I thought it would be interesting to have my grade 8 and 9 students translate jokes from their first languages into English. Would the humor come across? Well, no, partly because of their language skills, but also because humor is so culture-bound, especially puns.
One Russian-speaking kid translated a joke that requires you to understand that the Russian word for "woodpecker" is also the word for "snitch." (the joke was about a legendary Russian spy named Shtirliz who allegedly infiltrated the Nazi system in Germany during WWII.) Stepan couldn't explain the joke very well in English, although all of the local kids laughed their heads off.
A few days later, I was at a party with Ukrainian teachers. I asked about this spy, this joke, the pun on the Russian word for "woodpecker." They were happy to explain it to me.
The derivation of the pun is the knock on the door in the middle of the night, knocking like a woodpecker knocks against a tree, the knock that means there's a snitch, one of your neighbors or friends or family members has betrayed you and now the KGB is here to cart you off to the gulag. It was chilling.
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