Japan Should Name Everything
America’s national embarrassment (or treasure, depending on who you ask) has made its way over to the magical land of Japan, because there’s a whole group of people there who have yet to experience herpes of the eyes and the pharmaceutical companies have bills to pay, dammit! So, of course, they can’t call that mess Jersey Shore, because the Japanese have no idea what that is. And I guess Syphilis Shore and Jacuzzi Full of Kamikaze Barf doesn’t really translate, so they went with, “MTV Jersey Shore〜マカロニ野郎のニュージャージー・ライフ〜” which translates into “MTV Jersey Shore — the New Jersey life of macaroni rascals.” MACARONI RASCALS!
This is the best thing to come out of Jersey Shore since the duck phone! CNNGo explains the name:
Our only guess is that the folks at MTV were looking for a way to translate the Italian-American epithet ‘guido’ and stumbled upon something more Japanese but equally un-PC. Since this is a family website, we translated ‘yaro’ (野郎) as ‘rascals’ but the pejorative word can take on much more R-rated nuances.
According to Twitter user Daniel Feit, for all the strangeness of MTV Japan’s translation, the term “macaroni rascals” does appear in the Japanese subtitles of the 1972 film “The Godfather.” Someone in Programming apparently did their homework.
Macaroni Rascals sounds like the name of some backyard gang Chef Boyardee was in when he was just a little meatball. Macaroni Rascals is also the name of a dirty sex fetish Brit Brit gets into when Daddy Spears is away. When Kirstie Alley’s kids come home and wonder who ate their leftover lasagna from The Olive Garden, you know who she blames it on? Yup, the MACARONI RASCALS!
If The Real Housewives ever make it over Japan, I wonder what they will call that mess. Silicone Scoundrels? Foreclosure Fatales?
(Thanks Andrew)