Can you translate that?

Coming from a multi-lingual extended family, I learned early on to appreciate the humor that accompanies attempts at communicating in nonnative languages.

I recently received an email from China, alerting me to an exciting product. So I checked out the website and enjoyed statements such as the following:

The elders and the infants must be accompanied by experienced adult when they are using this equipment. Heart sufferers, hypertension sufferers, bad-healthy persons and over-drinking-persons must use the equipment carefully.

Doesn't this express things much better than our usual way of speaking? I don't know about you, but I'm thinking of adding "bad-healthy persons" and "over-drinking-persons" to my vocabulary, as in...

Me: We need to pray for Buford's mother.

Husband: Why? What's going on?

Me: Buford told me she's a bad-healthy person and asked for prayer.

OR...

Youngest Child: Mama, why did that crazy looking man shoot his lawnmower?

Me: Well, Youngest, it very well could be because he's an over-drinking person. And that turned him into a bad-healthy-in-the-brain person. At least he seems to have been one on the day he shot the lawnmower.


This post, along with my entire blog, is copyrighted. The phrases "bad-healthy persons" and "over-drinking persons" are not. Feel free to use them without guilt. But please read and honor the copyright notice at the bottom of the sidebar. Thank you.