"Hang on to your grandmas!"

December 18, 2007 3:47 PM

LostintranslationFilter: "Hang on to your grandmas!"

OK, so I've been playing Mario Party 8 for a little while now, and on the "Koopa's Tycoon Town" level, I encountered something that I thought the Hive Mind could help me with. When Koopa drives a character around the course, he yells "Hang on to your grandmas!" before speeding off.

Is this something that got lost in translation from Japanese? If so, what does it mean?

(My brother and I came up with two possible explanations. A) It has something to do with your ancestors, or B) one needs a grandmother in the car in order to be street legal in the country.)

Thanks!

posted by dondiego87 to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

That reads to me just like a humorous play on "hang on to your hats," inserting a random and presumably funny noun instead. If it is something interesting in Japanese, so much the cooler, but I just read it as a somewhat-lame joke.
posted by Rallon at 4:03 PM on December 18, 2007

It's probably something adapted and completely changed in the localization process. Along the lines of what Rallon said.

For example, in Jurassic Park, Sam Jackson's character Ed says "Hold onto your butts."
posted by cmgonzalez at 4:10 PM on December 18, 2007

(And I remember that vividly because my cousin, who was about 2 at the time when she saw it, would repeat the line in endless giggly fascination.)
posted by cmgonzalez at 4:12 PM on December 18, 2007

No, there is no common Japanese expression corresponding directly to "hang on to your grandmas", and you do not need a grandmother in your car to be street legal here. (At least, not since 1992, when the law was expanded to permit great-aunts and other elderly female relatives.)

My guess is that the original was something completely different which could not be translated directly without sounding bizarre or unnatural, and so the translator replaced it with an entirely different "Let's go!" phrase. This is very common in game translation, where the main goal is after all to entertain the player.

There are lots of Japan-based MeFites -- maybe one of them has Mario Party 8 and can provide the Japanese source...
posted by No-sword at 4:30 PM on December 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Okay, so I just played 10 turns on my son's Mario Party 8 BY MYSELF for the first time in my life... I'm obviously having a veeerrrry slow day. When you say "he yells," you mean the words that appear on the screen, right? In the Japanese version, the driver says (when you land on the spot where you get to go to the bonus stage): あんたオレさまがいいとこにつれてってやるぜ！(I'll take you somewhere nice!) いくぜ！(Here goes!) どうだい！オレさまのうんてんは、サイコーだったろ！(How about that? Wasn't my driving awesome?) それじゃ、またな！！(See you later, then!!) So, no, no mention of grandmas. And I'm pretty sure the only difference when he takes you to a hotel is that he tells you that he's taking you to a hotel.
posted by misozaki at 7:02 PM on December 18, 2007

The hotel version: またせたな！いまからオレさまがホテルにつれてってやるぜ！(Sorry to keep you waiting! I'll take you to a hotel now!) and the rest is the same as the above.
posted by misozaki at 7:15 PM on December 18, 2007

Response by poster: @misozaki: Yes, the words just appear. I assumed he was yelling because of context and the exclamation point.

I guess this is just something weird put into the American version. Thanks for the help!
posted by dondiego87 at 12:02 AM on December 19, 2007

Well, grandmas usually aren't comfortable with fast driving and that turtle is gonna drive fast. the phrase evokes a picture of a cartoon, grandma flying out of the window as the car turns, perhaps by the handle of her umbrella. Hang on to your grandmas somehow makes perfect sense.
posted by ersatz at 9:53 AM on December 19, 2007

And hang on to your capital letters.
posted by ersatz at 9:54 AM on December 19, 2007

It's probably a conflation (intentional or unintentional) of two alliterative phrases you yell in a car when you're on a fast, swervy ride. "Hang onto your hats! Grab your grandmas!" I have absolutely no Googleable evidence to support this, but it is a lot like something my brother and I used to say in the car on the way to the beach: "Hang onto your hats! Grab your gizzards!" It may have been based on some TV meme from the seventies. If so, it was probably from a Warner Bros. cartoon, or other similar show. Sorry to be so vague about the source. But I do remember this very clearly - we probably said it in the car every summer weekend for years.
posted by expialidocious at 11:33 AM on December 19, 2007

I've just set the new record for use of "probably" in and AskMe answer.
posted by expialidocious at 11:34 AM on December 19, 2007