For my third audio assignment, I did the “Make ’em Laugh” assignment. In all honesty, I needed something that wouldn’t be too time consuming, as I didn’t have a ton of time left. I did a bit of internet browsing, and found a funny joke in French.
It translates to “Which celebrity is the most beautiful? Angelina Jolie”, which is funny, because “joli(e)” means “pretty” in French. I recorded it in audacity, and then found a sound clip of an audience laughing to tack on the end.
I’m currently taking German 201 and I thought that this joke was very punny as I like to call it. I choose this joke because I feel that a person who doesn’t speek German can still get the jist of it and might be able to get a laugh out of it.
Hello to all!
This week I chose to complete AudioAssignment77 titled “Make ’em laugh!” Basically, I tell a joke in another language and add in some effects. I struggled with how to best do this and eventually ended up using iMovie so that I could show the illustration for the joke (below) while I was talking. I chose to do a joke in Spanish because I am a Spanish teacher and I love to use the language whenever I can.
For those of you that don’t know Spanish, the translation for the image is as follows:
Doctor: “The pain in your right knee is caused by your advanced age.”
Patient: “No, because the other knee is the same age and it doesn’t hurt.”
See my finished Audio product here. Hope you enjoy!
Here’s My joke in Spanish
It wasn’t all that funny to start with in Spanish, and I can’t imagine that I made it any funnier. It was a good joke to pick though because it was short and easy to get. I just grabbed a couple of audio clips from SoundBible and added them in to build up the joke and then I had the laugh at the end to finish it off. I thought the laugh was appropriate because it sounded really dorky and about the reaction I would expect if I were to tell this to someone.
The dialogue is supposed to be:
Person 1: The new cook is a ray of sunshine
Person 2: Does she cook well?
Person 1: No, She burns everything
Here are the audio clips from Sound Bible that I used:
Sound Bible Drum Roll Audio Clip
Here’s the original description
Hey everybody!
This week we had to complete at least two audio assignments worth a total of 5 stars. This is my second one and when I saw it I knew I was pretty much obligated to do it!
The Assignment
The assignment can be found HERE, it is worth 2.5 stars and the exact instructions are to:
“Find a good, brief joke in a language other than your mother tongue; if you don’t know any other languages this might be a good way to start learning. Record your voice telling the joke focusing on pronunciation and try to make it sound as natural as you can with appropriate vocal inflections. Add a (cc) music track underneath (maybe from jamendo.com) and a laugh track (soungle.com is a good source) at the end.”
The Work
The Story
I went on to google to try and find a good Russian joke and I did find many but the problem with some Russian jokes is that they include cursing and I didn’t really want to do that on a blog! Who knows, maybe my mom will see this. I have to say though that I find Russian jokes funnier than American jokes. For some reason, they have so much more…depth behind them? Plus, the Russian language is extremely diverse in my opinion. Telling jokes is like an art of how well a person can use and twist words of a language into something profoundly funny and thought-provoking at the same time.
Here is the joke I used:”???????: ?????? ???????? ?? ??????? ? ??????? ????? ?? ????????? ?????? 90 ??
? ????? ??????????, ??? ? ??? ?? ?????? ????? … ?????????.
? ??-?????, ???? ????????? ?? ?????????? ??????? ????? ??????? ??????? – ??? ????? ?? ?????? ???????????!”
It roughly translates to: “News, Latvia is going to build a 90 kilometer fence on its border with Russia. They further explain this is due to the fact that Vietnamese people are crossing into Latvia from Russia. Well, if a Vietnamese got to Latvia by going over the Himalayan Mountains, he can probably just jump over the border!” Yes, Russian jokes often include racial concepts and hints.
The Process
I found my joke on google and downloaded a sound of a laughing crowd from FreeSound. The music I used in the background is by Kevin Macleod, a fantastic composer who creates music for royalty free use as long as he is credited. The song I used is called “Carefree” and you can find his other compositions HERE. In Audacity, I recorded my voice, added some music, and added the laughter sound clip at the end. I compressed my voice for more clarity and de-amplified the music so that it plays in the background but doesn’t overthrow my voice. Below is a video of how I did it (with a few stupid mistakes).
To finish up my stars for the week, I decided to do the Make ‘em Laugh assignment (worth 1.5 stars). The task?: Find a good, brief joke in a language other than your mother tongue; if you don’t know any other languages this might be a good way to start learning. Record your voice telling the joke focusing on pronunciation and try to make it sound as natural as you can with appropriate vocal inflections. Add a music track underneath and a laugh track at the end.
This assignment was EXTREMELY fun! I grew up learningEnglish and a little bit of French, and have visited France at least once a year since I was born. Since half of my family lives in France, the French language and culture has always been a huge part of my life. My dad sends me jokes at least once a week, but those were definitely way too complicated to put in an audio post. I decided I would do a joke my dad told me when I was little, that to this day I find hilarious.
The english translation: A snail waits for his friend the slug. She arrives late, and the snail says to her “and in addition you didn’t bring your backpack?”
This joke gets me every time. I think it is hilarious, even in English. When I was deciding on a joke to do, I felt that it was important that the joke be translatable. There are many jokes that you cannot translate to English, which is always upsetting because some French jokes are SO FUNNY.
However, to create my masterpiece I recorded myself saying the joke in my best French accent ( I haven’t been to France in a year, so I’m a bit rusty). I then found some music on freesound which I thought fit well into a mini-joke segment. The song was a little too short for my joke, so I ended up changing the speed of it by slowing it down to make it a little longer. The last thing I did was find some laughing and clapping sounds. There were so many to choose from, but I am extremely happy with how the one I chose played out I was able to create a little into “Jokes with Mia” which really helped make the audio more my own.
I’m happy with how this turned out, and I’m really getting the hang of audacity. I think that I am definitely a pro at cutting, pasting, and moving pieces around.
These are the sounds I used, along with my voice.
and here is my final product!
Make ‘Em Laugh (1 1/2 Stars)
I chose this audio assignment because I am a German major and can speak German, so it felt only natural to choose the audio assignment in another language. I googled jokes in German, which for the most part I didn’t understand, so I either don’t understand German humor or there are some strange play on words that are lost to me, but this one I got.
Translation: A Joke in the Coffeehouse
A man says to the waiter, “Sir, my coffee is cold!”
The waiter replies, “Good that you told me, Sir! Iced Coffee costs a Euro more…”
Getting the pronunciation and inflection was not a huge struggle for this one, and I enjoyed adding the music and the laugh track. I kind of wish I could add laugh tracks and background music to my life, because it makes everything sound better. Also, I am still not over how strange my voice sounds when recorded.
So this assignment was called “Make em Laugh” basically we were supposed to tell a joke in another language, lay a soundtrack, and add a laugh track.
My parents lived in Germany so I had them help me pronounce this joke which translates to: “What do you call a pissed off German?””Sauerkraut.” Ha. Ha.
I laid it over an Instrumental of 99 red balloons, a popular song in German and English but with very different meanings, hopefully my joke is equally funny in either language 
Difficulty: 2 stars
View the Original Assignment Here
To finish off my 5 stars worth of audio assignments, I completed Make ‘Em Laugh, a 2 star rated assignment from the ds106 bank. I liked the idea of this assignment because I speak french (not very well) and I wanted to get some practice speaking it. I couldn’t think of any jokes off the top of my head (that always seems to happen right?) so I googled french jokes. I found one I thought was pretty funny on this website and opened Audacity. It only took me 3 times to record the whole joke to ok standards.
Another part of the assignment was to add background music and a laugh sound effect at the end. Since I was speaking french, I decided to put a pretty famous french song on in the background: Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. I uploaded the song into Audacity from my iTunes library and chose the middle portion of the song to play while I spoke. I searched on YouTube for a laugh sound effect and found this short clip. I was pretty tired by the time I did this, so I just used Audacity to record the laughter sounds while it played, instead of downloading the clip and uploading it into Audacity. I put the laughter at the end and exported the file in order to upload it to soundcloud.
This is the joke in French:
Un petit esquimau va à la pêche. Il fait un trou dans la glace et il entend dans un haut-parleur: il ne faut pas pêcher ici, il n’y a pas de poissons! Le petit esquimau va un peut plus loin et il entend à nouveau : il ne faut pas pêcher ici, il n’y a pas de poissons! Alors il répond : mais qui est ce qui parle? ici le directeur de la patinoire!
And here is the joke translated to English:
A small Eskimo goes fishing. He makes ??a hole in the ice and hears someone say: “Do not fish here, there are no fish!” The little Eskimo goes a bit farther but he hears again: “Do not fish here, there are no fish!” So he replies: “But who is saying this?” “Over here! the Director of the ice skating rink!”
I thought it was very cheesy and corny but also pretty funny! Don’t let the accent get in the way of finding the joke funny!
