LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 22 ‘There’s No Dot in the Middle, So That Character Is 'Dae,' Not 'Tae'!’

The Chinese character for "tae" is displayed in this illustration from The Korea Times.

The joke I’m translating today mixes a literary sensibility with an earthy and crude sense of humor. The setup is that three women are expected to celebrate their father-in-law’s upcoming birthday by miming the shapes of Chinese characters (also called sinographs, or “hanja” in Korean) with their bodies.

Chinese characters were introduced to Korea by at least the second century B.C.E. and established as the writing system used for government, law and education during the Three Kingdoms Period (which lasted from the first century B.C.E. through the seventh century C.E.). Although the Korean writing system, Hangul, was developed and promulgated during the 15th century, it was limited in application and Chinese characters retained wider use and greater cultural cache until the 20th century.

In this scene, each of the daughters-in-law has to choose a Chinese character to mime. The first makes the shape of the character “ho” (好), meaning “good” (an ideograph of a woman and child). The second makes the shape of the character “an” (安), meaning “peace,” by wearing a wide-brimmed hat (although the ideograph is actually a woman under a roof). The third stands with her arms and legs outstretched to mime the character “tae” (太), which means “great.” But the father-in-law jokes that with no “dot” in between her legs, the character she’s actually making the shape of is “dae” (大), meaning “big.” The missing dot in between her legs, of course, is a penis; this whole elaborate setup ultimately arrives at a dick joke.

There’s No Dot in the Middle, So That Character Is ‘Dae,’ Not ‘Tae!’

A prime minister had three sons who all married early, so he also had three daughters-in-law. Each morning they greeted their parents-in-law. A few days before the prime minister’s birthday, he told them, “On my birthday, you three have to celebrate me. Depict a hanja character to congratulate me with.”

When the big day came, the eldest son’s wife approached him holding her son in her arms and said, “Here is a woman holding her son in her arms. I’m showing you the character ‘ho,’ meaning ‘good.’”

The second daughter-in-law wore a gat (a wide-brimmed horsehair hat) and said, “Here is a woman wearing a gat. I’m showing you the character ‘an,’ for ‘peace.’”

It seemed like the other two had already taken all the good ideas for characters, and there were none left. But after the youngest daughter-in-law thought for a while, she stood with her arms and legs spread as wide as she could and said, “I am showing you the character ‘tae,’ which means ‘great peace.’”

The father-in-law replied, “There’s no dot in the middle, so instead of ‘tae,’ that makes it ‘dae,’ meaning ‘big!’”

G.S. Hand is a graduate of the Translation Academy at LTI Korea and winner of the Fiction Grand Prize of the 53rd Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards, and has a master’s degree in Modern Korean Literature from Korea University. He lives in Seoul.