Looks like someone asked about this line on another message board twelve years ago. The best guess was “ils (ne) sont pas en miettes” = (figuratively) “they haven’t fallen apart yet.” (Literally, “they’re not in crumbs.”)
Awesome, thank you! That makes sense.
But any sexual innuendo in “horizontal hold” isn’t a pun, because it derives from the ordinary meaning of “horizontal”. Presumably, whatever word Japanese uses for the television issue would work equally well as a sexual innuendo, especially when combined with the sorts of nonverbal cues that were doubtless present in the scene.
If there’s a pun, it would be on “hold”, not “horizontal”—that is, the way one holds one’s sex partner vs. the way a CRT keeps the image steady. But those two meanings of “hold” aren’t really distinct enough to make a good pun, which is why I think I may be missing some other aspect of the humour here.
His wife said that there was a problem with the horizontal hold on the TV. He made a joke about his wife complaining about how he holds her when they are horizontal. It really isn’t that hard. That’s what she said.
Hell, that movie is almost 30 years old so I don’t remember the exact words. I do remember they used horizontal hold and it’s even possible that it could have been a joke about premature ejaculation but it’s been far too long ago. I just noticed that they didn’t attempt to translate the joke into Japanese.
No, you were pretty much dead-on.
You got a problem with your horizontal hold?
I don’t know.
Your wife says you do.
Well, she ought to know.
Many years ago I was talking to a fellow from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade about his time in Spain. He mentioned there was a fellow from England signing up for the cause, and the (English) registrar was asking for his name. The two had strong English Accents.
“How do you spell that?”
“Oy-ee…”
“Is that as in ‘A’? Or ‘E’? Or ‘I’?”
Depending on the accent, it could be any of those.
So if someone speaks with a bad accent, Polish and polish could sound the same.
But how exactly do you translate the passage without having at least a slight hint of the joke? The translation of “horizontal hold” I guess could be sufficiently different that it’s not even possible for it to be associated with sexual activity in Japanese, but if it includes the concept of “horizontal” and “hold” as understood in English aside from the actual words, one might find one’s way there. There’s no real pun in the usage of words here - there’s a pun in concepts that one might think would be translated in a way that should always preserve it. There’s a reason why the most consistently funny joke in the world uses a bit of word play but seems to come across fine in most languages (at least it seems clear that plenty of other languages were consulted in this from the article). The whole “make sure” thing being misunderstood is simply that the concept can take on two facets, not that the words themselves do. I’d say that absent a completely contrary translation of “horizontal hold” the joke works. What might not work is the Japanese particularly thinking that such a joke would be funny due to different sexual mores, but that is culture and not language.
I was reminded of this thread today.
The classic 1970s manga Urusei Yatsura was published in the US a number of years ago, but it is currently near the end of the series being published again with cleaner scans and a new English translation. I have been compairing the translations of the first few chapters side-by-side. Some of the changes are minimal, but there are places where great liberty is taken with what was presumably the original Japanese.
For instance, in the first chapter, the series protagonist arrives at home to discover a strange visitor. In the first translation he throws candy at him because he thinks it is a Halloween costume. But in the second translation, he yells “ogres begone” and throws what is in context (but not in text) soybeans in a Setsubun reference. So the first goes for a familiar American reference, the second for the correct ritual at the risk of the audience not getting it. The chaper continues in the first translation to not use the term “ogre” (or the actual Japanese word oni) but the second translation restores it. (Neither translation provides insight into why the fate of the Earth is being determined with a game of tag, but in Japan’s equivalent, the person who is “it” is called the oni, so it isn’t as random as it seems.)
In another instance, a character introduces himself with a pun. In the old translation the panel is significantly redrawn to fit in an elaborate English joke. In the new translation, there is simply a note explaining why what he said is a pun.
Other panels have other Japanese cultural references including mention of funeral practices and sutra chanting replaced with completely unrelated text in the first translation but the orininal culture elements retained in the second translation.
(First translation on the left and read left to right, second translation on the right and read right to left.)
