Friday, October 1, 2010

Making me smile: Engrish and Missy Elliott

Translating language and culture in another country isn't always straightforward and often results in very laughable executions, especially in Asian countries. One of the more common terms/venues for this is called "engrish". "Hey Dude, let's Rock!" can become "Attention friend, let us create the time of rough influence!" Or apparently that movie "Indecent Proposal" where Robert Redford offers Woody Harrelson a million dollars to sleep with his wife, played by Demi Moore, was translated to "Peach Colored Transaction" in Japan.

But my favorite "translation" right now, given the inexplicable popularity of Jersey Shore (not that I'm pointing fingers), is the translation for that show to "Macaroni Rascals" in Japan. So awesome.

On a totally unrelated note, also making me smile was this clip:



I've nodded my headed to pretty much each of these songs and love that Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake included Missy Elliott in their homage to rap and hip-hop.

Her video for "Ching-a-Ling" always puts a smile on my face with its catchy song and dancing:



Happy Friday!

3 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Too funny.
That japanese translation reminds me of a term I learned called "mondegreen" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen.
And the Jimmy/Justin hip hop review reminded me of a song I heard recently reminiscing about the 90's (which was like yesterday...how are we remeniscing about the 90s?).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGavGIoPUWk

Pound said...

engrish is the best!