Translating Cultural Humour: Theory and Practice
Abstract
Humor is one of the most defining aspects of humanity. It is an integral part of everyday communication and an important component of so many literary works, films, art and mass entertainment. When trying to translate cultural humor, opaque elements and language-specific devices are expected to make the translator's work difficult, while some elements are ultimately not transferred at all. So, why does one translate a cultural humour? Usually, he does so in order to convey a message to someone whose culture and language differ from one’s own and thus prevent direct communication. This study sets out to provide evidence for the hypothesis that jokes that are bound to a specific culture lose their humorous aspect when translated literally into standard Arabic. Hence, the source culture can be substituted by the target one which shares the same aspect in a way that preserves their humorous aspect. The reason why jokes have been chosen among various humorous situations is that jokes are more formalized and more readily diffusible than the other forms of humour. It is found here that if the targets are funny in their own culture but not in the TL, a translator may invent new target-culture based jokes, instead of translating the original.
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