Never thought about it but how does this type of joke get translated for non-english speakers?

Zekana said:

Never thought about it but how does this type of joke get translated for non-english speakers?

Basically you don't get hung up on the pussy part and look for an euphemism that works in the source language and doesn't clash with the art/context.

"Down there" is a pretty one-size-fits-all workaround, but going for higher-hanging fruit that fits the source culture is what separates a good translator from a person with a E-J dictionary.

Mileavis said:

Basically you don't get hung up on the pussy part and look for an euphemism that works in the source language and doesn't clash with the art/context.

"Down there" is a pretty one-size-fits-all workaround, but going for higher-hanging fruit that fits the source culture is what separates a good translator from a person with a E-J dictionary.

What about Jessica the cat then? If you lose the pussy part, her involment becomes nonsensical.

bunkhead said:

What about Jessica the cat then? If you lose the pussy part, her involment becomes nonsensical.

She tells you to "take responsibility for playing with it down there and getting it wet", and for some inexplicable reason, a wet Jessica is down there. If you distill it, the point is "a seemingly sexual situation that turns out to be a non-sequitur prank". The pun is lost, but the humor is still there.

Of course, if someone is good enough to not distill it that far and can convey "a seemingly sexual situation that turns out to be a pun on wet pussies", then a pat on the back to them.

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As a case study, Nichijou has a joke about wiener coffee. The joke is passed to the reader in the vein of the "I don't know what I expected" meme.
It's also a joke in Japanese, but based on a pun: the katakana for Vienna and Weiner are the same in Japanese, so she thought she was ordering Vienna Coffee.

In this case the distilled point is "a non-sequitur joke that fits perfectly well within Nichijou", and the translation perfectly nails it by completely ignoring the original untranslatable pun.