Hacker News Reader

Comment by DHMO | Hacker News Reader

Tossing wanker slag cheese eating surrender monkey bastards of daft cow arsehole barmy chav dodgy gormless git of a manky mingers. Muppet naff nutter pikey pillock plonker prat scrubber trollops uphill gardener twit knobheads. Piss off you bell end lazy sod skiver knob wazzock ninny berk airy-fairy ankle-biting arse-licker arsemonger chuffers, daft as a bush, dead from the neck up, gannet, gone to the dogs ligger like a dog with two dicks, mad as a bag of ferrets maggots who only bugger plug-ugly mingebags not batting on a full wicket.

View on HN

I tried to translate this to American slang, and failed miserably.

Thank you, I laughed so hard

"cheese eating surrender monkey", at least, was coined by an American (Ken Keeler, for The Simpsons), though I gather, yeah, it became most popular in re-use in the UK.

Ah, don't be so rough on the USA. We've got some colorful expressions of our own, especially in places like NYC, Texas and Philly.

Now let me clear my throat and switch to French:

Va te faire foutre grosse pute. Je te pisses à la raie [<- my personal favorite], sous-merde. Grosse cochonne. Enculé de pédé de sa mère la pute. Je t'emmerde. Je te nique ta race vieille pédale, nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère la chienne. T'es con comme un manche, tu pues du cul et ta mère suce comme un aspirateur. Cuve à foutre! Vieille trousse à bite! Je te chies dans l'œsophage! Enfant de viol! Quand ta mère est sorti des chiottes, elle était avec toi! Et appelle-la, que je recommences, tiens! Connard.

You for got one, espece d'un branleur...

Espèce de branleur. Couillon, va...

;)

"T'es con comme un manche, tu pues du cul et ta mère suce comme un aspirateur."

Frenchie here, that one got me giggling, well played.

"You're an idiot as a handle, you stink ass and your mother sucks like a vacuum cleaner."

Apparently. However, "You're an idiot as a handle!" may well become my go-to insult...

Yeah it's a weird one. Why a broom-handle? Nobody knows. Doesn't matter.

"Con comme un manche" is stronger than "idiot like a handle" might first seem. Bête is idiot whereas con is etymologically equivalent to cunt. Semantically, however, it conveys something closer to fucking retard. "Asshat", maybe? Too funny. There's nothing funny about having to deal with a con.

Edit: tangentially related, but [0] this prank call is pure comedy and swearing gold. If you speak French and you haven't seen it, you're missing out. If you don't speak French, you get to hear a Corsican accent and Mediterranean rage (starts around 1:25). 10/10.

[0] https://youtu.be/RaNFPcZc9pY

Unfortunately, I don't speak French, so I wondered whether there was a translation of the video. As it turns out, YouTube has automatic sub-titling, and even automatic translation of sub-titles, from French into various languages - fortunately including English. But the text it produced, while entertaining in its own Dadaist way, was obscure and unhelpful. I guess machine translation still has a ways to go, particularly when dealing with enraged Corsicans!

Haha there's no way you can subtitle Corsicans!

I think this will, unfortunately, remain comprehensible only to Frenchman!

hehe love the brit slang :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com