Friday, August 12, 2011

Hakuna Matata: Means Something in Mandarin?


Being a teacher (at least temporarily) on summer break, means I have very few responsibilities right now; which revived the idea of Hakuna Matata from way back in the Disney era of my youth. When Simba leaves his kingdom to hang out with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern -- er, Timon and Pumbaa -- they sing him a song about leaving his troubles behind to dance, sing, and eat bugs: Hakuta Matata, no worries for the rest of your days. It recently occurred to me that each syllable in this phrase has at least a few, and usually copious, definitions in Mandarin. These are the definitions of the words Ha Ku Ta Ma Ta Ta that I found using my electronic Chinese dictionary, regardless of tone:

Ha: laugh/laughter, frog/toad, abbreviation for Kazakhstan, a pug

Ku: pants/trousers, skeleton, broken utensil, to cry, to toil, pain/to suffer, cave/hole, to cut open/rip up, dried up, warehouse, ruthless, strong (as in alcohol), cool (as in suave)

Ta: he/she/it, sole (the fish), door of an inner room, to despair, pagoda/tower, to sew onto clothing, collapse, thallium, to drink/swallow, to tread/step on, couch, careless/negligent, otter, abundant

Ma: mom, horse, weight, number, to curse/revile/abuse/scold, grasshopper, leprosy, mammoth, toad, ant, mark, dragonfly, hemp, question word (like Candadian "eh", but doesn't work here due to placement)

So, throwing grammar out the window I'd like to see if anyone can come up with a relevant or funny Mandarin translation of Hakuta Matata. As you can kind of tell from above, many words in Chinese can be used as nouns, verbs, or adjectives, so use whichever form makes sense. Also, feel free to fill spaces between words with smaller words that make it understandable such as "a(n)", "the", "of", "with," "in" etc. Whoever has the best one will win a horribly mistranslated t-shirt or other cheap Chinese trinket of their choosing.

The most relevant one I can come up with so far is: "the laughing, cool otter curses his despair"

See what you can come up with and post it in the comments or on my Facebook/twitter (@slauer), on Monday I'll either choose a winner or a top three for a vote.

Stephen "Scuba" Lauer

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