Gather round kids

It’s story time!

Today at work, I was looking for a “3 Little Pigs” script for the kindergarten kids to perform and ran across the above.

Later in the day, we were trying to simplify the script for the kids to memorize and ran into a slight problem with one of the lines.

Sometimes, when working in an EFL environment you come across things that just don’t translate.

For example, “Not by the hairs on my chinney, chin, chin.”

In Japanese, it just doesn’t have the same effect/meaning.

(Though to tell the truth I have no sweet clue as to the point of this line.)

It gets hilarious when you understand what chin sounds like to a native Japanese audience.

‘Chin’ literally translates into ‘penis’…

Picture this if you will…

You’re a reserved, proud Japanese parent who is anxious to see his/her sweet child perform in an English play.

(Oh, and you can’t really speak English, and you only have a fundamental understanding of the language.)

Here he/she comes, dressed as a cute little pig and at the top of his/her voice says:

“Not by the hairs of my chinney chin chin!”

You hear:

“Noto bi da heyasu ofu my PENIS, PENIS, PENIS!”

LOL.

Needless to say, the line got cut for fear of shocking the daylights out of the parents. 😛

Anyway, that’s my story.

– A.

~ by Amanda on February 25, 2008.