Keywords
Audiovisual text
Verbal means of creating humor
Non-verbal means of creating humor
Situational humor
Dynamic equivalence
Submitted : 2023-10-30
Accepted : 2023-11-14
Published : 2023-11-29
Abstract
The article presents a study on the problems of translating humor by taking the American comedy Sixteen Candles by John Hughes as an example. The original and its three translations (two voice-over translations and subtitles) in Russian were compared and analyzed in detail in terms of humor in verbal and non-verbal interpretation. In some cases, we offered our own translations. Conveying humor is still one of the most difficult tasks in audiovisual translation; it is often related to specific cultural peculiarities reflected in the speech of the source language speakers and the speakers of the target language. The relevance of the paper lies in the need for further research on the means of creating humor and the problems of its preservation in translation. The goal of the paper was to study the verbal and nonverbal means of creating humor in a particular comedy film, as well as to analyze and assess the effectiveness of their transfer in Russian translations. The following methods of data analysis were employed: comparative-contrastive analysis, linguistic analysis, lexicographic analysis, situational analysis, and functional-stylistic analysis. The study revealed some losses in translation usually caused by unjustified lexical replacements (mainly generalization), a change in the word’s register (for instance, using a neutral word for a slang word), and resorting to outdated vocabulary. Besides that, translators often ignore nonverbal, situational means of creating humor and their influence on the verbal description of the situation.
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