When I was a graduate student at Emory University in President Carter’s home state of Georgia, he met every year with the international students. To put us at ease, with his signature affability and sense of humor, President Carter shared a story about a speech he gave in Japan. He said that he opened with a joke, and that immediately after the interpreter translated the joke from English to Japanese, every single person in the audience laughed. Later that day, Carter asked the interpreter why the joke elicited such an enthusiastic response. After some coaxing, the interpreter admitted that he was not sure how to translate the joke into Japanese and instead said, “President Carter made a joke. Everyone must laugh.”

Viorica Marian, The Power of Language: How the Codes We Use to Think, Speak, and Live Transform Our Minds (2023)