Destroyed in Translation

So this probably wasn't too fair, but following up on the Mitch Hedberg excercise, I was curious to see if the students could translate jokes from Malay to English. In short, they can't. On the plus side, the results still are very funny in a kind of absurdist way. So if the start is funny and the end is funny, maybe they're better translators than I thought.

Some picks of the litter:

"One day, I looked my friend very shy with me. I do not know why she become like this on that day. Finally I know that my friend has diarrhoea."
A good lesson in general. If your friend is inexplicably shy, it's best not to take it personally. I will also dub this condition shy-arrhea.

"Laugh always make me happy but I never make it happy."
Kinda Zen. I like it.

"I like pooh because it face like my younger brother."
Scatological humor is pretty big apparently.

"I like her bcoz she is beautiful, honest, kind, friendly, and admirable. Moreover she is so famous... I never find a girl like her before... however, her armpits is too... smelly! Yaks!"

This one's pretty brilliant, actually. Here you have this confession of love and the person seems all deep and genuine, then *bam* armpits are a deal breaker. This student crossed out the word "long" before writing "smelly" which just leads to more questions. Short armpits are wrapped up in the Malaysian ideal of beauty, apparently

"My friend's armpit are very smelly like rubbish. That's why many flies like to go near her everyday."
If you come here your armpits better be top-quality. Otherwise the jokes will be relentless, Rubbish-Pits.

And finally:
"My friend, like to eat a lot of rice whe[n] he's stressed."
I see this one more as a call for help. Clearly binge eating is a problem in this country and the student was merely trying to warn me about his friend's problem. Alternatively there might be some cultural knowledge involving eating lots of rice that I'm just not privvy to. If I was going to guess, it probably makes your armpits long and smelly and gives you diarrhea.

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Post Update:

For those that are curious, here are a couple in Malay. Sylvia, I hope this is hilarious to one of us.

Sy suke die sbb die cntk, jujur, baik, mesra dan disayansi... tambahan lasi, die sit lereral... saya xprah jumpe sadis sptnye sblm ini. walaubasaimanapun, ketialenya sst busude, yaks!

Saya suka monyet kerana ia suka makan pisang seperti abang saya.

Pada satu hari, saya tangok kawan saya sangat malu dengan saya. Saya tidak tahu kerapa dia jadi macam tu pada hari itu rupa-tupanya, saya talu bakara kawan saya cirit-birit.

Saya suka pooh kerana muka dia seperti adik saya.

Ketiak kawan saya sangat busuk seperti sampah. Sebab itulah banyak lalat suka pergi dekat padanya setiap hari.

I've been told by one of the Malay English teachers that most of these aren't funny to him either.