On Reducing TMD Syntactic Ambiguity

One of our teachers at AllSet Learning introduced a hilarious Chinese article to me on the grammatical usage of the phrase 他妈的 (often abbreviated as “TMD”). The most appropriate translation of 他妈的 in English is usually “fucking” (in the emphatic sense), so if that offends you, stop reading now.

The origin of this article is unclear to me, but it dates back to at least 2009 (here’s a copy). Anyway, I found the article both funny and instructional, so I’ve translated it below. This is the kind of thing that has tons of translation options, though, so suggestions for more skillful translations are always welcome!

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The grammatically correct use of “TMD” (“fucking”)

In this article, I will offer some simple explanations and examples regarding this expression.

1. Consider the following sentence:

   今年的考题跟课后题一样。

   This year’s test questions were the same as the exercise questions.

   There’s ambiguity here: are we saying that that the questions on the test were really the same as the exercise questions, or are we just metaphorically stating that the test questions simply resembled the exercise questions? At this time, “fucking” becomes useful. We can insert “fucking” into this sentence to make the distinction:

   今年的考题跟课后题他妈的一样。

   “This year’s test questions were the fucking same as the exercise questions.” (indicating identical to the exercise questions)

   今年的考题跟他妈的课后题一样。

   “This year’s test questions were the same as the fucking exercise questions.” (suggesting that the test questions were too simple)

2. There are many similar cases, for example:

   [Translator’s note: I don’t think there’s any way to preserve this ambiguity in English translation, so I’m forced to translate it twice in English.]

   这个解释不清楚

   “This explanation is unclear.” / “This cannot be explained clearly.”

   There are two meanings here: that the explanation itself is not lucid, or that the matter is difficult to explain. However, once we add “fucking,” the ambiguity immediately disappears:

   这个解释他妈的不清楚

   “This explanation is fucking unclear.” (the explanation itself is not helpful)

   这个他妈的解释不清楚

   “This cannot be fucking explained clearly.” (the issue is difficult to explain)

3. Another example:

   没有一次看完

   “Didn’t finish reading it once.” / “Didn’t finish reading it all at once.”

   This sentence has two meanings: did not finish reading it a single time, or didn’t finish reading it all at once. If we insert “fucking” in different positions, the ambiguity can also be removed:

   没有他妈的一次看完

   “Didn’t fucking finish reading it all at once” (didn’t finish reading it all in one go)

   没有一次他妈的看完

   “Didn’t finish reading it fucking once”

   (simply has not ever finished reading it)

Therefore, our fucking conclusion is that we should advocate the fucking inclusion of “fucking,” which can fucking assist in the clarity of fucking sentence structure, reduce fucking syntactic ambiguity, and make possible obstacle-free fucking communication.