What?
When I lived in Georgia (the country), the James Bond film “Die Another Day” was translated as “Die, But Not Now”. I should have known that was a bad sign to start with. 
Of course you haven’t lived until you have seen Titanic dubbed by a gruff, monotone Georgian guy doing the voices for all the characters.
I hope he did the Celine Dion song.
This joke is a favorite of my Ukranian in-laws:
Mikhola and Andrei are fishing on the bank of a river.
Mikhola dozes off for a few minutes. When he wakes up he says “Andrei! I just had the most wonderful dream! The river was full of coffins floating downstream and each coffin had a Moskali (Russian) in it!”
Andrei scolds him “Mikhola! Some Moskali are nice!”
Mikhola says “It’s okay. Some of the coffins were nice.”
It’s a real knee-slapper if you lived under Russian domination, I guess.
My favorite is how guys never admit to being 24 years old in Brazil. They will be “23 and a half” and then eventually “almost 25”
There’s a bit of a convoluted chain for this…
There was (a maybe still is) an illegal numbers game called “The Animal Game” in Brazil.
In this game, each animal was represented by a number.
Number 24 was the deer.
“Deer” (veado) in Portuguese is a slang term for a gay person (similar to the double meaning of “fruit”)
Hence, Brazilian guys don’t admit to being 24.
Must be hilarious when teenagers stumble across that number in classrooms for whatever reason.
I think it’s funny, a bit dark though. 
Most of the humour in US sitcoms that air here I find terribly unfunny. These shows are actually made and end up airing here so somebody must find them funny right?
Somebody. Maybe just one guy, or maybe two. And if we ever found them and killed them, ours would be a much happier society.
Yeah, probably someone, but to be completely candid here, I cannot watch U.S. sitcoms. I’ve seen the odd episode of “Frazier,” and they’re OK I guess. I used to like “Spin City” too. Maybe I’m just a cranky old fart now but I can’t really watch much of anything on TV these days. Canada has a really good show (in its last season) called “Corner Gas.” The only other show I go out of my way to watch is the U.K. show “Heartbeat.” It’s not a sitcom, but it’s well written, and acted, and the music is great.
And of course “Hockey Night in Canada.” 
Some American sitcoms are, IMO, quite funny. One has to wade through an endless wasteland of dumb to find them, though.
I once theorized that one or two shows per decade are truly brilliant, and handful are pretty good, and the rest are mind-numbingly stoopid.
Almost as bad as simultaneous translations.
Years ago, on a German talk show, they were interviewing Barbra Streisand in English, and a German translator was giving a simultaneous translation over the sound track.
At one point they asked Streisand a question and she answered in English, “Absolutely not!”
The German translation?
“Yes!”
There are many sitcoms that didn’t translate well into German, but one that was, and is, wildly successful in German is Golden Girls - it became a classic. And believe it or not, Hogan’s Heroes was also a big hit in Germany.
BTW, Germans - like Americans - are lazy and really dislike subtitles; that is why shows are dubbed into German and almost never subtitled.
NPR had a feature a few years ago on dubbing Hogan’s Heroes into German. IIRC, Col. Klink was given a sophisticated Berlin accent, and Sgt. Shultz has a “dumb yokel” Bavarian accent.
I’m not sure about German, but it’s not uncommon for “yes” and “no” to be reversed in response to negative questions. So, if the question were something like, “So, are you not going to do that?”, the English might be “No [I’m not going to do that]” but in many languages you would say the equivalent of “Yes” to mean you were not going to do that. So that may not be a mistranslation.
No, it was dubbed. There are no subtitles in Spain. Don’t attack me, Doper Spaniards (the two of you), but it was explained to me that this is because a large section of the Spanish population cannot read.
Also, I should mention that I had never seen this episode in English. I was watching it in Spanish, yet I found it funny and my roommate didn’t.
British joke that doesn’t work in America
A naked woman walks into a bar and says to the bartender, “I’ll have a double entendre please.” So the bartender gave her one.
American joke that doesn’t work in Britain
Q: Why do chicken coops have two doors?
A: Because if they had four doors, they’d be chicken sedans.
In British slang, “give her one” has sexual connotations (see also: “getting your leg over”). And in the UK “coupe” is pronounced “coo-PAY” rather than “coop”, so the pun doesn’t work.
I heard an American late-night comedian tell a joke that went something like this:
“Where does Saddam Hussein keep his wine? In a rack!”
And it made no sense at all. “Saddam Hussein is a Muslim” I thought. “He doesn’t drink wine as far as I’m aware, but if he does then he probably does keep it in a wine rack, same as most other people.”
Then I switched the channel over and got the news, and the announcer was talking about “The latest offensives in A-rack” and then I realised that the punchline to the joke- a terrible pun on Iraq- had fallen flat for me because in Non-US English, the country’s name is pronounced Eye-rahk, not A-rack or E-rack or any of the myriad other American pronounciations that sound totally different to the British English pronounciation.
Lots of US humour- especially when it relates to actors in TV shows we don’t get here- often falls flat, as does political humour (unless it’s dealing with the President or Someone Very Important), at least in my experience.
Having said that, there’s also some excellent US comedy out there as well, so it’s not a blanket statement by any means.
A Czech man was walking along a street in Prauge when he came upon a magical lamp. After giving the lamp a vigorous scrubbing, a magic genie was released and it said: “You have freed me from my dungeon and as a reward you can have three wishes. Wish for anything you like”. The man thought for a second and said: “I want the entire army of China to invade my country, stay for a week, and then go back the way they came.”
And so it came to be. The Chinese invasion happened quite smoothly. Some statues were toppled and some feathers were ruffled, but nothing more serious than that. After a week, the Chinese gathered their things and went on their way back to China. “I have done as you wished”, said the genie. “No more foolish wishes. How bout a sportscar, or a big mansion?” The man thought for a moment and said: “I want the Chinese to invade my country, stay for a week, and then go back home”. The genie, clearly frustated, had no choise but to obey the mans insane wish.
This time the invasion went even smoother then last time. All the statues were still toppled, and all feathers were still ruffled. The Chinese soldiers had nothing to do but visit pubs and famous turist attractions. It turned out to be a huge economic boost for the Czech Republic. Especially for the suffering brewery industry. After a week, the Chinese packed up their gear and left.
“Could you please wish for something more sensible!”, the genie cried. “How about 10 million Euros and some bitches? I know some very nice bitches”. “I want the Chinese to invade. Stay for a week and then leave” the man said smiling. “FINE!” said the red faced genie. “But before I grant your wish, you insane person, I want to know why anybody in the world would wish for something so crazy.”
“Theres something you have not realized” the man said.
“What?!”
“Every time the Chinese invade.”
“What happens every time the Chinese invade?!” the genie interupted.
"Every time the Chinese invade…
They have to go through Russia."
I apologize for my bad spelling.
I like Corner Gas but I prefer Trailer Park Boys. It’s the funniest, most depressing show I’ve seen in ages.
Sweet, that sounds absolutely right for the czech sense of humour. Allow me to post another one. Do not read this if you have just eaten:
A dead body is found in a terrible state of decay by the roadside, and the cops are duly called in to investigate. They call in forensics to look for clues, but due to the decomposition and mutilation of the body, they can’t say much.
They call in an expert from Brno. He goes into the stinking tent that covers the scene and after a while he stumbles out looking sick. “I think it’s a man,” he says. “But more than that I can’t say.” He pukes behind a tree and leaves.
They call in an expert from Prague. He goes into the fly-ridden tent and after a long time, he emerges looking extremely unwell, and shivering. “I think the victim was between 20 and 30,” he stammers, before heaving his guts up and leaving.
In desperation, they call in an expert from Moscow. He enters the tent, and there is heard the sounds of squelching, sawing and other butcher’s shop noises.
He emerges some hours later, goes over to the chief investigating officer, presents an invoice and remarks:
“He will recover.”
Heard it from a czech lass, and apparently it’s a commentary on the arrogance of russians.
Heh. Good one My favorite Soviet joke goes like this :
Ivan and Mikhail are waiting in line in front of a butcher’s shop. The line is huge, going around the block and then some. The butcher comes out his shop and says : “We don’t have enough meat for everyone, so if you’re a Jew, fuck off ! We won’t serve your kind here !”. A bunch of people hang their heads and leave the queue without saying a word.
The waiting continues for one hour, but the queue doesn’t seem to move forward much. Eventually, the butcher comes back out : “There’s not enough meat for everyone, so : Ukrainians and Georgians, go home”. Another bunch of people grumble and leave.
More waiting. One hour, two hours, the queue still isn’t moving. Butcher comes out and says “Comrades, we apologize, but there’s still not enough meat for everyone here. We will only serve high ranking members of the Party”. Once again, lots of people dejectedly leave the queue.
One hour, two hours, and still the queue hasn’t moved an inch, although it’s now much smaller than it was before. The butcher comes out once again and says “I really apologize for this, friends, but I don’t think we have enough meat for everyone here, so if you aren’t a Hero of the Soviet Union, I’m going to ask you to leave. I’m sorry, I really am.”
Now only Ivan and Mikhail are left (they were tankers during the Great Patriotic War) and they’re waiting right outside the butcher’s door. It’s getting dark. The butcher comes out one last time, but this time he’s dressed warmly and he closes the shop after him. When he sees Ivan and Mikhail, he looks to his feet and mutters “Look, I … I’m sorry for you two. The truth is, there’s no meat at all. There never was.”
So Mikhail turns to Ivan and says : See ? It’s like I told you. The Jews always get preferential treatment !