How Do I Translate: The Bee’s Knees?
My wife is Chinese, and we are raising our daughter to be bilingual. My wife speaks to her in Chinese while I stick to English. Since we live in America, Chinese books are hard to find, so my wife translates a lot of children’s books from English into Chinese while reading them.
This can be difficult or even impossible. My wife has learned not to even attempt Dr. Seuss or Skippyjon Jones. These are books we only read to my daughter in English. On the other end of the spectrum, many children’s books are easy to translate and repetitive. My daughter loves Have You Seen My Cat? Even my poor Chinese skills are up to the challenge of reading that one.
In between these extremes are books which are straightforward but have an unexpected curveball. Therefore, I get questions from my wife like, “How do you translate you’re the bee’s knees?” My wife also told me I should write about these unexpected phrases, so here we are.
Bee’s knees is a slang term from the 1920s, which means something is excellent. So if someone says you’re the bee’s knees, they are giving you a real compliment. Even though it is an old-fashioned term, I happen to love the phrase because it has a bit of nonsense baked in. World Wide Words notes several of these nonsensical 1920s catchphrases, including cat’s meow, ant’s pants, bullfrog’s beard, elephant’s instep, and pig’s wings. Of these, the only one I’ve heard before was cat’s meow.
I suspect bee’s knees survived because it has the right amount of nonsense. If you heard pig’s wings, you would immediately know there is no such thing. Bee’s knees, on the other hand, sounds ridiculous but leaves you wondering, “Do bees actually have knees?” I could google it, but I prefer to leave it a mystery. The alliteration also helps, giving the phrase a fun sound. I would say whoever came up with this phrase was the bee’s knees!
On a side note, not all nonsensical animal phrases from the 1920s mean something excellent. Another bit of slang from that time is horse feathers, which means the exact opposite of bee’s knees.
