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.
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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!")
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.
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