Yippie Kay-Yay Mother Facker
When I was an ESL teacher, I worked hard to find innovative ways to teach my students, which was always a challenge. I had a small treasure trove of English textbooks and workbooks and games I'd play with my students. Occasionally I'd rent a movie and watch it with some more advanced students, coming up with some exercises to help them pick up vocabulary or useful phrases from the film. One day I rented the movie Die Hard, which they'd asked to see, and we watched it together with the Japanese subtitles. I hadn't realized the number of swear words that were present in the film, and before I knew it I was teaching a lesson on the various nuances of the "F" word to my students. And yet, it's funny how neutral such words can become when you're outside an English speaking country -- most Japanese know a few English swear words, but they have no teeth in Japan.
As you can see, the Japanese are quiet adept at using American slang.
posted by Peter in Japan at 5:18 PM
2 Comments:
In the Japanese dub of 'Reservoir Dogs' (a pretty good dub, by the way) they left in Quentin Tarantino's "fakku fakku fakku fakku fakku" in the opening scene. :D It was quite weird, it totally didn't have the originally intended effect.
(They left some other English phrases intact, too, like "tough guy." "Omae wa tafu gai daro!")
6:48 PM
That's hilarious because today we went to Lowe's and as we were getting out of the car I saw a big blue Toyota truck. On the side in cool big black lettering it said, "Toyota Racing Division TRD". My dad and I busted up laughing! Could you see that in a American commercial? I think the Japanese need to hire Americans for their marketing, but hey, it got our attention.
7:08 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home