Wordplay is all around us – it can create a humorous moment in a movie or TV show (i.e. Shrek saying “I’ve got to save my ass” in reference to Donkey), add a profound layer of meaning to an element in a book (i.e. Harry Potter’s “The Mirror of Erised” having “Erised” be “Desire” spelled backwards*), or make a brand more memorable through a clever marketing tagline (i.e. “Every kiss begins with Kay” for Kay Jewelers).
But what happens if these need to be translated into other languages? Because wordplay is language-specific most of the time, attempting to do a direct translation kills the effect. Thus, preserving the ingenuity of the source language is a very difficult task (see one translator who quit midway through a manga series due to the wordplay) – a translator must possess the same skills of the original source language copywriter to be able to recreate something just as brilliant. This is one aspect of what is known as transcreation, a fusion of the words “translation” and “creation”.
Here are examples of wordplay transcreation in Japanese – props to the translators that came up with such clever recreations!
7-Eleven’s Campaign
In the 1970s, 7-Eleven came up with a series of TV and radio commercials based around the jingle, “Oh thank heaven for 7-Eleven”, which leveraged rhyming between “seven”, “eleven”, and “heaven” to make the tune stick more in people’s heads.
However, this rhyme was English-specific, and when it came time for 7-Eleven in Japan to create a jingle, they needed to do something different. The solution they came up with was making a different phrase that rhymed in Japanese:
セブン-イレブン-いい気分
Sebun-irebun-iikibun
“Seven-Eleven-Feel Good”
“Sebun” and “irebun” are the transliterations of “seven” and “eleven” in Japanese, and the last part, “iikibun”, roughly means “feel good”. Because all three parts end in “-bun”, the rhyming is preserved, and 7-Eleven Japan had its catchy Japanese jingle (you listen to it here if you want)! It was used from 1976 until around 2008, and in that time, 7-Eleven greatly expanded the number of stores it had around Japan – anyone who’s been to Japan can attest to how you can’t even go a couple blocks in the city without coming across one.
Toy Story’s “Point” Puns
With the development of Toy Story 5 announced just last month by Disney, why don’t we take a look at a couple wordplay examples from earlier in the series?
Toy Story 4
First, in Toy Story 4, there’s one scene where Jessie punctures the tire of an RV truck with a nail to prevent it from leaving without Woody, Buzz, and Forky. She returns to the window with the nail, exclaiming “we’re not going anywhere, if you get my point” with a smug look on her face.
The wordplay here with the double meaning of “point” obviously can’t be directly transferred over to Japanese, so what was the solution? Well, in Japanese, Jessie’s line becomes:
これでどこにも行けない。釘付けにしてやった。
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’ve nailed us down.”
The first part is very similar to the English in meaning, but the second part uses the word 釘付け (“kugiduke”), meaning “be rooted to the spot” or “be nailed down”. The first character in the word is literally the kanji for nail, so this is a very clever way of getting the same “point” idea across while adapting the wordplay to something uniquely Japanese.
Toy Story 3
Going back one more installment in the series, Toy Story 3 funnily enough actually uses a different “point” pun. There’s a scene where Mr. Potato Head, Rex, Buzz, and the other toys all get stuck in a garbage bag and thrown out by the side of the road. Knowing that if they don’t escape soon they’ll be picked up by the garbage truck and crushed into pieces, they frantically try to rip the garbage bag.
Unfortunately, no one has much success, and Mr. Potato Head laments, “Andy doesn’t want us. What’s the point?” However, this gives an idea to Buzz, who mumbles, “Point…point…point!” because he sees Rex’s pointy tail as a tool they can use to puncture the garbage bag.
So…how can this work in Japanese? Well, whoever the amazing translator was created completely different, Japanese-specific wordplay. Mr. Potato Head’s line becomes:
どんなにはりきったって無駄だぞ。
“No matter how fired up we get, it’s still hopeless.”
The underlined word corresponds to the “get fired up” part and is pronounced “harikitta”. Buzz hears the first part of this – “hari” – and proceeds to say, はり…はり…はり！(hari…hari…hari!). “Hari” happens to also be the word for “needle” in Japanese, so the connection with Rex’s tail is maintained – an absolutely brilliant wordplay with a completely different set of words from the English version.
In Summary
Adapting wordplay between languages can incredibly difficult, and just as the original source creators likely took a lot of time to polish the original wordplay, translators also needs adequate time to adapt the wordplay into their target language – something that unfortunately doesn’t get reflected in their pay a lot of the time, due to pricing models based on word count or minutes of video.
These skilled translators are the reason that TV shows, movies, literature, and anything involving a creative element can be enjoyed by audiences around the world, and seeing their work was also the reason I decided to look more into localization in the first place! So, next time you grin at a clever pun in a movie, remember the emotions you feel in that moment – that’s what good localization should make an audience feel in a target language, too, and it’s the translators that make that magic happen.
(*Note: Regarding the Harry Potter wordplay mentioned in the intro – if you’re curious as to how this was handled in other languages, this site is a fantastic resource that compares what was done in the versions of the book released in Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and Vietnam. It also has many other examples from throughout the series as well!)
