Happy International Joke Day

People love to laugh. It can take the stress away from a long day, or provide much-needed relief from the mundane. Laughing makes us feel good. It brings people together. As the old saying goes, “laughter is by far the best medicine.” An easy way to get a good laugh out of someone is by telling a funny joke. Even if the joke falls flat you can laugh at how bad the joke was. In fact, people love funny tales so much that there’s even a holiday to celebrate jokes, and it’s fast approaching. International Joke Day is celebrated typically celebrated on July 1st each year.

So, what is International Joke Day exactly? Well, each year people from all over the globe exchange jokes online in order to spread laughter and cheer. Although the actual history of International Joke Day is not 100% known, there are multiple sources that claim it was started by Wayne Reinagel back in 1994. The theory is that he created International Joke Day in order to sell his joke books. Wayne picked July 1^st because he thought it would be fun to have the holiday at the halfway point of the calendar year. You can share hilarious jokes, funny stories, memes, and videos on your favorite social media platforms with people from all over the world.

But that raises an interesting aspect of International Joke Day. Since International Joke Day is international, you may very well need to translate your joke or jokes from one language to another. For example, if you want to impress a client in China with a funny yet appropriate joke, that means your joke needs to be translated into Chinese and needs to be translated properly. If the joke is translated wrong, even in the slightest way, it can change the entire meaning of the joke. Instead of making your client laugh, it could actually offend them.

The same holds true if you’re sending the same joke to clients in France, Germany, Hungary, and Korea the same holds true. In all cases, you need to ensure that the joke is translated correctly into French, German, Hungarian, and Korean. Otherwise you’re taking the unnecessary risk of offending an important client.

Jokes, especially puns, often depend on the nuances of their language, and can lose all their meaning in translation. (Take “read” and “red,” which sound identical in English; in Spanish, for example, the words would be leyó and rojo – they lose the similarity that can make a double-entendre funny in English.) To ensure proper translation, you should work with a professional translation company to review the text before sending your joke to clients around the world – even on International Joke Day.

UNIDA Translation is a leader in the translation industry. Our main goal is to assist your business by opening up the various avenues of communication. That way, you can be rest assured that your company’s message are being fully understood at all times.