Humor and Translation An Interdiscipline

1 Humor and translation — an interdiscipline
5
PATRICK ZABALBEASCOA
6
10
11
12 Abstract
13
14 This paper calls for greater attention from researchers into the nature of
15 humor translation as an interdisciplinary area that should be of interest to
16 translation and humor studies. It includes a brief review of the complexity
17 of translation and the problems posed by traditional approaches. The paper
18 introduces a number of parameters that may be of assistance in developing
19 joke typologies for translators or translation scholars. A model is presented
20 for structuring joke-types according to binary branching. An attempt is then
21 made to combine the model with ideas and concepts put forward in Attardo
22 (2002). The result is a binary branch tree for the 6 Knowledge Resources
23 and the hierarchical structure that Attardo claims they have. One important
24 conclusion is that sameness, or similarity, may have little to do with funni-
25 ness, and if this is so it is going to create a dilemma for translators wishing
26 to achieve equivalent e¤ect.
27
28 Keywords: Translation; interdisciplinary; joke-type; variable; mapping,

29 GTVH.
30
31
32 1. Introduction
33
34 There is one idea among translation scholars that is hardly disputed at all
35 nowadays; and it is that translation studies is an interdisciplinary field of
36 research. So is humor studies; and both draw from linguistics, psychology
37 and sociology, among other disciplines, for their descriptions and their
38 theoretical models and constructs. It is not surprising, then, that humor
39 and translation studies overlap, and the findings of one must be of interest
Humor 18–2 (2005), 185–207 0933–1719/05/0018–0185

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186 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 to the other. What is surprising is that the link between translation and
2 humor has not received su‰cient attention from scholars in either field,
3 with a handful of honorable exceptions (most recently, Vandaele 2002).
4 The translatability of humor, how well humor travels across languages,
5 and the nature of the barriers, these are the kinds of issues that need to
6 be addressed from both sides of the area where humor and translation
7 overlap. Translators could benefit immensely from a few useful tips and
8 some practical advice on how to decode and reconstruct humoristic pat-
9 terns. In developing their theories, translation scholars cannot a¤ord to
10 ignore the insights of their colleagues in humor studies (among others);
11 likewise, I believe that humor studies can actually gain greater insight
12 into the linguistic, social and psychological factors of humor, in the
13 search of universals, for example, by resorting to the test of translation,
14 both experimentally and descriptively. If there is insu‰cient dialogue
15 and awareness of progress made in related fields (e.g., humor studies),
16 certain translation problems and issues can only be addressed by applying
17 ‘‘general’’ theoretical models and proposals, none of which have even re-
18 ceived widespread consensus from the scholarly community as actually
19 constituting a general theory of translation. Such is the case of Skopos-
20 theorie, a powerful functionalist theory for translation, as it accounts for
21 a lot, but this does not mean that it can usurp the contribution of humor
22 studies, or ignore the hard work of its scholars.
23
24
25 2. The ABC of translatability variables

26
The reason why translation is so di‰cult to fathom is because it is about
27
28
dealing with contingency, unlike comparative linguistics. While the lin-
guist is interested in general patterns of similarities and di¤erences be-
29
30
tween language systems (e.g., grammaticality, normality), a translator is
required to act upon textual items (i.e., utterances) that often contravene
31
the norm, or to use words or sentences that have never been used before.
32
Thus, all attempts to pin translation down to a series of absolute truths
33
have failed. There are so many variables a¤ecting translation that they
34
may not have all been identified yet. In any case, here are the most obvi-
35
ous ones, the ABC of translation variables, in ten points (a)–( j).
36
37 a. the language(s)/culture(s) one is translating from (including all as-

38 pects of language variation, such as dialects and registers)
39 b. the language(s)/culture(s) one is translating into
Humor and translation 187
1 c.the purpose(s) and justification(s) for the existence of the translated

2 version
3 d. the nature of the text, including parameters such as textuality, genre,
4 style and discourse
5 e. the intended recipient(s), what they are assumed to be like
6 f. the client(s) or translation initiator(s), their needs and demands
7 g. the expectation(s) for the translated text and prejudice towards trans-
8 lations and translators
9 h. the translator(s): human (individuals or teams), fully automatic, or
10 computer assisted
11 i. the conditions in which the task is carried out (deadline, materials,
12 motivation, etc.)
13 j. the medium, mode and means of communication: oral, written,
14 audiovisual, private, mass media, etc.
15
16 In turn, each one of these variables can be read in the singular or in the
17 plural, as not all texts are monolingual, or single-purpose; more than one
18 person may be responsible for the final product, and so on. The transla-
19 tion of each and every text item (any segment, form, function, or feature
20 of a text, anything from the smallest detail to the whole text) is a¤ected
21 by the nature of these variables.
22 So much variability seems to suggest two complementary procedures
23 that could be of great benefit to scholar and translator alike. I will call
24 one procedure ‘‘mapping’’, i.e. locating and analyzing textual items (e.g.,
25 instances of humor) according to relevant classifications (e.g., humor ty-
26 pologies). The other I call ‘‘prioritizing’’, i.e. establishing what is impor-
27 tant for each case (in the context of translating), and how important each
28 item and aspect is, in order to have clear set of criteria for shaping the
29 translation in one way rather than another. Translators and scholars alike
30 have to weigh the relative importance of humor, along with the im-
31 portance of a given type of humor, when deciding how to deal with it. A
32 dangerous simplification is to presume that humor will necessarily be
33 equally important in both the translated version and its source text. Or
34 that the nature of the humor must be the same in both source text and
35 its translation.
36 Applied to humor, this means that translators, teachers and researchers
37 of texts where humor is an ingredient, especially if it is an important
38 one, would benefit from a ‘‘map of humor’’, i.e. a series of classifications,
39 definitions, and examples of instances of humor and humor-types, as well
188 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 as models and insights like the ones laid out in the General Theory of
2 Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin 1991; Raskin 1985; and Ruch et al.
3 1993). The bulk of the cartographic work should presumably be done by
4 humor scholars and then picked up by translation researchers and trans-
5 lators, who ultimately must make their own decisions on whose map to
6 use or whether they might have to draw up their own, hopefully on the
7 basis of a sound model. Research into humor is done by scholars who
8 have one foot in at least one other discipline, and this should be exploited
9 to disseminate their findings from one field to another. The same can be
10 said for spreading translation theories.
11
12
13 3. Traditional approaches to translation

14
15 Before we move forward let’s take a step back and look at what is usually
16 prioritized in translation. Common sense, and even common practice,
17 tells us that translation is about being faithful to the words, the meaning,
18 the contents, the intention, the e¤ect of a text. So the common practice
19 and general rule, when it comes to translating humor, could be summed
20 up as ‘‘translate the words and/or the contents and then keep your fingers
21 crossed and hope that the humor will somehow come across with the
22 rest’’. To the extent that this formula quite frequently fails to work,
23 many experts reach the rather hasty conclusion that humor is untranslat-
24 able, although they may di¤er on the degree or the circumstances of un-
25 translatability (see Delabastita 1994, for the issue of translatablity). The
26 translatability of humor could be a vital component of the common
27 ground shared by translation and humor studies.
28 The fact is that a joke (as an instance of humor, though not the only
29 one, as many are quick to point out) can be told in lots of di¤erent
30 ways, so where does that leave such a fearful respect for preserving the
31 words? The point of a joke is often far removed from its semantic value,
32 so where does that leave the importance of meaning and contents, and
33 what is one to do about non-sense humor? A text might resort to humor
34 as a means of making the author’s intention clearer or more e¤ective, but
35 what do we do if humor is detrimental to the author’s goals in the new
36 environment of the translated version? If, on the other hand, humor is
37 the goal of the text (as in comedy) or social intercourse (breaking ice,
38 gaining trust, salesmanship), what is the point in translating the contents
39 if the humor is made to disappear in the process? What translators need is
1 an awareness of the nature of humor and its relative importance in di¤er-

2 ent contexts. Nevertheless, our commitment to humor should not lead
3 us to prioritize it in situations where it may have to be sacrificed to some
4 extent to allow for a satisfactory rendering of other textual items that are
5 actually more important.1
6
8 4. Joke-types for translation

9
10 Humor scholars have produced many classifications for types of humor

11 and types of jokes. Here, I will simply outline distinctions that are impor-
12 tant from the point of view of the translator. These parameters are pro-
13 posed to be considered for ‘‘mapping’’, when appropriate, i.e. they could
14 be used as ‘‘types’’ (e.g., for Figure 1). Mapping and solution-types are
15 the focus of part 6 of this paper.
16 Unrestricted, Inter-/bi-national
17 Some jokes and types of humor o¤er very little or no resistance to
18
translation (in a sense they are unrestricted) when the source and target
19
languages and cultural systems overlap, when the text users of both com-
20
munities have the same shared knowledge, values and tastes that are
21
necessary to appreciate a given instance of humor in the same way. A
22
translator may not worry so much that a joke might be considered inter-
23
national, much less universal, as long at it is bi-national, i.e. it can easily
24 cross from the source-text community to the target-text (translation)
25
community, without any need for adaptation or substitution because of
26 linguistic or cultural di¤erences; it can be literally translated with no loss
27
of humor, or content, or meaning.
28
(1) Gobi Desert Canoe Club (English) ! Circolo di Canottagio del
29
30
Deserto del Gobi (Italian)
31 This example, borrowed from Attardo (2002), is unrestricted in the sense
32 just outlined if we consider that the Gobi Desert has exactly the same
33 referential and connotative values for the intended readers of the English
34 version and the Italian version, and likewise for canoe clubs, what they
35 are and what they might represent. In his paper, Attardo reaches the
36 unoriginal conclusion that absolute translation is impossible; this is an
37 age-old redundancy, since anything, including translation, upon which im-
38 possible conditions are imposed is impossible to achieve. No translation
39 is completely without restrictions since the very presence of restrictions is
190 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 what distinguishes a translation from a photocopy, for example. It is in

2 the nature of translation for the target text to be di¤erent to the source
3 text in some ways, and similar in others. The complication arises from
4 the fact that the precise di¤erences and similarities are so variable, often
5 hardly even predictable. What really matters in jokes like example (1)
6 is that funniness is not restricted by any (meta)linguistic or cultural-
7 knowledge barrier. For jokes to properly fall into this category nor would
8 there be any di¤erences in how such a joke as example (1) would be per-
9 ceived according to the rest of the parameters outlined below.
10
Restricted by audience profile traits
11
Some jokes and types of humor are challenging for the translator due
12
to specific di‰culties (restrictions) that have to do with the text users’
13
linguistic or encyclopaedic knowledge, or their degree of familiarity or
14
appreciation for certain subject-matters, themes, genres, and types of hu-
15
mor. So, a language-restricted, or linguistic, joke is one that depends on
16
the knowledge of certain features of a given language (e.g., which words
17
are homonymic, paronymic, alliterative or rhyming); an ethnic joke is one
18
19
that depends on the knowledge of certain features of a given ethnic group
for its understanding, and an appreciation of a certain brand ethnic hu-
20
mor for its funniness (this includes a stereotype of the group’s language
21
and discourse varieties). A joke might be theme-restricted if it deals with
22
a theme that is not at all common within a given community (e.g., law-
23
yers jokes in Spain), despite its popularity elsewhere. Likewise for script-
24
restricted humor. Many of these restrictions fall into the category of
25
‘‘culture bumps’’, i.e. culture-specific items of interpersonal communica-
26
tion and social dynamics. To sum up this category, here is a list of the
27
28
main problem areas.
29
– Semiotic and linguistic di¤erences, including metalinguistic devices
30
– Knowledge (of social and cultural institutions, themes, genres, etc.)
31
– Frequency-restricted (rare, marked v. familiar)
32
– Appreciation (of humor-value of theme, approach, presentation,
33
occasion)
34
35 The reason why this category stresses the profile of the audience is be-
36 cause there are, for instance, no objective linguistic restrictions, only the
37 extent to which the audience might be ignorant of, or inexperienced in, a
38 given (aspect of ) language. Most people are ignorant of certain aspects or
39 words of their own language, and a lot of people know certain things
1 about certain foreign languages, sometimes to a great degree of profi-

2 ciency and sophistication. So, what must be measured is not the di¤erence
3 between the languages involved, but the cognitive distance between the
4 knowledge required to decode a message (i.e., to understand and appre-
5 ciate a text) and the knowledge one assumes one’s audience to have. In
6 this sense, concepts such as ‘‘knowledge resources’’, which is part of the
7 General Theory of Verbal Humor, come in very handy. Example (1)
8 may be unrestricted linguistically speaking, however, the fact that it be-
9 longs to T-shirt slogan humor may be problematic for countries where
10 very few people walk around with funny slogans on their T-shirts (Spain
11 is one such example). The same could be said for bumper stickers, as a bi-
12 national di¤erence between Spain and the USA. Example (1) might be
13 considered untranslatable, not on the basis of any knowledge resource
14 required for decoding the text, but simply because one might not be able
15 to find a manufacturer for such T-shirts (or bumper stickers). Internet, on
16 the other hand, is a domain where jokes travel to many di¤erent coun-
17 tries, sometimes in one language, sometimes through translation. So, the
18 mode of discourse and social occasion are important sociocultural factors
19 to take into account.
20
Intentionality
21
Another important distinction for translators to watch out for is whether
22
or not the humor is part of the author’s intention or is caused by some-
23
thing else; e.g. text user seeing things in the text that the author did
24
not — or did not intend to — say, funny mistakes, like translators’ errors
25
(example [3]), or the specific circumstances in which the source — or the
26
target — text is received, i.e. situational factors, happy or unfortunate
27
coincidences. Unintended humor by punning and other means may be a
28
by-product of either the source text or its translation, though by no means
29
necessarily for the same reasons. As in the previous case, we can see that
30
interpretation depends as much on what is in a reader, listener or viewer’s
31
mind as what is on the page, the stage or the screen. Translators are often
32
warned against unintended punning (example [2]), especially for sensitive
33
texts. For example, Bible translator and theorist, Eugene Nida (1964)
34
shudders at the thought of Biblical translations that might produce
35
sniggering from the pews, so he proposes translators use ‘‘donkey’’ rather
36
than ‘‘ass’’.
37
38 (2) Monsignor to new priest, ‘‘When David was hit by a rock and
39 knocked o¤ his donkey, don’t say he was stoned o¤ his ass.’’
192 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 (3) In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: ‘‘Ladies are requested not to have

2 children in the bar.’’
3
Improvisation
4
Humor may be carefully contrived and rehearsed, or may be more spon-
5
taneous. Both kinds of humor can often be very di‰cult to translate, for
6
di¤erent reasons. Elaborate humor, or humor that is part of an elaborate
7
rhetorical style, is di‰cult when one wishes to translate the nuances and
8
innuendo as well as the more obvious aspects of the text. Spur-of-the mo-
9
ment punning and joking is a typical nightmare for interpreters because
10
they have no means of backtracking or foreseeing where the pun is going
11
to fall unless warned some time before the speaker’s performance, by get-
12
ting a copy of the speech, for example.
13
Signals (of the intention to joke)
14
15
Translators, like other text users, may miss certain jokes, either because
16
they ‘‘don’t get it’’ or because they fail to identify the presence of a joke
17
that has not been overtly signaled (for joke signals, see Nash 1985). Be-
18
cause of the di‰culties involved in translating humor, the translator may
19
feel the need to turn covert forms of humor into more overt manifesta-
20
tions, especially if the translation is less e¤ective than the original, in this
21
case the translator conveys that there has been attempt at being funny,
22
while acknowledging failure to render the actual funniness (the problem
23
is that the public usually have no way of knowing whether such a failure
24
is the translator’s or the source text’s). In any case, this kind of practice is
25
quite common in translation on the whole, so much so that it has given
26
rise to the hypothesis that translations have a universal tendency to be
27
more explicit than their source texts. The down side of this practice oc-
28
curs when humor is based, or relies on subtlety, tongue-in-cheek, irony,
29
allusion and other such covert devices, but the translator resorts to broad
30
brush, bluntness and denotative meaning to spell everything out to the
31
text user in no uncertain terms, thus shredding the very fabric of this
32
kind of humor. Sometimes, however, puns might be designed to be partic-
33
ularly di‰cult to spot, when the translator (and/or author) wishes to get
34
around the censor, for instance.
35 Private (or in-group) jokes
36 A typical hindrance to humor appreciation is for the text user to be ‘‘left
37 out’’ of a private joke, or humor that relies heavily on people belonging
38 to certain groups. The nature and size of such groups covers a whole
39 range of possibilities. Even people of the same country, village, or school
1 may be ‘‘left out’’, so foreigners are much more likely candidates, and the
2 principle still works when the group is a whole nationality. In the latter
3 case, ‘‘private national-group’’ would overlap with the category of ‘‘re-
4 stricted by necessary knowledge and appreciation of culturally bound
5 items’’. Smaller groups may be defined by small geographical regions,
6 certain social classes or professions, interest groups, political parties,
7 minority groups, and so on. Often such groups are characterized by their
8 sociolect or dialect, or particular language awareness.
9
Wordplay v. narrative (linguistic v. textual)
10
Humor may be produced by wordplay, as in puns, one liners, limericks,
11
witticims, and so on, or by funny situations that gradually unfold or
12
suddenly become apparent in the narrative or plot. The latter case is not
13
necessarily di‰cult to translate, although translators who have their noses
14
too close to the page may not be able to see the forest (narrative twists
15
and turns) through all the trees (words and sentences). It is also a good
16
reminder that how we translate a single sentence or even word does not
17
depend entirely on the word or sentence itself, or even its immediate sur-
18
roundings, but may depend on passages that are far removed form the
19
part of the text we happen to be translating at any given moment. Com-
20
pensation both of kind and place must be taken into account when ex-
21
ploring possible solutions. Compensation of kind involves achieving the
22
same e¤ect by di¤erent means, thus compensating for not using the one
23
appearing in the source text. Compensation of place refers to the practice
24
of making a certain source-text item or feature appear in a di¤erent place
25
in the translation in order to avoid loss of meaning, e¤ect, function or
26
intention.
27
28 Target
29 Usually the most interesting jokes and other instances of humor involve
30 some sort of victim, or target. Victimless humor tends to be either child-
31 like humor, such as toilet humor, or intellectual games, such as riddles or
32 linguistic awareness (examples [4] and [5]). Victims may be people, indi-
33 viduals or groups, institutions, ideas, common practices or beliefs, etc.
34 Needless to say all of them may be perceived di¤erently in di¤erent
35 communities and this a¤ects the strategies and the success of translating
36 victim-related humor. Victimless humor is not usually any easier to trans-
37 late because it tends to be metalinguistic, and in-group related. Finally,
38 all of the mechanisms used to produce victimless humor may also be
39 used when there is an identifiable victim, so the translator (and any other
194 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 text user for that matter) should not be misled by the initial appearance of
2 an instance of humor.
3
(4) Whose cruel idea was it for the word ‘‘lisp’’ to have an ‘‘s’’ in it?
4
Whether we consider example (4) to be victimless or otherwise may actu-
5
ally depend on the routine, or text, it is a part of, and how it is performed
6
or presented.
7
Meaning
8
We have already stressed the importance of meaning in mainstream
9
10
translation. Translating humor is complicated by the fact that it often
relies on double meaning, ambiguity, metaphorical meanings, and some-
11
times not on meaning — in the traditional sense of the word meaning —
12
but rather on absurdity, surrealism, or abstract or symbolic meaning.
13
Again none of this is exclusive to humor (which makes it interesting to
14
translation studies in other areas such as poetry and advertizing jingles).
15
16
Optionality and familiarity (regarding theme, genre, etc.)
17
Certain instances of humor may be expected so strongly as to be virtually
18
compulsory. An example of this could be public speeches for special
19 occasions. In English-speaking countries such occasions are much more
20
numerous and the need to show a sense of humor much more pressing
21 than in other countries. On other occasions (e.g., a prosecutor seeking
22
the death penalty for the defendant) humor may be rare, or at least a
23 certain brand of it. One of the translator’s jobs will be to assess to what
24
degree the presence of humor responds to demands of the genre, or social
25
occasion, and likewise, what the consequences will be for including or ex-
26
cluding humor from the translation, regardless/because of its presence/
27
absence in the source text.
28 Taboo (embarrassment, o¤ence, etc.)
29 Taboo is an instance of a culture-bound factor in the specific nature of
30 each taboo, although the notion and presence of taboo is universal.
31 Taboo can either be an external factor or a component of humor. In the
32 first case, I am referring, for instance, to jokes about aspects of society
33 that are associated to taboo (typically, bodily functions, sex, religion, pol-
34 itics), or that deal with these subjects in a light-hearted manner. In the
35 second case, I am referring to occasions when humor itself is taboo, or
36 certain brand of it. Obviously, the two could appear simultaneously. The
37 fact that these parameters vary from one community to another forces the
38 translator to assess the risk involved in rendering certain types of humor
39 with little or no change. An example of this can be seen in the variety of
1 laws and regulations from one country to another that deal with humor
2 on television; what words can be used, which institutions and groups can
3 be targeted, and so on.
4 Metalinguistic humor
5
By metalinguistic humor we mean that its object is language, and its ob-
6 jective language awareness. Obviously, translation is nearly always about
7
changing from one language into another and that tends to pose serious
8
di‰culties for finding a way to translate these jokes. One could almost
9
say that translation itself is a word game, and rendering metalinguistic
10
humor in another language is a particularly challenging riddle. Wordplay
11
forms include pun, acrostic, rhyme, anagram, witticism, etc. It is im-
12
portant not to forget the function of wordplay in case it is more impor-
13 tant than form. Wordplay functions include: phatic, image-enhancing;
14
part of a game, entertainment, educational, mind-teaser, tongue-twister;
15 mnemonic.
16
(5) I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m a pheasant plucker’s son;
17
I’m only plucking pheasants ’till the pheasant plucker comes.
18
19
Verbal and non-verbal combined, or iconic representation of idiom
20
and metaphor.
21
A further consideration in translating humor is related to the fact that
22
humor, like most aspects of human communication, can be produced by
23
verbal or non-verbal means, or by various combinations of the two (see
24
Hammond and Hughes 1978; for a study in visual punning). People tend
25
to think of translation as pertaining exclusively to the verbal domain, but
26
even if this were true for translators they still often have to compensate
27
for culturally bound meanings that are expressed non-verbally in the
28
source text and would lead to considerable gaps in the communication if
29
not accounted for somehow. Comic books, films and television readily
30
come to mind as illustrations of this challenge. See Figure 2 for an exam-
31
ple of how this can be incorporated into a model of humor translation.
32 The forms of humor (and contrastive studies)
33 Translating is to a large degree a decision-making process, and much of
34 this involves deciding what to do with the form of expression and how it
35 relates to the author’s underlying intentions and reasons for choosing one
36 form over another. We also know that form and performance (the pack-
37 aging and delivery) are key components of the potential success of
38 humor. Sometimes a change of scenery (i.e., moving the text to a di¤er-
39 ent country) will require a change of form, but any strategy has to be
196 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 carefully thought out since it is easy to change for change sake with
2 no real gain involved. In talking about form I am referring to rhetorical
3 devices such as: irony, paradox, contradiction; parody, caricature, imita-
4 tion; hyperbole, understatement; analogy, simile, metaphor, definition;
5 joke/comic formulae (structures, codes, patterns, performance-styles).
6
8 5. Targets and victims of humor

9
10
In a slightly more detailed look at victim-targeting humor, we notice two
11
important broad categories. At least they are important for the translator,
12
who might consider that it is worth changing or adapting one or more of
13
the variables that fall under these categories. One category covers aspects
14
of the victim’s identity, the other the function and nature of the attack.
15 Victim’s identity, human or otherwise
16 The victim may be the author, or a group the author is perceived as being
17 a member of, likewise for the text user, or the victim may be a third party
18 individual or group. On the other hand the victim may not be any partic-
19 ular person but something associated to human beings: feelings, behavior,
20 relationships, death, war, health, education, ideals. Otherwise the victims
21 might be animals, aspects of the environment, technology, etc. but even
22 these often end up as instruments for criticizing people who have some-
23 thing to do with these non-human victims. One cannot be aggressive to a
24 tree, says Attardo (2002), and indeed one cannot o¤end a tree. But one
25 can show either a certain degree of madness or anti-tree obsession; or
26 one might be openly targeting trees, and between the lines be having a
27 dig at human groups or institutions, environmentalists, local authorities,
28 tree-loving children (if a comedian reads this and makes a routine out of
29 it I hope to receive some acknowledgement). In any case, depending on
30 the formulation of the joke, it may not be totally bizarre to say that the
31 victims of some jokes are trees (or cars, or the weather, or insects). Iden-
32 tity is important in translation because there are shifts of perspective very
33 much like the changes that are made when shifting from direct quoting to
34 reported speech. Di¤erences between source and translation tend to in-
35 volve some combination of di¤erent people in di¤erent places at di¤erent
36 times. For example, if the source has taken its readers as the victims we
37 need to ask how is this going to work when the readers are no longer the
38 same? British humor (e.g., BBC comedy) about the British simply cannot
39 travel abroad, even in English, as the same thing entirely; abroad, you
1 have foreigners laughing at the British, not the British poking fun at
2 their own failings. Either that or you create an analogical situation of
3 foreigners making the same kind of fun about themselves in such a way
4 that Britishness is erased from the equation. This tends to be called adap-
5 tation in translation studies.
6
Function and nature of the attack
7
The reasons why a certain victim is chosen or certain kind of victim-
8
related joke is told must be known to the translator as a basis for deciding
9
whether those reasons will still hold water for the foreign version. Estab-
10
lishing or strengthening some kind of relationship between the interlocu-
11
tors is a possible reason for many kinds of humor. We might call this
12
tenor defining (bonding, establishing authority, image-enhancing, etc.).
13
The humorist might be attempting to produce sympathy or empathy
14
towards the victim, or on the contrary, use humor as a weapon to make
15
the victim look somehow unworthy of sympathy, much less empathy. I
16
like to refer to these two objectives as humanizing v. dehumanizing.
17
When we talk about ethnic humor we might be referring to jokes that
18
pick out a certain ethnic group as their target or victim; however the
19
term racist tends to apply to jokes that deliberately set out to dehumanize
20
a given race or ethnic group, probably to provide support in constructing
21
negative images of those people and justifying racist or otherwise discrim-
22
inatory practices against them. Cartoons and jokes are rife in war and
23
pre-war situations, and in the more metaphorical battles between rival so-
24
cial groups: political parties, religious groups, sports clubs, and so on.
25
When dehumanizing jokes are told — in di¤erent circumstances — by
26
their intended victims it is often the case that irony is involved, and what
27
is actually going on is a denunciation of such jokes, in a situation where
28
tenor and function are closely intertwined. Failure to identify irony is a
29
common problem when translating, precisely because the author claims
30
something that does not portray his or her actual beliefs or opinions.
31
The likely presence of irony and other potentially confusing signals means
32
that the translator needs to strive to discriminate whether an instance of
33
humor is attacking or serving a certain item or aspect of a given commu-
34
nity or society (practice, ideology, social status quo, ‘‘common sense’’,
35
tradition, etc.).
36
37 Criticism (constructive or otherwise)

38 Humor is a powerful tool for criticizing because, among other reasons,
39 it tends to provide ample opportunity to thwart or deflect any angry
198 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 reactions to it. For example, one can easily resort to the typical excuse ‘‘I
2 was only joking’’. Here again, the translator will have to decide whether
3 humor (or the same brand of humor) is the most e¤ective way of produc-
4 ing the same kind of criticism, and before that whether humor is at the
5 service of criticism, or whether the funniness of joke itself is more impor-
6 tant than any criticism it might hold.
7
(6) War doesn’t determine who’s right, just who’s left.
8
9 A type of joke that may overlap with other categories is the one consti-
10 tuted by mind-teasers and food for thought. Although they may often be
11 without any victim or criticism, this is not something that can be taken
12 for granted. Here is a short list of examples of what I am referring to:
13 puzzles, riddles and mysteries; witticisms; puns and wordplay; rhymes,
14 songs, and other sound patterns; paradoxes and contradictions; proverbs,
15 rules of thumb, folk wisdom; nonsense, surrealism. When this type of
16 humor relies on special features of the language it is formulated in it is
17 usually quite di‰cult to translate.
18
19
20 6. Binary branching as a form of mapping

21
22 A translational model should be adaptable to a wide range of classifica-

23 tions for jokes. By this I mean that an adaptable translation model, or
24 theory, is preferable to one that depends too heavily on new trends in
25 neighboring fields of study, or worse still, that translation scholars should
26 be called upon to resolve di¤erent schools of thought in humor studies,
27 although we have already pointed out that discoveries in either field will
28 often shed much-needed light on the other, but specialists should be given
29 some credit for their e¤orts and insights. The diversity of typologies may
30 be seen as a hindrance, or may simply respond to the need to highlight
31 di¤erent kinds of relationships among jokes, depending on the occasion.
32 Because this may in fact be part of the dynamics of a translator’s behav-
33 ior it might be contradictory to try to impose a definitive classification.
34 There is probably a di¤erence between categorizing jokes for (i) the pur-
35 pose of understanding or explaining what a joke is and how it works,
36 more closely related to ‘‘pure’’ humor studies or for (ii) establishing
37 relationships between a source text (ST) and its target text (TT), more in
38 line with a translator’s daily bread and butter. Figure 1(a) is an illustra-
39 tion of an instance of mapping possibilities for translation according to a
1 binary tree structure (S-set or set of all possible solutions), where a typol-
2 ogy of jokes has yet to be inserted on a particular joke for the purpose of
3 its translation (problem P). A scholar can often a¤ord to be cautious
4 when classifying jokes and introduce a certain degree of fuzziness at
5 some points. Translators cannot a¤ord to go deep into the discussion of
6 what constitutes funniness, or provide a definition for humor, or even
7 translation for that matter, since this is work for the scholars. The binary
8 structure, then, does not aim to do away with scholarly hesitations or
9 fuzziness, but rather attempts to establish what kind of criteria might
10 guide a translator’s hand, what kind of restrictions are in the way of
11 seamless consistency. If a joke, for instance, can also be regarded as a
12 non-joke, then a translator will have to decide whether to classify the
13 item as a joke, as a non-joke, or as a type of joke that may also function
14 otherwise, or as an ambiguous type of non-joke. This is why the actual
15 labels for each branch and the number of branches is left completely
16 open, to be established anew for each case. At the end of the day, the ty-
17 pology is always the translator’s, however his or her categories might be
18 influenced (and informed) by proposals from scholars in humor studies,
19 or elsewhere. A translator’s typology may actually be established without
20 full awareness of one’s own behavior, and the translator might be unable
21 to verbalize his or her criteria. Even then, the scholar will still be inter-
22 ested in setting out to find regular patterns of behavior. Binary branching
23 is merely proposed as a research tool.
24 Category [1] covers all of the potential TT solutions that are regarded
25 as still being essentially the ‘‘same’’ ST joke (for what might theoretically
26 constitute the same joke see similarity metric in Ruch et al. 1993, in trans-
27 lation practice it involves deciding on what constitutes the same joke
28 according to the translator). A solution within [2] would be any instance
29 of the ‘‘same type’’ of joke although not essentially the same one; this is
30 where di¤erences of criteria among translators might cause di¤erent ty-
31 pologies to be applied. Solution [3] refers to any joke of any other type.
32 Solution [4] provides that the translation may not render the joke as a
33 joke, but may compensate for this by resorting to some other device
34 such as hyperbole or simile. Solution [5] is for any remaining possibilities
35 for translation, such as stating the author’s intended message in straight-
36 forward, plain, blunt terms, unfunny and non-rhetorical.
37 It should be apparent that according to this kind of map, the trans-
38 lator, as well as the translation researcher, can greatly benefit from typol-
39 ogies that might be suggested by humor studies and theories, especially
200 P. Zabalbeascoa
10
11
12 Figure 1. Set of solutions S: Binary branching tree structure for translating problem P
13
14 for solution-types [1, 2 and 3]. Maybe less apparent, but equally impor-
15 tant is the fact that theories of humor should be aware of translational
16 practices regarding their field of interest. Figure 1(b) shows how the dia-
17 gram of type-within-type options for translation problems can be made
18 ‘‘telescopic’’, stretching out to any number ‘‘n’’ of types and subtypes.
19 Furthermore, Figure 1(b) shows how the diagram may be made more
20 abstract to be used for analyzing translation problems (P) other than
21 jokes and mapping their solutions according to a binary type-within-type
22 structure. Other translation problems that can be structured according to
23 various typologies in a similar way to the one outlined for humor are
24 metaphor, insult, irony, wordplay. Figure 2 shows potential ramifications
25 for verbal and non-verbal solutions, for L2 or other languages, and for
26 simple or complex solutions. By L2 we mean the language that is stated
27 as the TT language, L1 being the ST language. Simple solutions (S ) are
28 of the type: ST-joke-into-TT-item (textual items as discussed in section 2
29 above); or omission of joke. Complex solutions (S þ X) provide that, for
30 example, the ST-joke-into-TT-item ( joke or whatever) be complemented
31 with something else (X); this could be a small introduction to provide a
32 few useful hints that the target-text audience might need, a glossary, a
33 footnote, or whatever.
34 One aspect that is not visible in this model of binary branching is
35 the strategy of compensation of place, i.e. moving a joke or an instance
36 of humor to a di¤erent place within its text in order to preserve its
37 e¤ectiveness. This does not mean that I am not aware of the strategy or
38 its importance, it is rather, that binary branching is meant to focus on the
39 sum total of all instances of a given feature (humor or whatever) for a
1 text or text corpus, as a translation problem, to see how that particular

2 problem is or can be dealt with in a given translation. Thus, if moving a
3 joke enables it to remain the same in all respects, or at least all relevant
4 respects, then it will be categorized as the same joke; whereas if moving
5 it, or not moving it, entails a significant change, then the joke will have
6 to be regarded as of a di¤erent type, or even as a non-joke, as the case
7 may be.
8
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Figure 2. Verbal, non-verbal, interlingual and simple v. complex binary splits
20
21
22 7. The relative importance of humor v. other priorities

23
24 Mapping, i.e. becoming aware of all possible translation solutions and

25 how they relate to each other, is not enough, however. Once we have a
26 map we need a direction, and this is provided in translation by ranking
27 needs and objectives according to a hierarchical set of priorities. A set of
28 priorities for translation is not something that can be predefined by the
29 theory, it is dependent on the task at hand, and the restrictions involved
30 in the task. So, when translating humor we need to know where humor
31 stands as a priority and what restrictions stand in the way of fulfilling
32 the intended goals (Zabalbeascoa 1996). The complexity of translation,
33 then, arises from the range of possible combinations of so many variables.
34 Priorities and restrictions may change considerably from translation to
35 translation and even between the translation and its source text. Below is
36 a short list of possibilities for prioritizing humor among other textual
37 items. If a certain feature is perceived as a top priority it must be achieved
38 at all costs, middle range priorities are highly desirable but share their
39 importance with other textual features. Marginal priorities are the ones
202 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 which are only attempted as long as more important priorities are

2 fully accounted for first. Priorities that are prohibited should not appear
3 in the text at all, although they may be perfectly legitimate in other
4 circumstances.
5
Top: e.g. TV comedy, a joke-story, one-liners, etc.
6
Middle: e.g. happy-ending love/adventure stories, TV quiz shows.
7
Marginal: e.g. as pedagogical device in school, Shakespeare’s tragedies.
8
Prohibited: e.g. certain moments of high drama, tragedy, horror stories,
9
laws, and any other inappropriate situations.
10
11 Attardo (2002) presents a very interesting and enlightening set of

12 parameters for analyzing verbal humor. It seems highly likely that these
13 parameters, or knowledge resources, as he calls them, could be applied
14 very meaningfully to the scheme of mapping as presented here. It does
15 not seem so clear that the hierarchical structure that he provides for the
16 knowledge resources as a metrics for sameness can be applied mechani-
17 cally by translators in all kinds of weather. First of all, an embedded
18 joke may not be the translator’s main priority in dealing with a text.
19 Secondly, a translator may decide that funniness is more important than
20 sameness of the joke, since the same joke may go down better in some
21 places than in others, and Attardo’s hierarchy involves preserving same-
22 ness, not funniness. On the whole, Attardo’s suggestions for applying the
23 General Theory of Verbal Humor to translation only seem to take into
24 consideration joke-texts, i.e. jokes that make up the whole text, but their
25 validity does not seem so apparent for translating jokes or other forms of
26 humor that are items of a larger text. Of course, a map like the ones in
27 figure 1a and figure 3, could easily be read as a hierarchy of equivalence,
28 i.e. translators of jokes should first aim for [1], only if nothing can be
29 found for [1], should they proceed to [2], then [3], and so on. But this is
30 not the case because the binary branching map is meant as a descriptive
31 tool for scholars, not a prescriptive guideline for translators, although
32 they could use it to help them establish their own list of priorities. Fur-
33 thermore, a certain passage that is analyzed as a joke, and is put under
34 the scrutiny of a binary branching map, or is critically measured accord-
35 ing to the General Theory of Verbal Humor similarity metrics hierarchy,
36 might also be analyzed as something else (an insult, a metaphor, a
37 friendly gesture, a speech opener), and the translator may have preferred
38 to deal with the item according to a type-within-type scheme for, say,
39 speech-openers. This may mean that translators are wrongfully blamed
1 by scholars and critics for not achieving sameness in their versions for as-
2 pects that that they actually had no intention of preserving, since they
3 were working according to a di¤erent set of criteria. Critics and scholars
4 should not, therefore, take for granted that translators approach a trans-
5 lation task, exactly as they would want them to, assuming that when the
6 translation deviates from that approach it is not because the translator
7 had something else in mind but that he or she simply was not up to
8 the job, or that the text provides more evidence that translation is im-
9 possible. If we cannot always see the logic or the merit of a translation,
10 it may be due to some failing of our own, it may be a matter of looking
11 harder.
12 Let us take the Knowledge Resources, Script Opposition (SO), Logical
13 Mechanism (LM), Situation (SI), Target (TA), Narrative Strategy (NS),
14 Language (LA), as proposed in the general Theory of Verbal Humor and
15 use them as parameters for joke typologies to analyze the translation of
16 certain jokes. We could arrange them as in figure 3, following their hier-
17 archical order. This would provide us with a potential ‘‘prescriptive’’ tool
18 or illustration of degrees of similarity between the ST joke and its possible
19 renderings.
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Figure 3. Adapting the hierarchical organization of the GTVH Knowledge Resources to
39 binary branch translational analysis
204 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 Attardo (2002) spells it out as ‘‘if possible, respect all six Knowledge
2 Resources in your translation, but if necessary, let your translation di¤er
3 at the lowest level [starting with LA, at the bottom, and ending with SO,
4 at the top] necessary for your pragmatic purposes’’. We have just seen
5 how binary branching can represent degrees of equivalence. On some oc-
6 casions we might wish to prescribe or simply advise the greatest possible
7 degree of equivalence, or similarity, as Attardo does here, but translation
8 scholars on the most part shy away both from prescriptive approaches to
9 translation, and even — many of them — from the notion of equivalence,
10 at least as a theoretical concept.
11
(7) Here comes Joe with that dragon/cow/fox/rat/dog/worm close
12
behind him.
13
14
Example (7) could be analyzed as an instance of humor, regardless of
15
its quality or taste. The point is that ‘‘dragon/. . .’’ can be analyzed as an
16
attempt at being funny, and we could apply a certain binary branching
17
tree analysis to all the various potential translations as part of a study of
18
the translation of humor within a larger text that example (7) might have
19 been extracted from. However, ‘‘dragon/. . .’’ might also be analyzed as
20
an insult, or a metaphor of Joe’s boss. So, we could have at least three
21 di¤erent trees diagrams like the one in Figure 1(b), one for P ¼ item of
22
humor, one for P ¼ insult, and one for P ¼ metaphor. The potential of
23 dragon/. . . for humor, insult, or metaphor, may vary considerably from
24
one community to another, depending on traditions and beliefs associated
25
to (Chinese) dragons, (sacred) cows, and so on. The demand on re-
26
searcher and critic alike, regardless of whether they are in translation
27
or in humor studies, is to try and establish the translator’s rationale for
28 dealing with each item (his or her system of priorities) and the di‰culties
29
involved (his or her restrictions) against the backdrop of the text as a
30 whole, and ultimately the situation in which it will be received.
31
32
8. The translator among other restrictive forces
33
34
There are many obstacles to overcome during the translating process,
35
restrictions of all sorts. Most notably, contrastive di¤erences in any of
36
the following areas:
37
38 background knowledge of the two audiences;

39 moral and cultural values (taboo), habits and traditions;
1 traditional joke-themes (politics, professions, relationships) and types

2 (T-shirts, gra‰ti, comic strips, music-hall, slapstick).
3
Some traditional theories of translation seem to forget the presence of the
4 translator, unless it is to issue a series of do’s and don’t’s, golden rules,
5
and rules of thumb. These theories draw diagrams with arrows going
6 from language A to language B via all sorts of routes but fundamentally
7
bypassing the translator, the implication being that translations (should)
8
come out the way they do regardless of who the translator is. The reasons
9
for this attitude range from ‘‘any old fool can translate’’ to ‘‘the transla-
10
tor must be fluent in two languages (and several other such conditions
11
which are easy to prescribe but di‰cult to find in the real world)’’.
12
Whether such scholars are too demanding or simply patronizing, they
13 often seem to be saying that basically what you need is their rulebook or
14
recipe book. In the real world, each translator has di¤erent strengths and
15 weaknesses that play a significant role in the end result and how each
16
problem is approached, including humor. The perfect translator does not
17 exist any more than the perfect translation does. The translator is a vari-
18
able in the process, and understanding how translation works involves
19
understanding translators’ profiles and professional contexts. Of course,
20
even translators are the butt of many a joke, translation itself may be a
21
joke theme, or a sort of genre (i.e., ‘‘lost in translation’’ joke forms).
22
What is required, if we acknowledge that no translator, human or
23
otherwise, is perfect or foolproof, is to find ways of reducing the human-
24 limitation factor. Here is a short list of examples of the kind of areas
25
where work can be done to improve translator performance.
26
Hiring procedures, specialization and training.
27
More social, professional and academic recognition of the value and
28
di‰culties of translating.
29
Team work.
30
Technology and materials.
31
Awareness of goals and priorities
32
33 All of these general points are applicable to the translation of humor.

34 Indeed, humor is an area that translators need a certain amount of guid-
35 ance and practice. Translators who are not particularly brilliant at trans-
36 lating philosophical essays may be very good at translating humor, and
37 vice versa, of course. So, if employers and the public at large really want
38 translations that are good in conveying the humor of a foreign text, then
39 they might be well advised to spend some time and e¤ort in finding the
206 P. Zabalbeascoa
1 right person for the each job, and be willing to pay a decent fee for the
2 commission. Good translations should be praised and positively re-
3 viewed. To this end both translation and humor scholars should be inter-
4 ested in developing models for critical analysis of translated humor. It
5 may not be enough to apply general models of translation or humor anal-
6 ysis, without stopping to think about the implications of the overlapping
7 area between the two.
8
10 9. Conclusions
11
12 From this study three main conclusions can be drawn. A knowledge of

13 how humor works is an important asset for any translator and so it is
14 also necessary for translation scholars. Sameness according to similarity
15 metrics as the one proposed by the GTVH (Attardo 2002) does not entail
16 that funniness will be preserved to the same degree. Neither sameness nor
17 funniness are necessarily goals of the same importance for the translator
18 in all instances of source-text humor production. A translator’s goals de-
19 pend on a host of variables of many di¤erent sorts. Analyzing or judging
20 the translation of humor should involve understanding to the best of
21 one’s ability what the translator’s motivations, criteria and circumstances
22 were in dealing with each item of the text.
23
24 Universitat Pompeu Fabra

25
26
Note
27
28
Correspondence address: patrick.zabalbeascoa@upf.edu
29
1. For more on the theory of translation see Kussmaul (1998); Nord (1997, 2001); Reiss
30 and Vermeer (1984); Toury (1995); and Zabalbeascoa (1997).
31
32
33 References
34
35 Attardo, Salvatore
36 2002 Translation and humor. The Translator 8 (2). Special issue: Translating
humor, Vandaele, Jeroen (ed.).
37
Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin
38
1991 Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model.
39 Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4), 293–347.
1 Delabastita, Dirk
1994 Focus on the pun. Target 6 (2).
2
Hammond, Paul, and Patrick Hughes
3 1978 Upon the Pun. Dual Meaning in Words and Pictures. London: W. H. Allen.
4 Kussmaul, Paul
5
1998 Types of creative translating. In Chesterman, Andrew, Natividad Gallardo,
and Yves Gambier (eds.), Translation in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
6
John Benjamins.
7 Nash, Walter
8 1985 The Language of Humor (English Language Series 16). London/New York:
Longman.
9
Nida, Eugene
10 1964 Towards a Science of Translating. Leyden: E. J. Brill.
11 Nord, Christiane
1997 Translating as a Purposeful Activity. Functionalist Approaches Explained.
12
Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
13 2001 Loyalty revisited. Bible translation as a case in point. The Translator 7 (2),
14 185–202. Special issue: The Return to ethics, Pym, Anthony (ed.).
15
Raskin, Victor
1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel.
16
Reiss, Katharina, and Hans J. Vermeer
17 1984 Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
18 Ruch, Willibald, Salvatore Attardo, and Victor Raskin
1993 Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor.
19
Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (2), 123–136.
20 Toury, Gideon
21 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Vandaele, Jeroen (ed.)
22
2002 The Translator 8 (2). Special issue: Translating humor.
23 Zabalbeascoa, Patrick
24 1996 Translating jokes for dubbed television situation comedies. The Translator 2
25
(2). Special issue: Wordplay and translation, Delabastita, Dirk (ed.).
1997 Dubbing and the nonverbal dimension of translation. In Poyatos, Fernando
26
(ed.), Nonverbal Communication and Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
27 John Benjamins.
28
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Humor and Translation An Interdiscipline

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1 Humor and translation — an interdiscipline

28 Keywords: Translation; interdisciplinary; joke-type; variable; mapping,

Humor 18–2 (2005), 185–207 0933–1719/05/0018–0185

25 2. The ABC of translatability variables

37 a. the language(s)/culture(s) one is translating from (including all as-

1 c.the purpose(s) and justiﬁcation(s) for the existence of the translated

13 3. Traditional approaches to translation

1 an awareness of the nature of humor and its relative importance in di¤er-

8 4. Joke-types for translation

10 Humor scholars have produced many classiﬁcations for types of humor

1 what distinguishes a translation from a photocopy, for example. It is in

1 about certain foreign languages, sometimes to a great degree of proﬁ-

1 (3) In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: ‘‘Ladies are requested not to have

8 5. Targets and victims of humor

37 Criticism (constructive or otherwise)

20 6. Binary branching as a form of mapping

22 A translational model should be adaptable to a wide range of classiﬁca-

1 text or text corpus, as a translation problem, to see how that particular

22 7. The relative importance of humor v. other priorities

24 Mapping, i.e. becoming aware of all possible translation solutions and

1 which are only attempted as long as more important priorities are

11 Attardo (2002) presents a very interesting and enlightening set of

38 background knowledge of the two audiences;

1 traditional joke-themes (politics, professions, relationships) and types

33 All of these general points are applicable to the translation of humor.

12 From this study three main conclusions can be drawn. A knowledge of

24 Universitat Pompeu Fabra

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