Captain Underpants in Turkish

This weekend Adem humoured me by going to see Captain Underpants with me. He even let me drag him to the bookstore to buy the first book in the series in Turkish (though he loudly chanted “I married a ten year old, I married a ten year old,” the whole way.)

So I’ve been reading Captain Underpants in Turkish over the past few days and I have learned many things.

The most important of which is that Turkish doesn’t have a word for wedgie.

They have to translate “Captain Underpants was able to leap over tall buildings without getting a wedgie” with “Captain Underpants was able to leap over tall buildings without getting his underwear stuck.”

I felt very sad that the Turkish translation didn’t have the panache of the English original, so I asked Adem about it.

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen wedgies in films,” Adem said. “But we don’t do it to each other here so we don’t have a word for it. We have other stuff we do to each other.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, grabbing someone by the balls and telling him to sing the national anthem backwards.”

Where is that “the scream” emoji when I need it?

No word yet on whether there are Turkish words for wet willies, purple nurples, noogies, Indian burns, or swirlys. But I will let you know what kinds of similarly horrible practices English doesn’t have words for.

In the meantime, any translation suggestions for the National Anthem ball grab?