Slang research with Hulu.com, Part 2

Kevin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:49:04 +0000

[EDIT (6/7/10): I broke this long post up into two posts.]

This is Part 2 (Part 1) on finding early uses of American slang and colloquialisms from the television clips and episodes on Hulu‘s (language corpus of) shows from NBC Universal (NBC, USA Network, Bravo, Sci Fi, Sundance Channel, Oxygen) and News Corp. (Fox, FX, Fuel TV).

While searching in vain for the Steve Martin “NOT!” clip on Hulu for the Part 1 post, I found another “The Nerds” sketch from Saturday Night Live and stumbled on an old usage of yet another expression. This time it was post-adjective much? (e.g. “Awkward much?” for “You’re very awkward”).

I first noticed post-adjective much? in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer pilot, (“Welcome to the Hellmouth,” Season 1, Episode 1; first aired March 10, 1997). Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) informs Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) that there has been a mysterious death at their high school. Buffy wants to find out if it was the work of a vampire without blowing her secret identity:

BUFFY: How did he die?

CORDELIA: I don’t know.

BUFFY: Well, were there any marks?

CORDELIA: Morbid much? I didn’t ask!

(Welcome to the Hellmouth, 15:37-15:43, hulu.com/watch/48/buffy-the-vampire-slayer-welcome-to-the-hellmouth [EDIT (6/7/10): no longer available])

The construction not surprisingly predates the show, but I was surprised to find it two decades earlier.

On SNL’s October 7, 1978, episode (Season 4, Episode 1), with The Rolling Stones as host, the teen nerds Lisa Loopner (Gilda Radner; William Safire (1992) spelled it “Lupner” in On Language; Not! New York Times Magazine. March 8, 1992, 20.) and Todd (Bill Murray) are hanging out in Lisa’s kitchen:

TODD: I really need your help with my history homework.

LISA: Well, Todd, you know if you sincerely need my help, you can count on it.

TODD: Oh, good. Because I’m studying all about [grabs at Lisa's shirt neck and tries to peek down her shirt] underdeveloped nations!

LISA (shouting and smiling): Cut it out, Todd! Cut it out! [lightly swats him away] Stop it!

TODD (points at Lisa’s chest and mock laughs to a pretend audience): Underdeveloped much?

(Nerds Broken Fridge, 02:37-02:55)

The bit is quite crass, of course, but there’s the post-adjective much? construction way back in 1978.

As if I couldn’t waste enough time watching comedy and other clips and episodes on Hulu, now I shudder to realize that there’s a corpus linguistics use as well. NOT! No, there truly is.

Corpus.byu.edu (English, Spanish, and Portuguese online corpora)

Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon by Michael Adams (2004, Oxford University Press, ISBN13: 9780195175998)