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As I understand ...,但是有意思的是,... means ..., but the interesting thing is, ... but I went through great pains to arrive at this. The culprit here that jammed the cranks in my head was the 的. Had it not been there I might have just inferred that meaning and carry on assuming that the thing in interesting thing was implicit or the phrase was something akin to but what's interesting is.
What's 的 doing here?
I'd also be grateful for another example showing the same rule in action.
Both your translations are definitely correct (if you think about it but the interesting thing and but what's interesting mean the same thing). As you pointed out, something is omitted here: in this case it's the word 事情 thing, the thing. This happens because it's implicitly inferred.
The sentence 但是有意思的事情是 is grammatically correct too and it means the exactly same thing. In this case we made 事情 explicit.
You already know that 的 introduces the modifier which precedes the noun that it's modifying. If you make 事情 implicit, you have to leave 的 in the sentence to indicate that the element that comes before represents a modifier, and the thing that is modified can be omitted.
Consider this sentence:
我的自行车比你的新。
My bike is newer than yours.
Let's analyse it:
我的自行车 (Modifier + Subject) + 比 (preposition) + 你的 (Modifier) + 新 (Predicate)
In this example, after 你, there is a 的 that modifies something implicit. The word 自行车 is explicit the first time (after 我), but it's omitted the second time (after 你) because both the speaker and the audience know they are talking about bikes. Thus, you omit 自行车 the second time but keep 的 to signify that the element that comes before is a modifier.
P.S. Although it could sound redundant, it is perfectly OK to say 我的自行车比你的自行车新.
的 works as an attributive, so it's a different kind of beast, I guess? Also thanks for the example with 比, I didn't know about that either despite having seen numerous comparison sentences before.
Jun 4, 2016 at 0:42
As long as I can remember now, 的 has two uses:
我的妈妈 => My mother
杰克的食物 => Jack's food
Examples:
我帅气的老公 => My handsome husband
从中国来的特产 => A special property which comes from China
One more thing before analyzing your sentence:
In Chinese, the word "thing" is usually omitted if applicable. So if you see sentences like these:
这是我妈的(东西)。=> This is my mum's.
这个是很有意思的(东西)。=> This is very meaningful.
Then you should know that there is a hidden “东西” in between.
So, in your example, knowing that a hidden “东西” is within the sentence, and 的 in th above case having the second meaning, you should understand why the translation is like that.
“的”的用法是：①部分n＋的＝adj adj修饰n／v ②省略一些词语 such as:美丽的蝴蝶 美丽＝n 美丽的＝adj 蝴蝶＝n 美丽的修饰（modifier）蝴蝶 ——莫道不销魂，帘卷西风，人比黄花瘦。
