I CAN HAZ TRANZLASHUN?

July 15, 2008 10:53 PM

What does the phrase, "groBes malheur!", as used in this photo, mean and what language it is?

I've tried Google's translation tool and the regular Google web search and I haven't been able to get to a meaning that quite makes sense to me in the photo's context. The "what language is this?" online utilities I've plugged the phrase into have identified the words separately as either German, French, or Breton but not both words in the same language. Help?

posted by fuse theorem to writing & language (13 comments total)

I think it's someone doing lolcat French after some lolcat English.

'groBes' is slightly out of style German way of spelling 'grosses.' In French, 'grosses' is the feminine plural form of 'gros' (meaning big, large). 'Gros malheur' means 'big sadness, pity, disaster.' It makes about as much grammatical sense as the 'me az no backupz' up top.

"I have no backup! THE HORROR!" is the best translation into regular English.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 10:59 PM on July 15, 2008

groBes (the "B" is really a german way of writing a double ss sound) means big. malheur is french and means... displeasure or upsetness. "me has no backups" seems to be decrying the cats failure to store his digital data in a redundant manner. I believe the gestalt message is one of polyglossial regret - the cat is now sad having lost it's data.
posted by phrontist at 10:59 PM on July 15, 2008 [5 favorites]

I look forward to the academic treatises on lolcat code switching grammars.
posted by phrontist at 11:00 PM on July 15, 2008

Oh, and a quick flip through my German-English dictionary tells me this: like 'pomme frites' (french fries), 'malheur' is a French word that also exists in German. So it's probably some kind of German. It has a different connotation, though; more "WHAT A BIG MISTAKE" than "THE HORROR", as far as I can tell.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:02 PM on July 15, 2008

"Grosses Malheur" counts as German. It means a big piece of bad luck.
posted by creasy boy at 11:40 PM on July 15, 2008

Yeah, should probably have flipped through my German dictionary before declaring it pidgin French.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:41 PM on July 15, 2008

Bonus pedantry: that B-like letter in Großes is an eszett, which as others have said, is an olde fashioned way of representing an sz or ss sound. See the Wikipedia link for a nice visual explication of how the ligature grew into what otherwise appears to be a beta. I'm afraid I learned all my German before the great spelling revision of 1996, so I'm flagrant with my eszettage, but I gather that there are fewer ßs in the wild than there once were.
posted by mumkin at 11:57 PM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

According to this, you use ß after a long vowel, ss after a short one. So "groß" is correct, even post-1996.
posted by creasy boy at 1:48 AM on July 16, 2008 [2 favorites]

It's confusing, though, because the cat says "me az" instead of "me haz", which seems to me a parody of a French accent. It's definitely not German. So maybe it's a German person making fun of the French in lolcat. He uses the borrowed French word "Malheur" and imagines to himself the cat saying the German phrase "Großes Malheur" with a French accent, and then he switches to lolcat English with a French accent because there's no tradition of lolcat in German.

I don't even think it would be possible to reproduce lolcat in German, unless you count this sort of thing.
posted by creasy boy at 4:12 AM on July 16, 2008

Presumably, this is the result of someone (for reasons that remain obscure) trying to translate the common lolcat phrase "Epic fail".
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:11 AM on July 16, 2008 [2 favorites]

Don't give up hope, mumkin, the eszett is making a comeback.
posted by bluefly at 6:30 AM on July 16, 2008 [2 favorites]

"Big mistake!"
flibbertigibbet's version is great.
Good to see the eszett is still kicking!
posted by wundermint at 6:46 AM on July 16, 2008

Connotatively, "EPIC FAIL".
posted by everichon at 8:57 AM on July 16, 2008