“Linsanity” is less than a month old and still a victim of autocorrect, but it’s already a contender for word of the year. But in China and Taiwan, where the Jeremy Lin madness is in overdrive (he has nearly 2 million followers on Weibo), sparking new tensions between countries, and possibly worrying the authorities, figuring out the word for it hasn’t been easy.In Mandarin Chinese, the word was first most commonly translated as Línfēngkuáng 林疯狂, literally “Lin insane.” “It is not cute or clever the way Linsanity is,” writes the linguist Victor Mair at Language Log. “It is clumsy and clunky; just doesn’t sound right.” By replicating the order of the English portmanteau – Lin + insanity – the Chinese word sounds more like a person’s name in Chinese: “Insane Lin.” Says Mair, “That certainly is not the impression we wish to convey when we shout ‘Linsanity!’”“Moreover, the rhythm is wrong for a Chinese word, and believe me, rhythm is very important for Chinese word formation.” That’s because trisyllabic Chinese nouns, as Mair points out, have their main part at the end: airport, fēijīchǎng 飞机场, is “airplane field,” typewriter, dǎzìjī 打字机, is “strike character machine,” peanut butter, huāshēngjiàng 花生酱, is “peanut sauce” and so on, with two syllables modifying the final one syllable. But in Línfēngkuáng’s construction, one syllable modifies two. That just doesn’t’ sound good.
Fortunately, a better alternative has emerged: Línláifēng 林来疯, which is a pun on the Chinese expression rénláifēng, or to “get hyped up in front of an audience,” which is not only analogous to the word-twisting of “linsanity,” but kind of a brilliant metacommentary on Lin and the Lin sensation. In the span of two recent days, Google hits for Línláifēng 林来疯 soared from 155,000 to 683,000. “This shows that, when an excellent, idiomatic translation is made, people recognize it and approve of it enthusiastically.” That, or the NBA, more eager than ever to make inroads in the world’s fastest growing basketball market, has some very good linguists on its marketing team.