Multilingual Humour

Posted on 2003/06/25 14:03:57 (June 2003) by john.

Can a joke be funny in every language?

The other day I was out drinking with some Japanese friends, and, as I'm sure many other people have in a similar situation, we got onto the subject of jokes. I ought to know by now this is generally a very ill-fated topic indeed. English jokes in particular seem to be very linquistic and/or cultural, and are very difficult to translate. If you have to explain any part of a joke, like the dual meaning of one word, or the context in which we normally use a particular phrase, or the personality of a famous person referenced, you've utterly killed it.

The other problem is not so much language or culture related, but actually that our concept of jokes often doesn't really exist at all in other cultures. Humour definitely exists in Japan, people laugh all the time, but it seems to be more about behaviour and particular situations. You can't necessarily expect to string together a few words and get a laugh. I do know one Japanese joke, which manifests itself in a form we would find familiar. I've not yet managed to make anyone Japanese laugh with it, but perhaps I haven't quite mastered the correct way of delivering it yet:

- Michael Jackson no suki na iro wa nan desu ka?
- OW! (Said whilst doing a Michael Jackson style action)

In English, this is:

- What's Michael Jackson's favourite colour?
- OW!

Au is the Japanese word for blue, you see. OK, I didn't make any promises about how funny it was, but this proves, albeit rare, that the concept of jokes does exist in some form in Japan, even if they're not a particularly popular type of humour compared with, say, good old slapstick, and men dressing up as ladies.

I did learn recently, thanks to the wonderful Adam and Joe Go Tokyo on BBC Three, that Japanese humour, particularly the stand-up comedian variety, tends to be a lot less derisive. A particular no-no is having a go at anyone in the audience. This stems from the wide ranging Japanese belief that customer service is of paramount importance, and stand-up comics in Japan consider the members of their audience as customers. Self ridicule, on the other hand, seems to be highly acceptable, and almost obligatory, making many Japanese comedians look to me a lot like medieval jesters to some extent. Catchphrase based humour seems quite popular. Something like the Fast Show might work surprisingly well in Japan. They have Mr. Bean there, and this is more or less the average Japanese person's only experience of English humour. It's a very visual brand of humour, and therefore it is no great surprise that it easily crosses cultural and language barriers (the Americans like it too, apparently). From my experience they don't seem to enjoy Blackadder very much though.

So, clearly there are many types of humour. There's visual humour, slapstick, word play, cultural references, sarcasm, political satire to name but a few. Some types are seemingly more popular than others depending on where you come from.

It may just be that English is better suited to linguistic humour than other languages, perhaps in the same way that it is such a popular choice for song lyrics around the world. The rich nature of English, thanks to all the other languages that have fed into it over the years, seem to give it more words with double meanings, more words that rhyme, and perhaps just more words altogether than many other languages.

Despite this, I'm still convinced that there is a place for some kind of purely non-visual humour in every language. As a result of this, I have taken it upon myself, for the good of the human race, to try and find a joke that is totally devoid of linguistic or cultural references. A joke that can be translated into every language, with at least some small chance of being funny.

This, I have discovered, is not an easy task. Taking a sample of jokes (a list I received via email) I've discovered they more or less all rely on the same few basic constructs, which won't be able to cross the linguistic and/or cultural boundraries.

I met a Dutch girl with inflatable shoes last week, phoned her up to arrange a date but unfortunately she'd popped her clogs.

You'd need to know that to "pop your clogs" means to die (I have no idea where this bizarre colloquialism comes from), and a little cultural knowledge about the Dutch (i.e. they wear clogs). Not very translatable.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it.

I'm very fond of this joke, incidentally. It relies entirely on wordlplay, but there could be some limited mileage in it - kayak is not an English word, and therefore is probably used as is in many other languages too. Cake, well, yes it is English, but many non-European languages use it. The real problem is the phrase "You can't have your cake and eat it", which probably doesn't exist in many other languages.

The other day I sent my girlfriend a huge pile of snow. I rang her up, I said "Did you get my drift?".

Again, requires knowledge of the phrase, and that we call big piles of snow drifts.

So I went down the local supermarket, I said "I want to make a complaint, this vinegar's got lumps in it", he said "Those are pickled onions".

No word play here, so possibly a goer. However, not that many countries have pickled onions. You could localise it a bit perhaps - many countries pickle other things - gherkins, cabbage, raddishes, plums etc.

I saw this bloke chatting up a cheetah, I thought "he's trying to pull a fast one".

Yet again, totally dependent on a commonly used English phrase.

So I said to this train driver "I want to go to Paris". He said "Eurostar?". I said "I've been on telly but I'm no Dean Martin".

Mainly Word play, and also requires a bit of localised knowledge about public transport. Not a chance.

So I said to the Gym instructor "Can you teach me to do the splits?". He said "How flexible are you?". I said "I can't make Tuesdays".

Well, this might work in some languages, providing flexible can be used in both of the ways intended here. However, you can guarantee this isn't going to work in every lanaguage.

But I'll tell you what I love doing more than anything: trying to pack myself in a small suitcase. I can hardly contain myself.

No chance again - hinges on the phrase "I can hardly contain myself", which you can guarantee won't have an equivalent in most other languages.

But I'm in great mood tonight because the other day I entered competition and I won a years supply of Marmite...one jar.

Requires cultural knowledge (i.e. what Marmite is) no chance of working outside of the UK.

...OK, I've skipped a few here, as it was basically the same issues...

A jump-lead walks into a bar. The barman says "I'll serve you, but don't start anything"

So I thought this might be in with a chance at first chance. But when you think about it, even very simple constructs like "don't start anything", are actually phrases that are quite specific to English.

All in all, maybe it wasn't a very good sample, they were more or less all puns and gags, the sorts of jokes that rely on word play. There must be other types of jokes surely?

However, when I think through all of my favourite jokes, many of them are based on puns. For example:

There's the long winded rabbit-goes-into-a-pub one, with mixymytosis / mixing me toasties.

There's the man who goes to the Scottish doctor complaining he has a taste of coconut in his mouth. "Aye laddy, it's boun-ty".

The best joke I could manage from my repertoire, in terms of translatability (is that a word?) is the following. There's no word play, no required phrases, and not even any cultural references (although you might have to replace the butcher and/or rabbit for something a bit more localised in some countries). Anyway, here it is:

A rabbit goes into a butcher's and asks "Have you got any carrots?". The butcher says "No, this is a butcher's. We don't sell carrots."

The next day, the rabbit goes back into the same butcher's and asks again "Have you got any carrots?" The butcher, a short tempered man, and already quite annoyed, replies "No, don't be rediculous. I told you already, this is a butcher's. We do not sell carrots, OK?".

The next day, same rabbit, same butcher's. Again he asks, "Have you got any carrots?". The butcher, really angry by now, replies "Right rabbit. If you come in here, once more, asking for carrots, I AM GOING TO NAIL YOU TO THAT WALL OVER THERE.". The rabbit hops out.

The next day, the rabbit goes back in again, and asks "Have you got any nails?", to which the butcher replies "No, this is a butcher's". So the rabbit asks "Have you got any carrots?".

The only problem being that most people don't seem to find it funny.

But maybe after all, it really is all down to the way you tell 'em.

I managed a smirk at the rabbit / butcher joke. :-) Oh and the marmite one tickled me because that stuff is -nasty-.

Posted by Omar at 2003/06/25 15:26:42.

How about the official funniest joke in the world:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.

He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"

See here:

http://tinyurl.com/f878

Posted by Simon at 2003/06/25 15:28:06.

Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says "Hell, I've lost my electron!" The other says "Are you sure?" "Yes" replies the first, "I'm positive".

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/06/25 18:06:34.

So there's Tarzan, right? And he walks into the jungle bar with a giraffe on a lead. He orders a couple of pints, and he and the giraffe set about drinking them. Sadly, the giraffe can't hold his beer, and prompty falls on the floor. Tarzan decides it's time to go, and heads for the door. "Wait!" bellows the barman, "You can't leave that lyin' there!". Tarzan replies, "It's not a lion, it's a giraffe".

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/06/25 18:10:00.

Personally I find that to make my Japanese teachers laugh I only have to say "hebereke", "seisyun", or "hana yori dango". But YMMV.

Posted by Mark at 2003/06/26 12:28:55.

YMMV? What's that? I've looked it up on Google, and can only find "Your mileage may vary". Is this what you meant? If so, in what sense ..?

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/06/26 08:41:16.

I'm very fond of hana yori dango... It literally means "flowers below dumplings", which we'd probably say more like "dumplings above flowers". I actually thought it was quite profound - I've never managed to get a laugh out of it! It's all about valuing the concrete over the ethereal. There's not much point having pretty things around if you're starving too death. I suppose it is a distant cousin of "beggars can't be choosers" or maybe Mark Twain's "hunger is pride's master". By the way, isn't YMMV you make me vomit...?

Posted by John at 2003/06/26 10:32:45.

John, "hana yori dango" isn't meant to be a philosophical statement. What it refers to is people who go to hanabi (cherry blossom viewing festivals) but then don't actually look at the flowers, instead spending all their time at the snack table.

"Hebereke" means "falling over drink". "Seisyun" is a *very* poetic word for childhood (literally it means "springtime of life"), so sounds incongruously funny in a normal conversation - at least it seems to anyway.

Posted by Mark at 2003/06/26 24:15:50.

And YMMV is Your Mileage May Vary!

Posted by Mark at 2003/06/26 24:16:30.

Hmmm I think it works in both silly and profound contexts then. All the Japanese people I've talked to about it have called it a proverb, and therefore it must contain a certain amount of profundity. I think hana yori dango is perhaps a justification for not looking at the flowers at a hanami (isn't hanabi fireworks in fact?), but this isn't the only time it is used, as I understand it.

Posted by John at 2003/06/26 24:34:07.

Apparently, hana yori dango is used as the name for some kind of anime (a film perhaps?) in Japan. This is interesting (to me at least) as the title is actually written using a different kanji for "hana". So it reads "boys" in place of "dumplings". I'd wondered when writing this article if the Japanese might use double meanings of kanji to construct puns. It turns out they do. This oddly gives me a warm feeling inside.

Posted by John at 2003/06/26 24:40:46.

Hana Yori Dango is indeed used as the name of an anime, which I've seen an episode or two of. You don't really need to know much other than the fact that it includes a bunch of guys called "the flowery four", who specialise in the pose demonstrated here: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/StUnion/Anime/quiz2000/f4deject.jpg

And yes, Kanji puns are seriously bizarre..

Posted by Mark at 2003/06/26 15:32:02.

Please explain what a "Kanji" is.

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/06/27 09:54:18.

Actully, that pose isn't a million miles from Python's classic "NO BLACKMAIL!!"

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/06/27 13:04:15.

Kanji is a set of Japanese symbols. There are three sets of symbols in Japanese:

The first is Hirogana which used for Japanese words. The second is Katakana - used for foreign words. Both of these take the form of an alphabet which spells out words phonetically.

The third set of symbols is Kanji. Kanji are symols which denote one thing (or one group of related things) each. One Kanji can represent an item, for example 'Castle' can be represented by a single Kanji.

The above information may well be slightly wrong (or more) as it comes from the course in Japanese I did over two years ago... badly. I'm sure that John or Chie-san can correct my mistakes :)

Byrn

Posted by Byrn at 2003/06/27 14:10:52.

That's right re Kanji.

Every Kanji also has a "reading" (which is how you pronounce it). The problem is, most Kanji have several readings, and which one you use depends on the context of the Kanji.

Ok, here's an example. In English, the word "woman" has a meaning on its own. In "feminist", the prefix "fem-" has the same meaning, and in "misogynist" or "gynacologist", the prefix "gyn-" has the same meaning. So all these are effectively different ways of pronouncing the same thing.

Now, in Japanese, there's just one Kanji for "woman", and you have to know whether to read it as "onna" ('woman' on its own), "me" (as in 'me-gami' - 'female-god', ie goddess), or "jo" (as in 'shou-jo' - 'small-female', ie girl). Sadly, the rules for which reading you use are rather bizarre...

But a Kanji pun arises when you can swap one Kanji for another with the same reading. For example, a brief romantic poem might be written as "Ai, Ai, Ai" - the first one meaning "Sorrow", the second being a female proper name, and the third one meaning "Love"!

Another example, the Reading Japanese college is "Gyo-Sei" (Morning-Star) but "Gyo-sei" can also be Fish-Ghost. ;)

Posted by Mark at 2003/06/27 16:34:35.

What are he song lyrics for Adam and Joe recent song in partcial Japanes?? help me please someone.

Posted by matt at 2003/07/29 24:35:36.

no way

Posted by 6y at 2007/11/11 06:07:46.

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