In early October 2024, a rumor resurfaced online that MTV reality television series "Jersey Shore" is called "Macaroni Rascals" in Japan.
One Reddit user made such a claim on Oct. 9: "Every so often I remember that in Japan, Jersey Shore is called 'Macaroni Rascals' and it fills me with great joy."
(@MikeBeauvais on X via youarwendow on Reddit)
In fact, the claim appeared on social media as early as 2010, when musician and songwriter Moby posted to X that "in japan 'jersey shore' is called 'macaroni rascals'. amazing."
The rumor also cropped up on Reddit in the early 2010s, while an Instagram post from 2023 continued the conversation, offering the following explanation for the translation:
IS JERSEY SHORE CALLED MACARONI RASCALS IN JAPAN?
MTV Jersey Shore - Macaroni Yarou no Nyuujyaajii Rifu". The literal translation is "Macaroni Rascals of New Jersey Life". "Rascals" can also be substituted with "villian", "scoundrel", or "rogue". If you've ever watched an anime, it's a word that the hero yells at the evil thing it's fighting.
When the Japanese title, "マカロニ野郎のニュージャージーライフ," is translated to English using Google Translate, it can be read as, "Macaroni Guy's New Jersey Life." The undisputed use of the word "macaroni" appears to be a playful nod to the Italian-American identities of some of the cast members, including DJ Pauly DelVecchio and Vinny Guadagnino.
However, when that same title is translated using the Cambridge Dictionary Translator, it reads "Macaroni Bastards' New Jersey Life."
Hulu Japan and AppleTV+ both air the series on their respective streaming networks. Each streamer refers to the show as "ジャージー･ショア ～マカロニ野郎のニュージャージー･ライフ～," which translates to "Jersey Shore: The New Jersey Life of the Macaroni Guys" using Google Translate. Both streaming services favor the polite interpretation and use the word "guys" instead of the more colorful translation of "bastards" or "***holes." This likely avoids potential fines that could be incurred from displaying obscene or offensive words, due to streaming and broadcast standards and practices.
Translation tools DeepL, Lingvanex and Systran, meanwhile, each said the Hulu and AppleTV+ title means "Jersey Shore — The New Jersey Life of Macaroni Bastards" in English. Depending on how the Japanese title is translated back into English, it can read as "The New Jersey Life of Macaroni Bastards," or the more polite interpretation of "Macaroni Guys' New Jersey Life."
However, the term "rascal" has been embraced on social media and in news reports from the early 2010s, likely because of its less harsh, more comical tone.
According to a 2010 article by financial and business news website Business Insider, the real translation is closer to "Macaroni ***holes," but "rascals" is used as a more polite alternative. Digital magazine Entertainment Weekly reported a similar explanation in September 2010 (archived here).
We reached out to a number of Japanese language specialists to ask them for clarity about the Japanese translation of "Jersey Shore." This included professors and lecturers at the Oxford University Language Centre in the United Kingdom and the Stanford Language Center in California.
Yale University's Aaron Gerow is an A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Film and Media Studies and of East Asian Languages and Literatures who specializes in East Asian film and media. He told us via email that it was "basically an issue of translation," and the title can be translated as "The New Jersey Life of Macaroni Yaros." Per Gerow:
The answer to your question depends on how you translate "Yaro". It is true that "Yaro" can be a negative term (like bastard) in some cases, like when a yakuza yells out "Kono Yaro!" (You bastard!) before punching someone. But it often has a more neutral or positive meaning connoting "guys", "fellows", or "rascals" in a good sense. One popular film series in the 1970s in Japan, for instance, was called "Truck Yaro" and featured a low-class but lovable truck driver. Some have translated it as "truck guys" or "truck rascals."As with Truck Yaro, I very much doubt the connotation in the subtitle of Jersey Shore is negative. It is closer to "guys" or "rascals", again in a positive sense.
Snopes reached out to several of the "Jersey Shore" cast members for their take on the translation. Jenni "JWoww" Farley and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino were unavailable for comment, but we'll update this article if the other cast members respond.
One possible reason for this title tweak to replace the expletive "***holes/bastards" with "guys/rascals" on some platforms is likely because profanities can hurt a site's visibility on Google Search; such words are considered obscene, which may trigger SafeSearch filters to block this explicit content from appearing in filtered results. In other words, expletives can reduce a site's credibility, so avoiding explicit language can help ensure content reaches a wider audience without being restricted by Google's content policies.
So, like that infamous anonymous letter Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and JWoww wrote to Sammi "Sweetheart" Giancola in "Jersey Shore" Season 2, "Multiple people in the house know, therefore you should know the truth," that this claim is "mostly true
Snopes has previously fact-checked other claims about reality TV, including the true story of a reality series in which 15 men competed to impregnate a woman, and former Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel mocking sympathetic sentiments toward Meghan Markle.