39,327
edits
Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Difference between revisions
m
delink camelcase
m (revise quote template spacing) |
m (delink camelcase) |
||
Line 7:
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.]])
This is also used intentionally, to the opposite effect: unfamiliar or foreign swear words may be used where an equivalent local expression [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|would be inappropriate]].
This trope covers any confusion or [[Hilarity Ensues|hilarity]] arising from foreign swear words, not just in the US. Since international expletives are often "G-rated" on American TV, "arse" and "shite" can be family-friendly ways of getting "ass" and "shit" [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|past the radar]]. In Britain, "ass" can freely be used before the [[Watershed]], while "arse" is used conservatively. Gestures may be similarly misunderstood, such as the vee finger sign that means "peace" in America but is not nice at all in some other countries.
Line 21:
* 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.
** NOT averted, out of all places, in the Latin American dub itself. The characters still refer to the place as Laputa, and what's even worse, the pronounciation they give to the word is the ''exact same'' you'd give to the actual insult.
*** 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.
Line 35:
** Chamber is also the team's [[Lancer]], sort of a cleaned up version of an old-school British punk, and very grumpy most of the time, so him using strong language isn't too surprising.
* ''[[Excalibur (Comic Book)|Excalibur]]'', the funny, light-hearted X-Men title, had Pete Wisdom, who tried to include 'bloody hell' in every sentence he spoke. He was supposed to seem rough and a jerk, but it was still slightly uncomfortable if you don't like swearing, especially if you're not quite sure how offensive the swearing is.
* 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.
* Whoever decided that "wank" would be a good onomatopoeia for [[Captain America]]'s [http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=32&Itemid=50&limitstart=89 shield hitting a villain in the face] was clearly unaware of the word's [[A Date with Rosie Palms|meaning]] in British/Australian/New Zealand slang. [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|Or was 100% aware of it and having a laugh.]]
Line 76:
** 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.
* In [[The Kane Chronicles]], which is G-rated, except for a [[Narrative Profanity Filter]] with Carter sometimes, Sadie uses the word "bloody" a lot.
* [[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 40000]]'' novels in ''The [[Space Wolf]] Omnibus'' seems to have very little cursing other than this.
Line 88:
** Not to mention Spike used ''[["V" Sign|that certain hand gesture]]'' several times. Probably the director [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|worked under the assumption]] that no-one outside of the U.K. would know that an outstretched index finger and middle finger do ''not'' form the victory sign if the back of the hand is pointing ''away'' from the body, in the direction of the viewers. Done this way, it means the same as an outstretched middle finger gesture. Hilarious.
*** And then he put it in the ''Season Five opening credits''.
*** The original "V for Victory" sign, as done by Churchill, ''was'' palm inward. Whether the aristocratic Churchill knew what that gesture meant to other classes in England is subject to debate, but he turned it around later in the war. One story ran that Churchill, while visiting troops, would give the palm-out V sign, then, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|"And this is what we think of Hitler!"]] [[Crowning Moment of Funny|turn it around]], [[And There Was Much Rejoicing|to great cheers]].
** Then there's the hilarious moment in the episode "Tabula Rasa" where Anya accuses Giles of using a lot of British slang that she doesn't understand. When he argues that she couldn't possibly have heard him say any of them words she mentioned (they had lost their memories at this time), she retorts, "Oh, bugger off, you brolly!" which is a slang term for umbrella. Clearly Anya overestimates her curses.
** There's a truly startling moment in ''[[Angel]]'' where Spike instructs Angel to "wank off," the writer apparently believing this is analogous to "piss off." [[A Date with Rosie Palms|It really isn't.]] It's commonly believed that Joss knew what was meant. The creators have joked in the commentaries about how they could use language that would ''never'' have made it past the censors if not for the fact that it was British, rather than American, obscenity. Although it may have worked well for American broadcast, it somewhat spoiled the UK transmission of the show, which had to cut the "wankers" and the "bollocks" from pre-watershed airings, thus making dialogue occasionally choppy and nonsensical.
Line 110:
'''Davis:''' A wanker. }}
** Given the entirely-innocent grin on Davis' face, he likely didn't realize how offensive the word was. Which was probably part of the joke.
* It's a little jarring, considering the [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|superficially clean]] nature of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000|MST3K]]'' humour, to hear them burst out with the occasional stronger-in-Britain profanity. They use the terms correctly, it's just an unexpected comedy bonus as there's virtually no US profanity in the series.
** Neil Connery inviting someone to 'kiss my white Scottish arse.'
** Receptionist at 'Nirvana Village' doppling centre: "Your kind has to take what you can get." "And what's that?" "''Bollocks!''"
Line 142:
* The GBA game ''[[Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga]]'' features a race of snails named 'winkles'. Nothing wrong with that in America - 'winkle' is simply a shortened form of 'periwinkle', which is a snail. But in the southern UK, 'winkle' is also an old-fashioned childish word for a male organ. And this is a game primarily aimed at kids.
* ''[[Super Mario RPG]]'' has Croco refer to Mario as a "persistent bugger" at one point; when Europe finally got SMRPG on the Virtual Console, it got changed to "persistent pest" to avoid PEGI giving it a 12+ rating.
** And, after all these years [[No Export for You|spent waiting for the damn game]], this was the only line that got changed.
* Reverse example. In the DS version of ''[[Dragon Quest V]]'', Prince Harry tells the main character, before his wedding to not "cock it up." Cue the player making innuendos about the wedding night. Although, considering Prince Harry's choice of souvenir for his own wedding {{spoiler|(he has musical instruments made so he can gleefully present the player with his very own *coughcough* "marital organ,")}} this one might be intentional.
* ''[[Jak and Daxter The Precursor Legacy]]'' features a fisherman with a stereotypical pseudo-Bristolian seafarers' accent. He describes unwanted fish as "buggers". The game got off with a 3+ ("general") rating.
Line 149:
** And the previous game got away with a character saying 'arse'. However, the third game is careful to avoid the trope. A character uses the word 'bollocks', but it's censored.
* ''[[Jazz Jackrabbit]] 2'' fell into this trope in Britain, due to Jazz' brother being called Spaz. "Spazzy" in American English simply means "zany" or "crazy", which definitely describes him, but anywhere else it would be like naming him "Retard."
* An interesting version that's actually not with American and British English but Japanese and American English happens in the little known PSP game ''[[
* On ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', the phrase "bloody" is pretty common in the vocabulary of Demoman and Sniper. Sniper is also keen on using the word "wanker." The game ''is'' rated Mature (17 and up), but the other characters keep to milder language, in keeping with the lighthearted tone of the game (the strongest words they use are "ass" and "son of a bitch").
* The Korean-developed ''[[Alliance Of Valiant Arms]]'' has one of the EU side's taunts vocalized as "Go ahead, shoot some more, you bloody tossers!" One can suppose it was the British voice actor [[Throw It In|ad-libbing a bit]], as the other English taunts use somewhat more benign words like "rascals" and "cowards".
Line 207:
== Real Life ==
* BBC America also ran an advert that went "Bugger. Roger. Wanker. Shite. Find out what they mean before the censors do."
* "Bloody" is not generally considered an offensive swear word. Police forces in [[Canada, Eh?|Alberta and Saskatchewan]] ran a [[Public Service Announcement|series of ads]] with the slogan, "If you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot!". Exactly the same campaign was used in Australia and New Zealand, but not in the UK, where the word would've seemed slightly more offensive and risky. (In fact, in Canada the ads drew protests not about the word "bloody" but the word "idiot".)
** 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").
Line 214:
** The DVD of the Korean movie Tae Guk Gi includes an interview with one of the special effects supervisors. He's wearing a t-shirt which says "D-Squared Fucking."
** 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.
** Many Japanese people, particularly young ones, are aware from movies that the middle finger gesture is rude in the United States - they just don't realize HOW rude, and will happily throw it around as if it was just a gesture of wacky mild defiance. Manga and anime characters are sometimes drawn making the gesture as well, with the same not-meant-to-be-offensive context, which can be very jarring for American manga readers who aren't used to that kind of thing.
** The same story happens even in Europe. In Russia, for example, a pitched battle still rages [[Serious Business|in translators' circles]] about whether English profanities have the same level of obscenity as Russian ones, with lot of seemingly reasonable and well-qualified people insisting that they are significantly milder. The idea of English swearwords being indeed milder can be best supported by the fact that most of the "harsher" Russian swear words have never been used uncensored in mainstream media, sans R-Rated DVD releases of movies like Wanted or Kickass. To a foreign ear, English swear words sound inoffensive,leading to things like "fuck" being a borrowed mild swear in Russian.
Line 236:
* Due to years of enforced squeaky-cleanliness by the Franco regime, there was an enormous backlash of profanity on Spanish television during the transition to democracy. This has led to Spaniards being comfortable hearing "[[Cluster F-Bomb|joder]]" being dropped left and right in early evening sitcoms. Exporting them to Latin America, on the other hand...
* Not a particularly offensive example, but [[Twitter]] amused a few Brits when it was launched, "twit" being a very mild term for "idiot".
** "Twit" is also equally known as a mild form of "idiot" or "ditz" in the States. One can only assume that Twitter banked on the fact that "twit" isn't actually used often on the other side of the pond.
*** Personal experience suggests it is at least considered more offensive in Canada than it is in England.
**** "Twit" isn't used very much up here, but it's still fairly mild.
*** On the other hand, given that about 99% of Twitter content would qualify, maybe they were in on the joke ahead of time.
*** "Twitter" also means (or at least meant) to rabbit on inanely without really engaging a brain, Yours or anyone elses. ie What are you twittering on about now?.
** Of course, this has also led to particularly useless or stupid Twitter users being referred to as "Twatters" in the US, in part because it's a mild swear compared to [[Country Matters|that other word]].
* ''Brat Camp'', a documentary about British delinquents being sent to an American disciplinary camp, had one of the teenagers in question making use of this, explaining to the camera crew that they "Don't know what the word 'bollocks' means, so don't tell them".
Line 252:
** It's also the derivation of the band name "The Pogues", originally "Pogue Mahone". They shortened it when BBC airplay became a likelihood, as it was pointed out that there are Irish-speakers who listen.
* One of the sponsors of the 2010 Olympics was a Canadian clothing company called Roots (a longtime Olympics and [[NHL]] supplier, and Canada's answer to The Gap) . One wonders why the Australian team seemed so interested in wearing their stuff...
** On a similar note, in the promotional trailers for the [[Yogi Bear]] movie in Australia, they left in the voiceover saying "It's time to root for the bears."
* The word 'twat' in some parts of Britain is just as offensive and has the same meaning as the [[Country Matters|C-word]], but in Scotland it is often used as a marginally-more-offensive form of "twit" (as in "you complete twat"). When a scientist was quoted as saying anyone who thought the Large Hadron Collider was going to destroy the world was "being a twat," it was rather amusing to note the difference in how many letters of the word, if any, various newspapers chose to censor.
* It's also worth mention that "Twat" is actually a less extreme epithet than the "C-word", even in Britain (with "fanny" being far, far less offensive, school-child version of both) however none of these words is considered as bad as it is in the U.S., where calling someone "female genitalia" is potentially grounds for divorce proceedings to take place.
Line 264:
** This lead to a wonderful moment in the '90s when (then) Radio One DJ Steve Wright was forced to explain on his afternoon show that "in America 'fanny' means 'bottom'" after playing the radio edit of Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" (which, of course, contains the line "jumped on the big fat fanny" when Ice Cube is relating some "fun" he had with a girl).
** Bizarrely, the use in the [[Title Theme Tune]] for ''[[The Nanny]]'' was left uncensored in Australia. Of course, the mental images provoked by the line "out on her fanny" become fairly bizarre...
** Fanny was also at one time quite a popular name for girls and dogs. This has led to generations of juvenile sniggering when 'classic' literature comes up with lines like "Will no one come and play with my little Fanny?".
* Fox Sports showed a lot of interest in British sports by being one of the first outlets to report on English footballer Wayne Rooney's plan to leave Manchester United. Just as impressive was their choice of article name - 'Later, wankers.' It was changed, but British papers and panel shows had a field day.
* Hebrew has rather few original common cursewords, often using loanwords from Russian and Arabic, and are perceived as far milder in Hebrew (actually, only elderly people in Israel would really frown upon cursewords nowadays). For instance, the common phrase ''kus emek'' (literally 'yo' mamma's cunt' in colloquial Arabic, used as a very strong version of 'fuck!' or 'fuck you!') could startle Arabs but is seen as a frequent term of displeasure for Hebrew, albeit somewhat crude (somewhat like 'damnit'). Similarily the most common Russian curseword in Hebrew, ''k yebyona mat´'', literally meaning 'to the fucking mother', is pronounced ''kibinimat'' in Hebrew, with the vast majority of native Hebrew speakers entirely unaware of its meaning and using it as an equivalent of 'kus emek', or as the equivalent of English 'Hell' or 'to Hell' ("send them ''kibinimat''"/"to ''kibinimat''" is like a crude version of 'to Hell with them', and 'go ''kibinimat''' is, well, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|go to Hell]]).
Line 273:
** 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.
*** [[He He You Said X|Hehe, Willy.]]
* 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.
* In an accidental aversion of this trope, English-language works of fiction will often have a stereotypical French-speaking character shout "''Zut alors''!" What they don't realize is that this expression almost literally means....GoshDangItToHeck.
Line 283:
* While the [[Warding Gestures|horns]] are used as a warding/cursing gesture in most latin countries, in 'some' of them (mainly Brazil and Italy) they can also mean "your wife is cheating on you". Incidentally in some latin countries (mainly Brazil and Italy, notice a trend here?) "your wife is cheating" is considered one of the worst possible insults, and in the wrong company can easily get you stabbed for the trouble. (Which, in turn, makes the trope played quite literally).
** 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).
* In Aussie slang, the word "root" apparently is somewhat offensive. One website describes it as "a synonym for f*ck in nearly all its senses" and uses some examples including: "I feel rooted;" "this washing machine is rooted;" "(s)he's a good root." This created a pretty funny story after the 2008 Olympics, when Australian diver Matthew Mitcham won the gold medal in a pretty amazing come-from-behind (no pun intended) victory. He was apparently pretty amused and surprised when he heard a bunch of American fans saying "they were rooting for him."
* The N-word has made its way to Bosnia through rap videos on MTV where black people throw the term around casually as a term for friends. Cue Bosnian youths greeting each other with "Vatz-ap mah nig**" and some very pissed off tourists. Also South Slavic profanities are infamously crude, creative and ubiquitous, so most English swear-words are barely acknowledged as such.
| |||