The Blog

No matter how much you study a second language, you’ll never be 100% prepared to use it on the spot in a random, real life situation. Especially if that random, real life situation is something you don’t do all that often. Like getting a bimonthly haircut. Or signing up for a yearlong gym membership.

Such was my predicament earlier today, which prompted me to tweet this. After just barely managing to awkwardly stutter through phrases like “我要会员卡” (I’d like a membership card) and “我可以用信用卡吗?” (Can I use my credit card?) sans translator, and asking staff members to repeat words and then exclaiming “ah!” when I understood, I finally got stuck on one word I couldn’t figure out for the life of me.

“你今天来对练吗?,” asked one of the trainers. Did you come to duìliàn today?

Duìliàn? Now there was a word I’d never studied before.

Embarassed, I asked, “对练是什么?” What is duìliàn?

She sighed and scratched her head. How on earth could she describe duìliàn to this confused foreigner?

“等一下,” I told her. Wait a minute. Then I fumbled through my purse and pulled out my iTouch. I hated having to wait around awkwardly in silence while my trusty translator app loaded. When it was finally ready, I hurriedly typed in dui lian. These were the search results I got:

The results.

Not helping, I thought. Defeated, I put the device back in my bag and said “听不懂.” I don’t understand. Having suffered through two strenuous years of studying Mandarin in college, I hated using this phrase. Especially when I understood all but one word. A word I knew was some sort of action verb.

She pointed to the treadmills and elliptical, then across the room to the weight machines. “你在这儿对练,” she said. You duìliàn here.

Ah. “对练是—” I pretended to lift weights in the air. This is duìliàn?

With a look on her face that read, “no, that isn’t quite it,” she threw a hand up in the air. She had given up trying to explain, so she gestured for me to follow her. Then she showed me around the gym. During the brief tour, she repeated everything two, sometimes three times. She also kept asking “明白了吗?” Is it clear? It was only fitting that after the awkward duìliàn conversation, I could almost completely understand everything else she was saying. It made the repeated use of “Is it clear?” that much more humiliating.

I was determined to learn the meaning of duìliàn, so when I got home I immediately went to nciku and typed it in the search box. This was the one and only result:

Oh.

You know that sketch in Chappelle’s Show where Charlie Murphy tells the True Hollywood Story about playing basketball with Prince? When they ask Murphy what happened next after being defeated, he tells the interviewer, “After it was all over, he took us in the house and served us pancakes.” Then he pauses, and repeats, “Pancakes.” When I first stumbled across the translation for duìliàn, I immediately pictured Murphy repeating the word “sparring,” emphasizing just how ridiculous it sounded.

Sparring.

Of course, I had to actually look up the definition for sparring. And to be honest, I still don’t really understand what it is or how it relates to treadmills, ellipticals and weight machines. But according to Wikipedia, it’s “a form of training common to many martial arts.”

Alright, then. I guess some phrases will permanently be lost in translation. In the meantime, I’ll be heading off to the gym to go sparring.

UPDATE (6/15/10): As Tae from nciku points out in the comments, the trainer may have actually been saying “锻炼” (duànliàn) which means “to work out.” This would make a lot more sense. 不好意思!