V: *feels self-satisfied*

Head of Media and Communications: “…of course, this just means you’ll all be competing fiercely against each other for good marks in your subjects.”

V: “shit.”

***

So I’m finally back home after five extremely excellent months living and travelling through Asia, which also means I’m currently in the throes of mild but everpresent reverse culture shock. Nothing’s upset or pissed me off too much so far, but I haven’t exactly re-integrated into society yet either. But seeing as it’s just a day after Australia Day** (which I only remembered after queueing behind some lobster-complexioned lasses in Australian flag dresses at the airport), I thought I’d share with you all my thoughts on being back in Melbourne.

1.  Where did all these pale, hairy, large-limbed and extremely loud people come from, and why are they speaking English?

2. Giving the trams a new exterior paint job does not make them any less infrequent and slow.

3. Ravioli! Ravioli! And the pizza…OMG, it actually tastes like food! *slobbers some*

4. $2.50 water? That’s so cheap! *mentally multiplies this by six* …or maybe not so cheap. But there’s something about overpriced Mount Franklin water that soothes the soul (and then you remember it’s owned by Coca-Cola).

5. People here read books in the wrong direction.

6. Melbourne’s skyscrapers are numerous enough to fit inside a petri dish.

7. I haz balcony. Hawr hawr hawr.

8. What do you mean I can’t have a 20 minute shower!?

9. People actually care when you accidentally bump into them.

10. Cats! I have cats again! *squeezes them both and consequently discovers a large deposit of fur on t-shirt* Cats…I have cats again…

Ah, Melbourne.***

*Paraphrased. It’s too early in the year to be taking notes.

**Referred to by me and mine more commonly as Invasion Day.

***I swear that’s not patriotism. It’s irony, or cynicism, or nostalgia. Or something.

• 汉堡包 hàn băo bāo = hamburger

• 摩托车 muó tuō chē = motorcycle
• 星巴克 shīng bā kè = Starbucks

Those are all fine, because the English sounds have been transliterated into Chinese sounds that already have corresponding characters. It’s when the English words are borrowed in full, i.e. keeping their original form, that I’ve been running into problems.

Some English borrow words are relatively straightforward and have retained their English meanings. “Gay”, for example:

• “青峰哥哥不管是不是GAY我都一如既往的支持他.” (“It doesn’t matter if Big Brother Qing Feng is gay or not, I will support him as always”).

“Fans” (sometimes translitered as 粉丝 fĕn sī, which originally meant mung bean starch noodles, no joke) is another example of a word that has made it into Chinese with its original form and meaning intact:

• “在2006年李准基北京演唱会中他给FANS写了封信，内容是什么？” (“At Lee Jun Ki’s 2006 Beijing Concert he gave a letter he’d written to his fans, what was the content?”)

All pretty straightforward, until you run into the great preponderance of English words whose meanings have shifted since entering Chinese.

• “Man” in Chinese means “manly”, “masculine” or “macho” and is without exception a compliment. E.g. “大东抱她最不费力，还是单手，感觉很MAN” (“The way Da Dong hugged her was not at all strained, was also one-handed, the feeling was very MAN”)
• “DIY”, i.e. “do it yourself”, is sometimes used properly, but more commonly attached to things that are hand made by other people. E.g. I recently saw “DIY 巧克力” (“DIY chocolate”) for sale at a market.
• “High” in Chinese means “happy” or “euphoric” and can be used to describe people’s state of mind or the atmosphere of a place. E.g. “哈哈今天大家都很HIGH” (“Haha, today everyone was very HIGH). Considering what “high” also means in English, this is a particularly funny/concerning example of a word that’s been lost in translation.
• And finally, one of the most commonly seen English words sticking out like a sore thumb in a line of Chinese text is “CASE”, usually in the context of “小CASE” (“small case”). E.g. “漂亮是小CASE,关键是我还很聪明” (“Being beautiful is a small case, the key thing is that I’m very smart”).*

While it’s pretty obvious from the context the writer means “being beautiful is a small matter/not important”, a lot of Chinese students learning English don’t realise that these English words they’re using in the Chinese way aren’t equivalent in their original language (I’ve heard more than one language student say “Today I was very high” in English, which is hilarious and disturbing until you explain that they’d be better off saying “happy”).

Apparently Japanese is no different (someone told me the English word “smart” means “fat” in Japanese), but I guess I have the rest of my life to enjoy figuring out that minefield ;)

————

*Yun and I have come to the unresearched conclusion that “小CASE” entered Chinese through Hong Kong lawyer soaps where the characters would often proclaim “this is just a small case!”. The phrase was probably then picked up by the Taiwanese media and, inevitably, by the mainland too.

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