The other day I went through the McDonald’s drive-thru with my son, and I noticed they were giving out SpongeBob SquarePants toys with the Happy Meals. I knew instinctively that the sentient sea creature’s name would been amended to leave the “Pants” part off, thanks to the Japanese use of the word “pants” to mean underwear (which is the same in most of the U.K.). It’s similar to the way the nickname of Horatio Cane from CSI: Miami had to be changed from “H” to “chief” in the Japanese-dubbed version. The letter “H” (e.g. ecchi) is a catch-all for anything sexual, and it’d be just about the last word a subordinate would call his boss. Similarly, the Miyazaki classic Laputa was released as “Castle in the Sky” in the U.S. since Laputa means a woman of ill repute in Spanish. Finding cross-cultural wrinkles can be fun!
