THE TRANSLATION OF HUMOR: PRACTICAL APPROACHES AND PERSISTENT OBSTACLES
Keywords:
humor translation, audiovisual translation, wordplay, cultural references, translation strategies, untranslatabilityAbstract
Humor is widely recognized as one of the most challenging elements to translate across languages and cultures. Rooted in linguistic play, cultural references, and shared social knowledge, humorous texts often resist direct transfer. This article examines the practical strategies available to translators of humor and identifies persistent obstacles that remain even for experienced professionals. Drawing on Attardo’s (1994) General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), Zabalbeascoa’s (2005) typology of translatable jokes, and comparative analysis of translated examples from audiovisual and literary sources, this study argues that successful humor translation requires a functional rather than formal equivalence approach. However, certain obstacles—particularly phonological puns, culture-specific allusions, and multimodal constraints in subtitling—remain resistant to satisfactory solution. The article concludes with practical recommendations for translators and directions for future research.
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