中國十大網絡流行語

It’s the time of the year for list making! This Youku video clip named the nine hottest lines on China’s Web this year. The Yangtze Evening Post, an influential newspaper, is the original list compiler.

又到了一年盤點的時候了，揚子晚報上傳了一段名叫今年中國網絡九條最熱流行語的視頻，盤點了如下幾條流行語。

According to the list, ge (哥, older brother, big brother) is without doubt the hottest net word of the year. Both of the top two cited lines use the word. In Chinese, ge here is used more like the first person pronoun (like the English, “Can a brother get a break?”)

根據這個盤點，“哥”無疑是今年網上最流行的詞。最熱的兩條流行語都提到了“哥”。在漢語裏，這個“哥”被用來指代自己。

1. What big brother is eating isn’t noodles, but loneliness.

1.哥吃的不是面，是寂寞。

It’s ironic that in a country as populous as China, a meme about loneliness would be so popular. This seemingly irrational line has been repeated in every possible permutation, on every possible occasion, e.g. “What big brother is reading not a book, but loneliness.”

像中國人口這麼多的國家，關於寂寞的病毒式模仿會這麼流行實在是件很諷刺的事情。這句看上去很無厘頭的話被用在了所有可能搭配的排列中，用在了所有場合，比如，“哥看的不是書，是寂寞。”

2. Don’t fantasize about big brother: I am only legend.

2.別迷戀哥，哥只是個傳說。

The most popular variation of this line is “Don’t fantasize about big sister: I am only legend.”

這句話最流行的變體是“別迷戀姐，姐只是個傳說。”

3. Jia Junpeng, your mom wants you to go home for dinner.”

3.賈君鵬，你媽媽喊你回家吃飯。

If you haven’t heard about this, you probably haven’t been on the Chinese Internet in the last year. This simple line was left on a World of warcraft BBS, and somehow — some are claiming it was an online agency stunt and was helped along — managed to attract over 7.1 million views and 300,000 comments in just the first 24 hours.

如果你沒聽過這句話，你去年絕對沒上過中文網。這句簡單的話是留在魔獸BBS上的，不知道什麼原因——有說法是有網絡公司是幕後推手——這句話吸引了710萬人點擊，在發佈後24小時內產生了30萬條評論。

4. We can’t go into detail on this matter.

4. 這事兒不能說太細。

This quote is the only one picked for the list that didn’t come originally from the Web, but rather from the real world. A government official evading a journalist’s persistent question about the annual total of car loans repaid in Tianjin simply said, “We can’t go into detail on this matter,” which apparently Netizens found really laughable.

這句話是唯一來自現實世界而不是網絡的。一位政府官員在回答《焦點訪談》記者“天津市每年要償還公路建設的貸款量有多大”的問題時，回答到“這事兒不能說太細”，網民們覺得這句話很有意思，於是流傳甚廣。

The rest of them, he goes over quickly:

剩下的流行語，我們列在這裏：

5. Life is like a coffee table: it’s got tea sets and dinnerware all over it. (beiju, 杯具, is a homophone for tragedy, 悲劇, and dinnerware, canju, 餐具, a homophone for disaster, 慘劇).

5. 生活就像一個茶几，上面擺滿了杯具和餐具。（杯具是“悲劇”的同音詞，餐具是“慘劇”的同音詞。）

6. It’s not that the story ended badly; it’s that we expect too much of the story.

6.不是故事的結局不夠好，而是我們對故事要求太多。

7. Love is like two people holding two ends of a rubber band: it’s always the one who doesn’t let go who gets hurt more.

7.愛情就像兩個人拉橡皮筋，受傷的總是不願意放手的那一個。

8. A lovely flower doesn’t belong to the one who appreciates it, but to the dunghill it grows on. (“To stick a lovely flower in the dunghill” is a popular Chinese saying, normally used to describe the common social phenomenon of a pretty girl marrying an ugly but rich guy).

8.鮮花往往不屬於賞花人，而屬於牛糞。

9. You can’t spell BELIEVE without the LIE.

9. 就算是believe裏面，也有lie。

10. The difference between a lie and a promise is that the believer of a lie is the listener and the believer of a promise is the speaker.

10.謊言和誓言的區別在於，一個是聽的人當真了，一個是說的人當真了。