适得其反 - translation into English?

[tooironic]

How would you translate the chengyu 适得其反 (shìdéqífǎn) into English?

It can be defined in Chinese as 得到的结果跟预想的或期望的恰恰相反.

I thought maybe "to backfire" would be a good translation. Its definition in English is "(of a plan or action) rebound adversely on the originator; have the opposite effect to what was intended.

But I'm not sure if the connotation is exactly the same as the original Chinese idiom.

What do you think? Cheers.

[陳德聰]

Hm... Well backfire refers to the plan, but 适得其反 refers to the result, doesn't it?

[Guest realmayo]

"Backfire" is the only English word or saying I can think of that broadly works. 'Hoist with your own petard' would work only in a limited number of cases, i.e. for a scheme that intended some degree of unpleasantness.

However I saw this example sentence on nciku, 服药过量会适得其反, and if that's a perfectly acceptable use of 适得其反 then I think "backfire" isn't perfect here because I'd usually associate backfire with a plan of some sort.

[Kenny同志]

適：恰恰；得：得到；其：所期望的結果；反：反面。適得其反：恰恰得到相反的結果, or according to Dr Lin Yutang, get just the opposite.

I am sure it'd be easier to translate in specific context because from there you can figure out the opposite result and instead of saying 'get just the opposite', which may seem ambiguous in English sometimes, you can spell out the result in English as part of the translation of the whole chengyu.

[roddy]

You could in some cases say that someone has shot themselves in the foot.

[imron]

counter-productive

[Kenny同志]

高！