oops..

hab gehört, dass "that's bollocks" das ist Schwachsinn und "that's the bollocks" das ist das Größte heißen soll. Von nem Typen aus London. Der hat mir da ca. 30 Mal erklärt...

Have you heard XY's new album? It's the dog's bollocks! [i.e. "it's excellent!"]

"It's the bollocks" (without "dog's") sounds strange to me, but it might just be a contractions of "the dog's bollocks" - things seem to get shortened in colloquial English more and more, probably due to people wishing saving keystrokes when typing. "It's the bollocks" is so close to "It's bollocks" that it could easily be misheard, and then the meaning of the sentence is reversed ("It's bollocks" would be synonymous with: very poor/rubbish/nonsense/crap). Excuse the vernacular. :)

pheasantplucker is right- also in terms of 'yes, it might sound easy to reverse the meaning', but that's how it's used.'
other less bollock-related are:
the bees knees
the cats whiskers

closest i've seen in german is die heisse scheisse- any more German ones

THANKS