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The Translation of Humor; Who Says it Can’t Be Done?

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... En otras palabras, la traducción del humor, en general, se lleva a cabo siguiendo un proceso, a saber, (a) identificar y descodificar el humor implícito en el texto original y (b) reformular y transferir el humor al texto meta, con el objetivo de que el público reciba la misma función humorística. En el texto audiovisual, además, se ha de considerar la sincronización entre la imagen y el sonido, pues, si no, los espectadores pueden tener la sensación de que se están perdiendo algo (Leibold, 1989;Díaz Cintas y Remael, 2007). ...
Article
En este artículo presentamos una investigación sobre la traducibilidad de los fraseologismos humorísticos en un género multimodal como es la comedia de situación. Uno de los fenómenos más difíciles de traducir es el humor. Asimismo, las unidades fraseológicas también son unas de las unidades lingüísticas más complicadas de trasladar a otra lengua. Si unimos ambos conceptos, fraseología humorística, se transforma en una de las tareas más arduas en la que se involucra un traductor. Según Zuluaga (2001) en el proceso traductológico de la fraseología se debe identificar, analizar y buscar la mejor equivalencia en la lengua meta. Partiendo de esta premisa, llevaremos a cabo el proceso contrario, es decir, seleccionaremos las secuencias humorísticas de la versión doblada en las que el humor se genere a través de una unidad fraseológica y comprobaremos qué recurso humorístico se hallaba en la versión original para que el traductor optase por la utilización de un fraseologismo. Como conclusión, se puede afirmar que, en la mayoría de los casos, el traductor ha optado por una equivalencia del fraseologismo tanto formal como de sentido.
... The 'Negativity Thinking' pattern, based on 'cynical skepticism' and 'emotional reasoning' distortions, is accompanied with the cognitive 'Easel' pattern, responsible for the dominance of visual pictures and images. According to A. Pavio people remember visual pictures and images shaped by words much faster than any logically connected information [18]. The 'Easel' cognitive pattern turns around such value dominant as the 'picture delight' and consists of such frames as 'visual picture' and 'mental image.' ...
... Not all humour travels well, whether it be in space or in time. Frederic Dard's hardboiled San Antonio novels (Leibold, 1989) may seem silly in France but are likely to be considered sexist in North America, including in French-speaking Quebec. In fact, such differences of opinion are fundamental in the history of international literary relations: outside of their original contexts, Gogol's Government Inspector and Kafka's Trial did not provoke roars of laughter but were seen as criticizing oppressive societal systems. ...
Chapter
This book explores an important aspect of human existence: humor in self-translation, a virtually unexplored area of research in Humour Studies and Translation Studies. Of the select group of international scholars contributing to this volume some examine literary texts from different perspectives (sociological, philosophical, or post-colonial) while others explore texts in more extraneous fields such as standup comedy or language learning. This book sheds light on how humour in self-translation induces thoughts on social issues, challenges stereotypes, contributes to recast individuals in novel forms of identity and facilitates reflections on our own sense of humour. This accessible and engaging volume is of interest to advanced students of Humour Studies and Translation Studies.
... They have employed a number of creative solutions to address the perennial problems of translation such as those involved in equivalence, including wordplay. Much has been said about the difficulties in translating humor whose substance is captured best by an early scholar, Anne Liebold (1989) who wrote:" It requires the accurate decoding of humorous speech in its original context, the transfer of that speech in a different and often disparate linguistic and cultural environment and its reformulation in the new utterance which successfully recaptures the intention of the original humorous message and evokes in the target audience an equivalent pleasurable and playful response" (109). Yet the context of the Philippines stands in stark contrast: there is no need for self-translation because the readers speak the same two or three languages the writers do, and live in the same culture, too. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
This book explores an important aspect of human existence: humor in self-translation, a virtually unexplored area of research in Humour Studies and Translation Studies. Of the select group of international scholars contributing to this volume some examine literary texts from different perspectives (sociological, philosophical, or post-colonial) while others explore texts in more extraneous fields such as standup comedy or language learning. This book sheds light on how humour in self-translation induces thoughts on social issues, challenges stereotypes, contributes to recast individuals in novel forms of identity and facilitates reflections on our own sense of humour. This accessible and engaging volume is of interest to advanced students of Humour Studies and Translation Studies.
... Los estudios sobre la traducción del humor verbal se inician en los años 80 del siglo pasado y múltiples análisis han arrojado luz sobre el traslado interlingüístico e intercultural (Redfern 1984;Leibold 1989;Raphaelson-West 1989;Chiaro 1992Chiaro 2005Chiaro 2006Delabastita 1993;Gómez-Capuz 2002 El estudio de la traducción del humor verbal en textos literarios recibió aportaciones en los años 80 y 90 del siglo pasado, las cuales se enfocan específicamente en juego de palabras (Redfern 1984;Delabastita 1993). A pesar de los retos que conllevan las faltas de equivalencia en ámbitos lingüísticos y culturales, obras literarias de Boccaccio y Shakespeare distinguidas por su estilo humorístico se han traducido en múltiples lenguas y han conseguido gran éxito. ...
Article
From the perspective of functionalism, this article explores the specific methods and techniques of interpretation of verbal humor (from Spanish to Chinese, or vice versa) in order to achieve the goal of fluent communication. Therefore, we analyze the main standards of functionalist translation. According to these principles and specific examples of interpretation, we propose three methods of interpretation and their respective techniques: (a) Literal interpretation: the correspondence between the original text and the target text is achieved in form, content and function. (b) Free interpretation: the content and function are properly modified and retained. The specific techniques are amplification, compensation, enhancement and elision. (c) Interpretation and communication: the functions are maintained. The respective technique is partial replacement.
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Karikatürler geçmişten günümüze kadar toplumların kültürlerinde önemli yere sahiptirler. Bir iletişim aracı olarak sevilerek okunan karikatürlerde yaşamın içinden çok farklı konular ele alınmaktadır. Yazılı çevirinin bir alanı olarak karikatür çevirisi yapmak isteyen çevirmenlerin kaynak ve hedef dile hakim oldukları kadar, kaynak ve hedef kültüre de hakim olması beklenmektedir. Karikatür çevirilerinin çeşitli sorunlar içermesi bu yüzden şaşırtıcı değildir. Bu sebeple bu çalışmanın amacı, mizah-kültür ilişkisini açıklayarak çeviri eğitimindeki çeviri ve alt edinçlerinin önemini vurgulamaktır. Çeviri eğitiminde çeviri edincini oluşturan tüm alt edinçleri: dil edinci, metin edinci, kültür edinci, aktarım edinci, araştırma edinci, uzmanlık edinci, iletişim edinci, teknoloji edinci kazandırmak amaçlanır. Çeviri öğrencilerinin bu alt edinçleri edinerek, çeviri edincine sahip bir şekilde mezun olmaları beklenmektedir. Bu çalışmada, çeviri alt edinçlerden dil edinci, kültür metin ve aktarım edinçlerine odaklanılmıştır. Karikatür çevirisindeki değinilen sorunlar için çevirmenlerin bunlarla kültürel, teknik ve dilsel bağlamda nasıl yüzleştiği gösterilmiş ayrıca çeviri edinçleri arasındaki ilişki irdelenmiştir. Karikatür çevirisine çevirmen, sadece dil bilgisi ile çeviri yapamayacağı aynı zamanda çeviri, kültür ve diğer alt edinçlere de ihtiyacı olduğu açıktır. Çalışmada bu bağlamda çeviride çevirmenlerin rolü, çeviri eğitimi ve çeviri edinçlerinin önemi ve dikkat edilmesi gereken noktalara dikkat çekilmiştir. Uygulama bölümü için Trakya Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Almanca Mütercim-Tercümanlık bölümünde 3. Sınıf seçmeli dersi olarak verilen “Karikatür ve Çizgi Roman Çevirisi” dersi öğrencilerinin sınav kağıtlarındaki çevirileri değerlendirilmiştir.
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Jokes have increasingly become the medium through which people in different Arab countries express their concerns. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are full of jokes tackling various spheres of life. Those jokes serve as a secure resort for people to raise issues they may not be able to express openly. The present study deals with the complications involved in the translation of Arabic jokes in general, and political jokes in particular into English. It sheds some light on the extent to which the translations of those jokes retain the force of their originals. The corpus of this study consists of 100 jokes that have been collected from different websites. The theoretical framework is eclectic, as it considers theories of translation and linguistics. It is based on Hans Vermeer's skopos theory (Nord, 1997; Reiss and Vermeer, 2014; Vermeer, 1989), and Halliday's theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 1985/1994). This study concludes that understanding a joke and then reproducing and translating it depends on a combination of linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The joke tellers may embrace various ideologies, and translators are required to be familiar with those ideologies to render the text adequately. The fidelity of translation will never be preserved unless all those aspects are taken into consideration.
Article
Стаття присвячена аналізу стилістичних особливостей чорного гумору в такому продукті медійного дискурсу, як комедійний анімаційний фільм. Досліджується ступінь вивчення такого багатогранного явища, як гумор у сучасному мовознавстві. Особлива увага приділяється розкриттю сутності феномена чорного гумору як особливого виду комічного. Обґрунтовано актуальність дослідження й проаналізовано низку теоретичних праць, присвячених вивченню різноманітних аспектів прояву й функціонування чорного гумору в літературі, мистецтві, мовознавстві, перекладознавстві, кінопродукції тощо. Виокремлено низку характерних ознак, які вирізняють чорний гумор з-поміж інших видів комічного. З’ясовано, що в досягненні чорно- гумористичного ефекту, який відображено на стилістичному рівні в комедійному анімаційному фільмі «Родина Адамсів», значну роль відіграють засоби мовної виразності, як-от: тропи й фігури мовлення. Аналіз стилістичних фігур, уживання яких сприяє створенню комічного ефекту в межах зазначеного медійного продукту, дав змогу визначити такі їх види, як метафора, персоніфікація, порівняння гіпербола, літота, каламбур, силепсис, зевгма, антитеза, перифраз. Використання засобів увиразнення мовлення може мати різну мету. Так, каламбур і полісемія допомагають створити ефект двозначності й невідповідності, що лише підсилює комічність ситуації. З’ясовано, що сутність створення ефекту комічності полягає в порушенні законів логіки, невідповідності між очікуванням і реальністю, що зумовлює появу контрасту, а також виникнення додаткового сенсу, спричиненого явищем імпліцитності. Отже, гумор віддзеркалює злам стереотипів, трансформацію уявлень про навколишню дійсність і моделі мови, що породжує протиріччя образів і сенсів. Перспективи подальших досліджень полягають у більш ґрунтовному вивченні специфіки чорного гумору як складника медіапростору, а також його впливу на реципієнта; вивченні мовних особливостей чорного гумору як особливої форми комічного.
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Esta tradução anotada e comentada da peça trágica Júlio César, embasada na articulação entre os Estudos da Tradução e os Estudos Shakespearianos, tem como propósito oferecer ao estudante de Letras e de Teatro um texto que seja ao mesmo tempo que possa funcionar como um roteiro como também ser legível e encenável, dada a dupla natureza da tradução dos textos shakespearianos, que ora são destinados à página, ora ao palco. Antes de se dar início à tradução propriamente dita, é necessário tecer considerações pertinentes acerca da tradução teatral do texto shakespeariano, mais precisamente da figura do clown, um personagem correspondente ao bobo da corte na época shakespeariana. Após o embasamento teórico proveniente das considerações de Bárbara Heliodora, Delia Chiaro, Dirk Delabastita, Susan Bassnett, entre outros nomes oriundos dos Estudos da Tradução e dos Estudos Shakespearianos, apresentamos nossa tradução com comentários e notas. A cena traduzida é a de abertura da peça, na qual somos apresentados ao Sapateiro, um cidadão proveniente da classe trabalhadora que, valendo-se de ambiguidades e jogos de palavras referentes ao seu ofício, ridiculariza os tribunos Flávio e Marulo.
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This book offers a comprehensive account of the audiovisual translation (AVT) of humour, bringing together insights from translation studies and humour studies to outline the key theories underpinning this growing area of study and their applications to case studies from television and lm. The volume outlines the ways in which the myriad linguistic manifestations and functions of humour make it dif for scholars to provide a uni denition for it, an issue made more complex in the transfer of humour to audiovisual works and their translations as well as their ongoing changes in technology. Dore brings together relevant theories from both translation studies and humour studies towards advancing research in both disciplines. Each chapter explores a key dimension of humour as it unfolds in AVT, offering brief theoretical discussions of wordplay, culture-speci references and multilingualism in revoicing and captioning in AVT as applied to case studies from Modern Family. A dedicated chapter to audio description, which allows the visually impaired or blind to assess a non-verbal content, using examples from the 2017 the Big Sick, outlines existing research to date on this under-explored line of research and opens avenues for future study within the AVT of humour. This book is key reading for students and scholars in translation studies and humour studies. Margherita Dore is Adjunct Lecturer in the
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Abstract Most of the neologisms which are coined by politicians are strange to the Arabic language linguistically and culturally. Niska (1998, p. 89) states that "neologisms are tokens of a creative process "a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life on the other". Translating neologisms accurately and finding the right equivalents is a problematic issue. This study endeavors to investigate the translation problems of political neologisms and the strategies used to translate these neologisms. In order to achieve the objectives of the study the methodology which is used is qualitative method. As a theoretical frame work for the study Peter Newmark's dual theory of semantic and communicative methods of translation in addition to his translation procedures model for the translation of different types of neologisms will be utilized. The results show that political neologisms are culturally loaded and difficult to translate without having good background knowledge of these neologisms. Translators should have a good command of both source and target languages and should be culturally and linguistically competent in order to be able to translate neologisms. It also shows that the most frequently used strategies were functional equivalent, word for word, modulation, paraphrasing, and compensation. The least frequently used strategies were couplets, componential analysis, omissions, additions, reduction, expansion and transference.
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Aquest treball pretén analitzar la funció de la variació lingüística en un text humorística audiovisual en el context de la traducció. Com a objecte d’estudi s’ha escollit la pel·lícula francesa Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008), en què tant l’humor com la variació lingüística són elements clau de l’argument. Les modalitats analitzades són doblatge i subtitulació i les llengües meta català i castellà. Aquest article demostra que en tots dos textos meta l’estratègia de traducció aplicada ha estat la creació d’una varietat lingüística fictícia.
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El estudio de la traducción del humor ha experimentado en las últimas décadas un auge notable en el campo de la traductología. Una de las razones por las que se ha impulsado la investigación en este ámbito tiene que ver con el aumento en la demanda y distribución de productos gráficos y audiovisuales de diversa índole: series de televisión, comedias románticas, comedias musicales, películas de animación, cómics y novelas gráficas, publicidad, DVD, libros electrónicos, videojuegos, aplicaciones informáticas, etc. La apertura a nuevos mercados internacionales, a través de la localización o adaptación de este tipo de productos culturales, ha provocado que la inherente multimodalidad que los caracteriza se haya tenido que reconfigurar o traducir para poder llegar a un mayor número de consumidores. Este hecho −y en especial la posibilidad de establecer un análisis multilingüe− le ha proporcionado al investigador una valiosa herramienta heurística para estudiar cómo se lleva a cabo el trasvase lingüístico y cultural del humor de una lengua a otra. En los siguientes apartados analizaremos, en primer lugar, el papel de la traducción en relación con el concepto de cultura. A continuación, nos ocuparemos de la especificidad lingüística y cultural del humor como características que pueden condicionar o determinar la traducibilidad de un texto humorístico. Por último, a partir de un repaso de algunos géneros humorísticos multimodales (la literatura infantil, la comedia musical, y el cómic y la novela gráfica), describiremos algunas de las técnicas empleadas en la traducción del humor.
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Resumo: a tradução do humor está sujeita um conhecimento significativo do tradutor do assunto e da sua própria época, já que em determinado momento, faz-se necessário que o tradutor, por meio da sua imaginação e perspicácia, recrie determinadas passagens em função do entendimento contemporâneo do objeto cômico. O presente trabalho pretende analisar a conservação do humor em uma breve passagem da cena dos coveiros da peça A Tragédia de Hamlet: Príncipe da Dinamarca, de William Shakespeare, traduzida por Millôr Fernandes em 2011 e Carlos Alberto Nunes em 2011. A edição usada como original é a Oxford Shakespeare e a base teórica para este estudo se debruça nas tendências deformativas de Antoine Berman. Palavras-chave: Performance. Imaginação. Hamlet. Ironia.
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Résumé Cette étude est basée sur un corpus d’environ deux cents annonces publicitaires humoristiques publiées dans divers magazines. Elle vise à étudier les techniques de création et de (re)création utilisées dans les textes sources et dans les textes cibles pour créer des effets humoristiques. Effectuée du point de vue de la rhétorique et de la sémantique interprétative, cette analyse montrera non seulement que l’humour est traduisible, mais que les traductions sont souvent excellentes.
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Como resultado de una investigación para la Maestría, este estudio pretende recuperar inicialmente algunas consideraciones teóricas sobre la traducción del humor y, por lotanto reflexionar sobre ellas. De las teorías que tienen que ver con el tema, se retomarán las ideas propuestas por Jeremy Munday (2009), Patrick Zabalbeascoa (2001), Salvatore Attardo (2002), Stanislaw Baranczak (1992), entre otros. La traducción del humor es un área que se está desarrollando cada vez más en la esfera académica, no sólo en el aspecto verbal, sino también el humor es recurrente en los textos audiovisuales, con sus peculiaridades hacia la tarea de traducción. Aunque muchas de estas son consideraciones de décadas anteriores, siguen siendo pertinentes hasta la actualidad, destacando la importancia de los estudios en el campo de la traducción y el elemento cómico como algo significativo para el traductor y para el público/lector.
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Resumo: Muito pouco se tem publicado a respeito de produções acadêmicas destinadas ao estudo da tradução do humor; os estudos voltados para o humor estão ligados aos mecanismos lingüísticos – ou seja, algum aspecto da linguagem (como fonética, sintaxe, estilística) – de produção do humor. Da mesma forma que os estudos da tradução se consolidaram recentemente, o mesmo pode ser dito a respeito do estudo de tradução de humor. A tradução do humor está sujeita um conhecimento significativo do tradutor do assunto e da sua própria época, já que em determinado momento, faz-se necessário que o tradutor, por meio da sua imaginação e perspicácia, recrie determinadas passagens em função do entendimento contemporâneo do objeto cômico. O presente trabalho pretende analisar a conservação do humor em uma breve passagem da cena dos coveiros da peça A Tragédia de Hamlet: Príncipe da Dinamarca, de William Shakespeare, traduzida por Millôr Fernandes em 2011 e Carlos Alberto Nunes em 2011. A edição usada como original é a Oxford Shakespeare e a base teórica para este estudo se debruça nas tendências deformativas de Antoine Berman.
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This article deals with the main elements at stake in the production, reading/interpreting and translating of humor. To achieve his objective, the application of the principles of Raskin and Attardo's General Theory of Verbal Humor as well as Reiss and Vermeer's Scope Theory to the translation of humorous texts is suggested in this paper. The aim: (1) to produce through translation an analogous effect which such texts potentially provoke in the source language and culture; (ii) to keep as much as possible, their informational and pragmatic content.
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In this paper I argue that the presentation and study of humor should be an important component in foreign language and translation courses. The use of humor in language courses, in addition to making classes more enjoyable, can contribute to improving students' proficiency. Humor is useful for the development of listening comprehension and reading. An analysis of the vast bibliography on humorology has led to the organization of humorous discourse into three groups: (i) universal or reality-based humor, (ii) culture-based humor, and (iii) linguistic or word-based humor. This grouping serves as a pedagogical framework for teaching humor in both language and translation classrooms. Learners and tyro translators should deal first with the relatively straightforward universal humor, continue with cultural humor, which demands more of learners and translators, and finally deal with linguistic humor that offers serious challenges to students of foreign languages and translation. The study of humor presents translators with the opportunity to exercise their creativity. Word-based or linguistic humor serves as a test of what can and cannot be translated and may entail a change in script if the "new" humorous discourse is to evoke laughter or at least a smile on the part of the target language audience.
Article
Malgré le succès récent des Humour Studies et de la traductologie, la traduction de l’humour ne suscite pas souvent l’intérêt des chercheurs. La plupart des contributions traitent de la soi-disante «þ(in)traduisibilitéþ», qui se situerait aux niveaux «þculturelþ» et «þlangagierþ». Bien qu’en général les pensées soient empiriquement peu fondées et théoriquement déficientes, elles nous procurent une image plus concrète de ces difficultés de traduction culturelles et linguistiques. Pourtant, la «þcartographie culturelleþ» a tout intérêt à prendre l’humour traduit encore plus au sérieux: son absence ou présence et ses modalités se laissent lire comme des signes incontestables de frontières communautaires. La bibliographie élargie qu’offre cet article pourrait servir de point de départ d’une discussion plus articulée qui incorpore les résultats récents aussi bien des Humour Studies que de la traductologie.
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This study applies the Skopos Theory and Christiane Nord's functionalist approach, as well as the Hallidayan methodology to humour translation. The analysis highlights the cultural component in joke translation. The theories appear to be excellent for an analysis of the linguistic and cultural coordinates that need to be rendered in a target text in order to make for a successful translation of jokes. The study examines concrete jokes in the English-Romanian language pair and looks at the strategies open to translators for successfully transferring both the linguistic and cultural information embedded in the source texts to the target language.
Article
Full-text available
This article deals with the main elements at stake in the production, reading/interpreting and translating of humor. To achieve his objective, the application of the principles of Raskin and Attardo's General Theory of Verbal Humor as well as Reiss and Vermeer's Scope Theory to the translation of humorous texts is suggested in this paper. The aim: (1) to produce through translation an analogous effect which such texts potentially provoke in the source language and culture; (ii) to keep as much as possible, their informational and pragmatic content.
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