Hong Kong English/Cantonese (XXI)
Pennsylvania: A Swing State That Catches All Attention during the US Presidential Election
It’s all because of its Chinese name’s acronym
The US presidential election is almost over (what remains are the Trump drama, I guess), so I believe that it is the time to tell you about something related to the states in the USA.
Because of the differences between Chinese and English, we need to translate the names of the US states for daily use or for media. We basically translate the state names by how they sound except for the words “New” (apart from New York) and the direction words. Then we add a word 州 to indicate a state.
So we have 俄立岡州 (Oregon, Jyutping: ngo4 lap6 gong1 zau1), 新澤西州 (New Jersey, Jyutping: san1 zaak6 sai1 zau1) and 北卡羅萊納州 (North Carolina, Jyutping: bak1 kaa1 lo4 loi4 naap6 zau1) for example.
Moreover, we can have short forms for some states that we hear very often, such as 加州 (California, Jyutping: gaa1 zau1; short form for 加利福尼亞州, Jyutping: gaa1 lei6 fuk1 nei4 aa3 zau1) and 德州 (Texas, Jyutping: dak1 zau1; short form for 德克薩斯州, Jyutping: dak1 hak1 saat3 si1 zau1).
The few exception from using 州 in their short form is Massachusetts, for example. We use 麻省 (Jyutping: maa4 saang2) for this state in the short form because of the old translations in Ching China. Currently, a use of this short form is for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Chinese: 麻省理工學院. The Chinese word 省 means “province”.Not all US states has short forms in Chinese, especially for those short names like New York (紐約州, Jyutping: nau2 jeok3 zau1) and Washington (華盛頓州, Jyutping: waa4 sing6 deon6 zau1) states.
But the short form of a state makes Hongkongers laugh out of embarrassment.
During the 2012 presidential election (Obama vs Romney), I needed to do a group project at the community college to translate a long piece of news with classmates and we chose to translate a news report on an Obama speech. This was when I started to read some US presidential election news.
I got an A+ in that subject, thank god.I started to notice that a US state has a short form:
Pennsylvania it is.
Its name is 賓夕法尼亞州 (Jyutping: ban1 zik6 faat3 nei4 aa3 zau1) in Chinese and its short form is…
賓州
(Jyutping: ban1 zau1)
It sounds exactly the same as one of many ways a Hongkonger calls a penis (賓周).
What’s more, Pennsylvania is a swing state and Hong Kong media wrote it as
搖擺賓州
(Jyutping: jiu4 baai2 ban1 zau1)
which sounds like “Swinging Penis”.
The use of Pennsylvania’s Chinese short form went to extremes during 2016 elections (Clinton vs Trump).
The following are some news titles suggested by netizens in that period and I’m going to translate all of them and let 賓州 mean “penis” as it sounds the same as Pennsylvania in Cantonese.
These are the news titles that we might understand when reading out loud back then.
- Hilary and Trump fighting for penis
- Trump carelessly loses penis
- Hilary grabs penis by accident
- Trump’s reverse victory in penis
- Eyes on penis in the battle for White House
- Trump swings penis and snipes Hilary
- Trump loses penis by Hilary’s sneak attack
- Trump’s fate to lose penis
- Trump’s fans cheer as he shows penis
- Trump’s penis glows
- Clinton’s penis helps Hilary
- Possibility for Hilary to control penis
- Trump gives up penis as he feels the fate
- Trump’s penis seriously injured
- Hilary’s bite endangers Trump’s penis
Because of histories, we tend to use the first name to refer to Hilary Clinton as we use the last name to refer to her husband who is a former US president. Even when she was the Secretary of State, we still called her by her first name and her title, which was 美國國務卿希拉莉.Yes, every time when we read news about Pennsylvania, it was like we were watching porn. This sounds too embarrassing for us but it is worth a laugh.
We don’t really care who swings, but we’d prefer the media to be more decent.
This year, I could only find pro-Peking media in Hong Kong used 賓州 for Pennsylvania. Probably we should be glad about this. Let me do that “translation” in the caption.
This is just one of them.
It was too “funny” for Hong Kong media to not be conscious of the homophone Pennsylvania’s short form has. This “penis” joke, I believe, will never end.