A few weeks ago when I asked about gěrpì, it took Sinoglot readers all of a few minutes to come up with the dictionary entry that had eluded me. From the comments in that entry I’ll first quote Jeroen’s response:

嗝儿屁[-兒-] gěrpì v.o. 〈slang〉 die; be dead

and then Julen’s comment:

etymology: from ass belching, something people do when they die.

Brendan also noted the phrase is in current (ironic) usage not just among kids.

Now the question is: what would be a better translation of that phrase that inspired the title of the original post: “Grandma’s going to murder me if she finds out”?

Yàoshi Lǎolǎo fāxiàn de huà wǒ huì gěrpì de.
要是姥姥发现的话我会gěrpì的

“Murder”, as an active verb with Grandma as agent, isn’t even close. Construction-wise it seems to fall in line with the fully idiomatic phrase “if grandma finds out, I’m dead meat”. But “dead meat” doesn’t quite capture the foulness of 嗝儿屁 — keep in mind it was something my 10-year-old didn’t dare to say in front of her grandmother.

My best proposal is to borrow the “dead meat” format and substitute “ass belch”, so that you get: “If grandma finds out, I’m an ass belch.” But of course that lacks transparency in English: you’d have to go through an explanation of ass belching… Well, I never claimed to aspire to anything but the crudest translations. Ideas?