Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Difference between revisions

[[File:mp8 3899.png|link=Mario Party|frame| Who knew such a term would be highly offensive across the pond?]]

 

 

Sometimes a writer will use "international" slang to make a character seem more salty and "regional" (frequently American versus British usage of a word). Sometimes, however, an expression is still considered vulgar elsewhere. When words like "bollocks" or "wanker" appear in a work whose language is otherwise PG, it creates dissonance for those who are familiar with them. ([[Have a Gay Old Time|Though it varies according to region, age, and circumstances,]] "bloody" is about as strong a curse as "damn", and "bloody hell" is about the same as "goddamn". [[wikipedia:Bloody#Etymology|It refers to "God's blood" as an oath. Maybe.]])

 

{{examples}}

** In the Napoleonic Wars, one of the French slang terms for the British was "Les Goddamns", because of how often they said it. On the other hand, randomly cussing for no reason at all is a common Japanese stereotype of Americans, though almost exclusively played for laughs.

* Inverted in the dub of ''[[Laputa: Castle in the Sky]]'', which was originally titled "Laputa: Castle in the Sky". This was changed because "Laputa" resembles "la puta", which means "the whore" in Spanish. And more people in Europe and North America are more likely to recognize a Spanish swear word than in Japan. Obviously, you don't want to take a chance with printing something like ''that'' out there.

** The name Laputa was taken from Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels'', so it's not too big of stretch to imagine Swift naming a floating island "the whore" on purpose. Of course, Hayao Miyazaki probably didn't realize the name had a hidden meaning.

*** Swift may have called it "Laputa" because it had "no visible means of support", a phrase used in vagrancy laws.

*** It may have also been more literal, referencing Martin Luther's "Reason is a whore", seeing as Laputa is a highly advanced society that cannot make anything practical for all its enlightenment.

* In the first episode of Season 3's edited English dub of ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', the apparently Australian Jiece gives us such lines as, "ah bugger, this blasted thing!" and, "no bloody Saiyan that we've ever met is that strong."

 

* In an issue of ''[[Y: The Last Man]]'', a captured woman calls the leader of the Amazon gang/army a cunt. The [[Ax Crazy]] leader [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this by going into a detailed description of the word and how it's not an insult in Britain. The captive responds by spitting on her and getting shot for her troubles.

** Just to clarify it certainly ''is'' an insult in Britain.

* Lampshaded in one ''[[The Simpsons (Comic Book)|The Simpsons]]'' comic, Bart and Lisa end up staying with psuedo-South-american freedom fighters. When Bart utters his [[Catch Phrase]] "Ay Carumba!" He is immediately beaten down by a woman for using dirty language in front of her child.

** Which is again an inversion, since Ay Carumba can be approximated to 'darn', or a similarly mild epithet.

** It's even better. Because of the placement of the speech bubble, it looks like "I command you to--WANK!"

** The placement suggests that it most likely was intentional.

* In an early issue of [[Marvel Comics]]' ''[[Conan the Barbarian (comics)|Conan the Barbarian]]'' series, British artist Barry Smith convinced American writer Roy Thomas to have a soldier call another soldier a "wank". After the issue's publication, Thomas shortly ended up with more informative letters from British readers than he'd have liked.

 

* While all the swearing recognizable to American readers of [[So Bad It's Good]] ''[[Death Note]]'' fanfic ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami|Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]'' is censored out, British ones are not, leading to Watari yelling things like "''THAT TIT IS TAKING THE PISS NOW!... WE MUST GET THE WANK OUT OF THIS SODDING CONTRACEPTION!''" fully uncensored.

** Note that the only thing that makes no sense (besides "contraception", which doesn't have a slang meaning) here is "get the wank out" which is nonsense.

* Really, this is fairly common in most fanfiction written for something that originated in a country different than the one the author is from. The most prevalent example is probably American authors writing ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfic. Seriously, next time you see a long fic by a non-Brit, count how many times 'wanker' is said. It especially happens to Ron a lot, because he ''is'' implied to be swearing sometimes in canon, [[Narrative Profanity Filter|it's just never outright stated what he said]].

** No few ''Potter'' fan authors are aware of this, and make a point of recruiting UK natives (or Americans who've lived there) to check their usage. The colloquial term for such advisors is "Brit-pickers".

 

** Mike Myers' father was British, so he's likely well-aware of those words' connotations. It's also likely that the film was aimed at U.S. audiences, with British marketing an afterthought.

* In Shyamalan's ''[[The Last Airbender]]'', the repeated use of the word "bender" (a homosexual male) has been said to provoke inappropriate laughter from British audiences.

* ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]'' is otherwise free of profanity, though when Billy Bones is dying, Gonzo and Rizzo lampshade the fact that "this was supposed to be a kids' movie!" Shortly after that, when Billy's shipmates search his room, one of them says "Billy's dead, and he hasn't got the bloody map!" Billy himself asks aloud "How does [Mrs. Bluberidge] bloody do that?"

** Some versions of the film dub over "bloody" with "bloomin".

* In the first ''[[Lara Croft: Tomb Raider|Tomb Raider]]'' movie, Lara is fond of the word "bugger". She uses it a couple times, once with something as innocuous as some food blowing up in the microwave. The movie is PG-13, but it's mainly because it's an action movie, so there's very little in the way of swearing anyway.

 

* In the [[Lois McMaster Bujold]] [[Vorkosigan Saga]] novel ''Memory'', Miles Vorkosigan is said to have "buggered the cartridge" from a [[Sonic Stunner]] to improvise a grenade. Also, he describes Impsec's security recording as having been "buggered" when he finds evidence of tampering. Nowhere else in Bujold's books do we find this sort of expression. "Buggered" is fairly innocuous US slang for fouled-up or broken (but usually not irreparably). In the UK you can ''describe'' something as "buggered" or talk about "buggering something ''up''", but in most dialects if you say you've buggered something you'll get some strange looks. Thus Miles' statement sounds as odd to the British ear as it does to the US ear when a Brit "[[Burn the Witch|lights up a fag]]."

* Used in-universe on several occasions by Diana Gabaldon. She ''does'' do the linguistic research, but several characters (from different countries or different ''centuries'') manage to cuss each other out and have it go right over the other person's head. (Such as Claire using the word "fucking" and utterly perplexing her husband.) In a more fitting sense for this trope, the author also gets away with a lot of creative language in the ''[[Outlander (novel)|Outlander]]'' series by way of it being exotic and Scottish, or terribly dated—and then lets loose with the contemporary profanity.

** Han specifically asks him at one point if he minds that his name is a rather insulting joke, so it's not really worried about the radar. In some rural parts of the US, "bollocks" is simply used to mean "testicles, usually of an animal", (e.g. in the context of castrating a bull)—it's slightly more objectionable than "buttocks".

* [[John Brunner]], in his dystopian near-future novel ''[[The Sheep Look Up]]'' (set in a [[Twenty Minutes in The Future]] version of the USA), fell foul of this by having a midwestern DJ {{spoiler|(who had been poisoned, alongside thousands of others, by leakage into the water table of a military psychedelic)}} use the word "bollocks" in what is probably the filthiest limerick ever printed.

* [[Jack Vance]] innocently named an alien race ''the Wankh''; the resulting book ''[[Planet of Adventure|Servants of the Wankh]]'' sold quite well in a niche market. For a recent republication he consented to rename them ''Wannek'', irritating at least a few fans because a race that can express a sentence in the overtones of a single chime ought to be monosyllabic.

* Some of the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' novels in ''The [[Space Wolf]] Omnibus'' seems to have very little cursing other than this.

 

* In one episode of ''[[Friends]]'', Chandler calls a character a "wank", to which many British viewers react with surprise or disbelief.

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' lived and breathed this trope through the character of [[Badass Decay|Spike]] and occasionally Giles.

* In ''[[Weird Science]]'', Lisa once used 'wank' to mean any pointless pastime. "Then you can wank to your heart's content. Wank, wank, wank."

 

* On ''LoveLine'', Adam Carolla once pondered if it was okay to say "shite" on the radio at 10 PM pacific (it is, or at least it was when he said it).

* A succession of radio commercials with an [[Austin Powers]] tie-in had him openly talking about "shagging" every thirty seconds, apparently without any notion of what the Belgium it ''means''.

** It means the exact same thing in American English that it does in British—most Americans would be surprised anyone thought it was an exclusively British expression ([[Disco Stu|it just sounds slightly outdated to American ears]]). Apparently, [[They Just Didn't Care]].

 

* Having researched Victorian thieves' cant enough to create a glossary but not enough to know which words were still in use, the ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' setting ''Planescape'' also included "berk" on its list of slang. To make matters worse, most of the books were written in-universe style, slathering virtually every character's speech with cant, and that was the writers' single favorite word. Most Brits don't know what berk derives from, so it does sometimes get used casually in the UK as well, but it is still a reasonably strong term (equivalent to "moron") even if you don't know its history.<ref>"Berk" is Cockney rhyming slang, where a shortened version of a phrase is slang for what the phrase rhymes with. It's short for "Berkshire (or "Berkeley") hunt." [[Country Matters|Yeah.]]</ref>

** Though the few still-in-use terms included in the Cant were jarring enough (Blood and Sodding being the most jarring) the use of the word Pike for "move on" was ill-advised, since the only derivation still in use is "Pikey", which is [[Irish Traveller|rather racist]]

*** Strangely enough, "pike" is still in use in Australia and New Zealand (where it isn't offensive at all, and means "to cancel at the last minute on a social engagement"), along with "piker" (one who is notorious for doing so). "Pikey" is however completely unknown (or at least it was, until ''Snatch'').

 

* In ''[[Recettear]]'', Charme, The Lady Thief, repeatedly introduces herself as a "professional Berk." One wonders whether Carpe Fulgar knew exactly where [[Country Matters|that quaint colloquialism]] came from.<ref>While drunk, she even goes so far as to say that she is Recette's personal berk.</ref>

* ''[[Sonic Rush Series]] Adventure'' got a 12 rating in the UK partly because the (American) translators gave Marine the Raccoon, who speaks in an exaggerated Australian accent, a line involving the word "bugger." It still got a G rating in Australia, because Australians tend to take swearing much more in stride.

* British players of ''[[Escape from Monkey Island]]'' have been rather taken aback upon hearing the usually family-friendly Guybrush Threepwood describe a group of termites as "little buggers."

* ''[[Portal 2]]'' features Wheatley, a personality core with a pronounced British accent and vocabulary to match. Later in the game, when things stop going his way, he begins tossing around "bloody" an awful lot for a game rated E10 in the U.S. (One must also however consider that Wheatley was ''made'' in the United States in-universe, so it could just be stupidity on the part of Aperture.)

** {{spoiler|On the other hand, the "[[Fake Irish|Irish]]" character himself is not actually an Irishman, as his [[Accent Relapse]] shows during [[The Reveal]]...}}

* Rocket Racoon in ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 3]]'' gets away with calling people 'wankers' just by having a British accent. Which is strange, since one of his other taunts gets censored to "Flark-Face".

* The ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' games contain a lot of racy Britishisms that slipped past ESRB censors and got an E rating. Note that given Rare's sense of humor [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|this was almost certainly on purpose.]]

 

* Played straight and averted by ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'', as some British characters are played by British handlers themselves, while others do tend to lapse into this.

* While swearing is ''very'' infrequent and mild in the ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' universe, in sb_email 22, Strong Bad receives an e-mail from a fan from England. Since the e-mail concluded with "Thank You," Strong Bad told the sender he would sound more English if he used something in its place like "Cheers," "Cheerio," or "[[Sex Pistols|Nevermind the Bullocks]]." Of course, knowing Strong Bad [[Fridge Brilliance|he probably didn't know or care he was being offensive]], or perhaps thought he was but wasn't, since the British term is 'bollocks', and 'bullocks' refers to cattle.

** Swearing is mild and rare except for the fact that the use of the word "crap" was a running joke in some of the Strong Bad e-mails.

* [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]] once, "borrowed a phrase from the British" to describe people as 'twats', but pronounced it 't-wot' - to rhyme with hot, instead of 't-wat' to rhyme with hat, cue many confused British people wondering what the hell a twot is and why it's apparently British.

 

* Happened in ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' several times - Bart has used the word "wanker" several times, and more [[egregious]]ly, Groundskeeper Willie used the word "shite" to describe a tractor. You'd think people would notice that it's just one almost silent letter away from its American counterpart. ([[Sky 1]] apparently didn't notice this until ''after'' their first airing of this episode - unsurprisingly it's cut from future screenings, and as [[Channel 4]] runs the series at 6pm it's safe to say it's snipped there as well.)

** One episode featured a [[Sex Pistols]] parody including a song consisting entirely of "<Noun> is bollocks!"; for comparison, this is essentially equivalent to "bullshit." When the episode was aired on Sky in the UK it was the first ''Simpsons'' episode ever to premier after the watershed.

* ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' episode "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide" opens with a man with a British accent saying "I feel like an absolute bloody fool."

 

* BBC America also ran an advert that went "Bugger. Roger. Wanker. Shite. Find out what they mean before the censors do."

** In contemporary times, "bloody" can be an emphatic way of saying "very", with little residual offensive value. Ironically, it's so inoffensive now that using it often sounds like a [[Bowdlerise|bowdlerization of worse swearwords]]. "Bugger", in modern Britain, is mostly harmless in much the same way (but "bugger" ''really really'' does not mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US. See also "fanny").

* Real life examples abound in Asia as a result of the practice of [[Gratuitous English]]. The sight of a demure girl in a T-shirt reading "A Fuck" (not just "fuck", not "the fuck" but "A fuck") is pretty jarring. It's rumoured that there are hospitals in China where the gynaecological ward is labeled (in huge letters) [http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/07/20/engrish-signs/cunt-examination/ "Cunt Examination."]

** Also, the time when [[Aya Hirano]] wore a T-shirt reading "Did you cum twice too?" in a concert.

** The (extensive) rules and regulations for Shanghai municipal park, prominently displayed on signs by the entrances, include the instruction that visitors should not [[Sophisticated As Hell|"urinate or shit"]] anywhere in the grounds.

** Like the above examples of Americans using British swear words, most younger Asians know the meaning of these words (more or less), but find them cute or funny because, as [[Foreign Cuss Word|foreign words,]] they don't have the same emotional impact. Westerners are brought up thinking the words are offensive; Asians are not. Europeans as well. At least one European T-shirt company makes child sized T-shirts that say "Fuck You". Some words just aren't as offensive.

*** 'Same in both Germany and the Netherlands.

* Many English-language publications in the USA are quite happy to print the offensive Spanish word ''cojones'' (often misspelled as ''cajones'') as a [[Foreign Cuss Word|euphemism]] for "balls." An owner of a faux-Mexican eatery got away with calling his place C. O. Jones for about a year before anyone caught on.

** They do know. It's just not used as profanity here (it's basically just used, mainly by older people, in its literal sense, and almost exclusively of animals). Saying "oh bollocks" sounds, to Americans, like saying "Oh pizzle" or "oh phallus".

* Often satirized on British magazine TV shows such as ''That's Life'', which sometimes featured foreign products which accidentally fell into this trope—such as (Danish) Bollux washing powder. Such a pity that was never marketed in the UK, imagine the campaign; "To all your tough laundry stains, say Bollux".

* [[wikipedia:Sacrebleu|"''Sacré bleu''!"]] in English-language works is a silly, meaningless expression that a stereotypical character will utter in order to demonstrate his or her [[Buffy-Speak|Frenchness]]. It means "holy blue" and could be a veiled reference to the sky-blue clothing traditionally worn by Mary (the mother of Jesus) in Roman Catholic illustrations. However, [http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/sacrebleu dictionaries explain it as being] [[Bowdlerise|a bowdlerization]], with "bleu" substituted for "Dieu" (God), occurring also in old phrases like "parbleu" ("by blue") or "morbleu" ("blue's death"). Such phrases are thus comparable to English phrases like "zounds" (from "God's wounds") or "dagnabitt" ("God damn it").

** Interestingly, "Sacrement!" and "Tabarnak!" <ref>sacrament and tabernacle</ref> and other French Catholic curses are still used in Quebec. It's common in English Canadian children's shows to have the [[Token Minority|French character]] say them as a way of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]], since they aren't swear words when translated into English.

* In Germany, English curse words are used quite often and are usually considered to be less offensive than the German equivalent. So any German who visits the US should remember not to say shit or fuck as they're used to doing. Also Germany is in general more relaxed concerning swearing, so they will rarely be censored. Tho only place where this happens is on MTV when they show subbed American shows like [[Pimp My Car]].

** Same goes for [[The Netherlands]]; shit and fuck are thrown around willy nilly, but "Kut" which only ranks medium on the swear-0-meter, probably won't be said on a family show.

* In Switzerland, English curse words are used also quite often, but I wouldn't say that they're considered less offensive than german ones. It's just about the same, and nobody would consider them too offensive for TV or Radio anyway. Apart from the usual german ones such as "Scheiss" (shit), "Pisse" (piss), "Seckel" (scrotum) or "verfickt" (fucked) There are some words very specific to switzerland: "Huere" (Whore) which is used as intensifier as in "Huere Scheiss". Another intensifier is "Rüdig" (Scabietic). They can be used in positive context too: "Rüdig Geil" (And "Geil" of course literally means "Horny", but is used to mean "cool" or "grand").

Apart from those sex-related ones, there's a plethora of religion-related ones like "Gopderdammi"/"Gottverdammt" (god damn me/god damned).

** US-American exchange students are often quite a bit baffled to hear things like "fucked up" in swiss lecture halls (used by the professor, of course).

* In general, most Europeans are more comfortable with swearing than Americans.

** "''Zut alors''!" is more of a cross between "''Oh Man''!" and "''I've had enough''!" and is the kind of profanity you would expect from first graders

* In Norway, the word "skitt" is a slightly informal word for "dirt" (the verb form, "skitten" is the common term for "dirty"), but can also be used as an extremely mild expression of anger (we're talking about as offensive as saying "oh no" here), as well as a very mild insult typically directed at physical objects (around the level of calling something a "stupid thing"). The word is pronounced exactly the same way as the English "shit". Cue not-very-English-savvy Norwegians picking up the word "shit" from English television and movies and assuming it's as inoffensive as the Norwegian word, then trying to use it in English-speaking countries.

** Sales of [[Spider-Man]] comics must be pretty dire in those countries.

* "Where the bloody hell are you?" Australian tourism ad. Banned in American (for hell) and Britain (for bloody).

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