Blog entry by Joanne Chuang

Anyone in the world

反諷是件很有意思的事。看到一個壞傢伙因為自己的行為付出代價、或自詡贏得全局卻滿盤皆輸,沒有比這更過癮的事了! 任何人看到《Avengers: Infinity War 復仇者聯盟 : 無限之戰'》劇中Thanos敗於自己的無限寶石手套…說實在的,真是過癮! 當我們進行一件事但是結果卻適得其反時,可以稱之為 'backfires 弄巧成拙/適得其反'。

Irony is delicious. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a bad guy lose due to his own actions, or think he is winning, but actually losing. Anyone who has seen 'Avengers: Infinity War' and seen Thanos defeated with his own magic gauntlet... well, it feels good! When we do something but it has the opposite effect, we can say that it 'backfires'.

在10月時,中國施壓要求不得宣稱台灣為一個國家,實際上卻導致印度 (目前與中國為敵) 掛起比往日更多的台灣國旗,其間與台灣相關的貼文更迅速爆紅。然而,這不是中國所樂見的事。川普亦然 ( Luiz : 原諒我們無法不在 English Sandwich 提及川普....Matt:噢~再等等!很快!等一月份到來就解脫了!) 我們見證了他的行為 'backfire 弄巧成拙'。他持續告訴他的支持者,此次選舉的被 'rigged 操縱' 不利於他 ( 請參閱我們前篇關於 'rigged 操縱' 一詞的貼文 ),但如今他仍需鼓動他的擁護者在1月份再次投票支持至關重要的參議院選舉。他的支持者對於是否值得再次投票的態度可能會困惑躊躇,不過我們很快會看到川普的行為究竟是否會 'backfired 弄巧成拙' 。

In October, pressure from China to not call Taiwan a country, actually resulted in India (who is China's enemy at the moment) putting up more Taiwanese flags than before, and made posts about Taiwan go viral. Not what China wanted to happen. Trump too (Luiz - because we cannot have a post from English Sandwich that does not mention Trump... Matt - oh we will soon, just wait for January!) has seen his actions 'backfire'. He has been telling his supporters that elections are 'rigged' against him (see our previous post about the word 'rigged' here) but he now also needs to encourage those supporters to vote again in January for a vital senate election. His supporters might be a bit confused about whether it is worth voting or not, but we will see if Trump's actions have 'backfired' soon.

這個詞很容易理解,它來自最初不靠譜的槍枝和大砲,有時會產生逆火或爆炸而誤殺使用者 ! The word is pretty easy to understand. It comes from the first guns and cannons that were unreliable and sometimes fired backwards or exploded - killing the user!

記得本週別讓自己的行為 'backfire 弄巧成拙' !

Make sure your actions don't 'backfire' this week!