{"id":6713,"date":"2010-12-04T11:30:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T15:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6713"},"modified":"2010-12-04T13:00:01","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T17:00:01","slug":"insults-in-other-languages-that-dont-translate-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/12\/04\/insults-in-other-languages-that-dont-translate-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Insults in other languages that don’t translate well"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fascinating thread on AskReddit<\/a> asks “What are your favourite culturally untranslatable phrases?”<\/p>\n

Language warning, so I’ve put it below the fold.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

imstuckonatrain<\/strong>: I really like this Greek\/cypriot phrase which basically means you’re really overcomplicating something:<\/p>\n

\u0395\u03ba\u03b1\u03bc\u03b5s \u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\u03c4\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u03b5\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03ae\u03bc\u03b7<\/p>\n

Translated: You made masturbation a science<\/p>\n

cake_a_too<\/strong>: In French we say “You’re sodomizing flies”.<\/p>\n

lilgreenrosetta<\/strong>: The Dutch phrase for giving too much attention to insignificant details is “ant fucking”. I guess the French have us beat on that one.<\/p>\n

Kasyx<\/strong>: Personally, I’m a huge fan of the derogatory Afrikaans term for South African English-speakers:<\/p>\n

soutpiel<\/em><\/p>\n

Which translates to “Saltcock”, implying that they have one leg in England, one leg in South Africa, and their dick is dangling in the ocean.<\/p>\n

ricoza<\/strong>: Piele vleg<\/em> – braiding penises : to engage in male bonding<\/p>\n

das_hansl<\/strong>: Funny, I’m dutch and I understood it without translation.<\/p>\n

LexMortis<\/strong>: That’s because Afrikaans is Loldutch.<\/p>\n

TastyAnimal<\/strong>: Jou mammie naai vir bakstene om jou sissie se hoerhuis te bou.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dunno if the spelling is correct, but apparently it’s an insult.<\/p>\n

Oh, and bedsuavekid, have an “opstoot”.<\/p>\n

bedsuavekid<\/strong>: Oh, that one’s glorious! Opstoot vir jou ook! Vieslik!<\/em><\/p>\n

EDIT: oh, and for the rest of you, a rough translation would be, your mother engages in prostitution in order to raise funds for the building materials necessary to construct a brothel from which your sister will operate.<\/p>\n

TastyAnimal<\/strong>: That is a hell of an eloquent translation.<\/p>\n

A more brash one would be ‘your mother shags for bricks to build your sisters whorehouse’.<\/p>\n

EDIT: Fantastic. The most upvotes I ever get is for translating Afrikaans swearing. Eish.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to BoingBoing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating thread on AskReddit asks “What are your favourite culturally untranslatable phrases?” Language warning, so I’ve put it below the fold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[400],"class_list":["post-6713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","tag-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Kh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6713"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6721,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6713\/revisions\/6721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}