About

English to Jamaican Patois Google Translate refers to a series of memes in which funny phrases are translated from English to Jamaican Patois using Google Translate. Jamaican Patois was added to Google Translate in June 2024 and became the subject of memes over the following months, becoming more widely popularized in February 2025 on X / Twitter. As it spread online, some people accused the meme trend of being racist and making fun of Jamaican Patois, though others pushed back on this take. The meme is comparable to the 2022 English to Dutch translations trend.

Origin

On June 27th, 2024, Google Translate^[1] added 100 new languages to their service, including Jamaican Patois.

On August 3rd, Redditor u/d8662 announced the addition to the subreddit /r/Jamaica,^[2] inspiring users to test out the addition.

On December 20th, 2024, X^[3] user @evsfred posted a screenshot of a translation of the sentence "I think I want to take my own life," resulting in, "mi tink mi waan tek mi own life," a reference to the "Mi Tink Mi Gwaan Tek Mi Own Life" meme, garnering over 560 likes in two months.

Spread

In February 2025, many people began experimenting with the Jamaican Patois translation and posting their results to X as it continued to spread.

For instance, on February 24th, 2025, X^[4] user @Sick0las posted a screenshot of a translation of the sentence, "I'm so tired all the time I want to die," resulting in, "mi so taiyad aal di taim mi waahn ded," writing, "This is way better than therapy," garnering over 331,000 likes and 23,000 reposts in three days.

Later that day, X^[5] user @y_cumbinator posted a translation of the sentence "my balls are enlarged," resulting in, "mi balls dem big," garnering around 15 likes in three days.

On February 25th, X^[6] user @linaposting quoted @sick0las' post, criticizing it and writing, "this trend is racist as shit," garnering over 155,000 likes in two days.

The post garnered some significant pushback in the comments. For example, X^[7] user @MarcosSnchezMu1 posted on February 25th, "people also do it with dutch, because it similarly looks funny when you know english but not those languages, which are similar to english in a sweet spot for comedy. That makes me think it is not racist," garnering over 24,000 likes in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References