online chinglish dictionary

One of the things that helps me to study Chinese, is to try to translate things that I think are funny into Chinese. This is difficult as humor frequently hinges on subtle wordplay, and is, of course the easiest thing to lose in translation. This is why slapstick, bizarrity or unsubtle filthiness is the way to go for international comedy celebrity.

So as far as working on foreign languages go, I find trying to find linguistically simple bits and translate them into Chinese. It helps to get a feel for how words are actually used. The ultimate test, (which I often fail) is whether Chinese people (not Chinese-Americans, mind you) find it funny. Many of my entries in the Devil's Phrasebook fail this, while my "Weird Al" take on "我爱你" usually passes.

That's why I was trying to come up with ways to translate GIR into Chinese. I guess.

So, I was trying to put this classic into Mandarin, "Why is his head so big? Why is his head so big?" I am fond of using 学中文's typing program, and that site offers you a translation of whatever you typed, one which I think underscores the difficulty of translating actual sentences, no matter how simple. The phrase that I chose to use, and I think it's a good one, was "他的头怎么这么大？！怎么这么大？!"

Out of curiosity I clicked on the machine translation and got this: "Is his head how such big? ! Is how such big? !"

Delightful. So I tried my earlier attempt at trans-pacific humor.

"我爱你就像小胖子爱蛋糕" : "I like you liking the young fat person to love the cake."

I'm pretty sure that I can translate entire paragraphs into genuine Chinglish this way.

(Shut up! That's very exciting for me.)