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48
Abstract
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.
Key-words: Romanian and British English; humour; translation of jokes; cul-
tural components; functionalist approach; Skopos; linguistic incompatibility;
functional constancy
Introduction
Existence, identity, consciousness, and humour are all axiomatic concepts
of the human condition. Yet humour seems to be one of the least understood,
though thoroughly studied, phenomena because its hermetic structure refuses
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Corpus
This study focuses on verbal humour, specifically jokes, because they are
self-contained linguistic units that usually follow normal grammatical pa�ern.
My corpus consists of 150 English and 150 Romanian jokes selected from
my collection of more than 1,000 wri�en jokes.1 The jokes come from printed
sources (collections, newspapers, magazines, e-mails, and web sites), as well as
dialogues or narration that I have heard and subsequently wri�en down. As far
as jokes are concerned, it is impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between
these two sources.
The jokes used in the present study were selected according to several criteria:
1. the jokes must have the discourse organisation of short narratives or ques-
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Purpose of study
In this contrastive study between English and Romanian, I analyse the con-
nection between linguistic choices and the immediate situational and cultural
contexts in jokes with specific reference to translation. Approaching the issue
from a functionalist perspective, I regard translation as a communicative act.
As products of social interaction, jokes therefore foreground the cultural and
social contexts in which they are negotiated. Unlike Anne Leibold (1989: 109),
who believes that joke translation primarily poses linguistic challenges, I posit
that jokes belong to the same type of texts that people negotiate in order to make
meaning.
Agreeing with, for example, Susan Bassne� (1980: 80), Salvatore A�ardo (2002:
173-194), and Anne–Marie Laurian (1989: 5), it is my basic assumption – or hypothesis
– that jokes can be translated. Yet, for a translation product to be adequate, a translator
must bear in mind that:
1) joke translation is a complex phenomenon that has to take into account the
transfer of the situational, cultural, and linguistic content of the source-
language joke to the target-culture and, at the same time, must not lose
sight of the Skopos of the translation;
2) a successful transfer of all the situational, cultural, and linguistic features
to the target joke does not necessarily mean that the translation is success-
ful.
50 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 1
(1) One day, an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together.
They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy
beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints, and were stuck in the thick head.
The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out
of his beer, and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman,
too, picked the fly out of his drink, held it out over the beer, and started yelling,
“SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT YOU BAS**RD!!!!”
(2) A Scots boy came home from school and told his mother he had been given a part
in the school play. “Wonderful,” says the mother, “What part is it?” The boy says,
“I play the part of the Sco�ish husband!” The mother scowls and says: “Go back
and tell your teacher you want a speaking part.”
(3) “Care este diferenţa dintre Ceauşescu şi Iliescu? Unul era cizmar şi altul şiret.”
[What’s the difference between Ceausescu and Iliescu? One was a cobbler and the
other one is cunning.]
It is obvious that as far as these examples ((1), (2) and (3)) are concerned, we cannot
speak of any functional constancy. The function in the target language and culture is
different from that in the source language and culture.
We find functional constancy in the following joke (4). A Romanian transla-
Popa: Jokes and Translation 51
tion would preserve the general function of amusing, as well as its teasing char-
acter. Its criticism works perfectly in both English and Romanian.
(4) If Presidents don’t do it to their wives, they do it to the country. (Mel Brooks)
(5) Prince Charles was out early the other day walking the dog. When a passer-by said,
“Morning,” Charles said, “No, just walking the dog.”
that it is public knowledge that Charles did not really love Prince Diana, etc.
Let us have a look at a Romanian joke (6):
In this case (6), the information that must be introduced into English culture
in a translation relates to the name ‘Iliescu’. Ion Iliescu was formerly the presi-
dent of Romania. His English was poor and he did not speak Chinese. ‘Chinese’
makes its appearance because of the Romanian idiom that when somebody
“speaks Chinese”, the listener does not understand it, roughly corresponding
to the English idiom “It is Greek to me.” The joke goes further in saying that
President Iliescu cannot even speak but only swear in Chinese.
What happens if people project their own cultural frame of reference on a for-
eign culture?2 Gudrun Wi�e terms this a culture shock. In her view, this obliges
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(7) “În Otopeni se afla o pancartă: ULTIMUL CARE PLEACĂ, SĂ STINGĂ LUMI-
NA!”
[At the Otopeni International Airport, in Bucharest, there is this huge poster that
says: “THE LAST ONE TO LEAVE, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!”]
Translations of jokes like (7) and (8) may lead to Wi�e’s “culture shocks”
and run counter to the jokes’ function as humour, because they would then be
presented outside their situational and cultural contexts.4 I posit that normally
these contexts are within the texts, as they comprise the determinative factors
and circumstances that make it possible for the audience to recognise them as
jokes by means of a process of deduction. This process of deduction cannot be
applied to situational and cultural items.5 Translations of such jokes become
experientially ambiguous, as we cannot be sure to what dimensions of reality
the translations refer.
In order to determine the contextual coordinates, I use Halliday and Martin’s
Popa: Jokes and Translation 53
The two jokes are meant to make listeners aware of factors in the cultural
background that do not usually surface or are not discussed openly. The genre
in (7) and (8) is represented in the act of telling political jokes. Since genres are
different ways of using language, it follows that the speakers make different lex-
ico-grammatical choices according to the specific purpose they want to a�ain.
This implies that different genres will open up to different lexico-grammatical
choices – different words and grammatical structures.6
However, genres are not the only contextual elements that determine lexico-
grammatical choices. Register (mode, tenor, and field) also has a significant im-
pact on the type of language used. Because the translation Skopos is achieved
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This translation into Romanian uses the co-ordinating ‘but’, because the two
clauses, which are contrasting in meaning, do not exclude each other. In other
words, the use of nucă in the singular (at the lexical level) and the use of the
Popa: Jokes and Translation 55
coordinating conjunction dar (but) (at the syntactical level) in Romanian are
meant to make up for the non-existence of a lexical and semantic equivalent of
the polysemous English word nut.
Another possibility is to render only the communicative meaning and
disregard the semantic and syntactical content of the source joke altogether.
In that case, we would have to find something that works naturally both at the
language level (embedded in the lexical system) and at the cultural level (being
cultural specific and playing on a well-known idiom). A possible solution might
then be:
(9b) Care e asemănarea dintre o familie şi o turmă de oi: majoritatea sunt albe dar mai
scapă şi câte una neagră.
[Why is a family like a flock of sheep? It’s mostly white sprinkled with a few black
ones].
It should be mentioned that, like in English, to be the black sheep of the family is
a set phrase in Romanian. However, this second solution is open to criticism: it
does not render the originality, spontaneity, and sparkle of the source-language
text.
So, although the Skopos of a translation may be a�ained in joke translation,
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many commonly known solutions cannot convey the source text’s ability to
cause laughter, as was just illustrated in the “flock of sheep” translation (9b), in
which the idea of “black sheep” in a family is not funny because the comparison
has been overused.
This leads on to another important point: good translators of humour must
also be aware of the genre potential of a particular culture. This comprises all
linguistically achieved activity types recognised as meaningful and appropriate
in a given culture.7 Genre potential could be described as the possible
configurations of register variables that are allowed in specific cultures at a
given time. Thus the register configuration:
Conclusion
As hypothesised, the analysis of humour translation shows that jokes can
be translated, provided it is accepted that o�en translations cannot be as
effective as the source texts. The above analysis has provided some indications
of the factors that should be taken into account in the translation of jokes. The
following can be cautiously posited: it is important to determine the function of
the joke in the target socio-cultural framework. As shown, a translated joke will
have to work at two main levels. We must consider the pragmatic function of a
joke, namely to amuse and cause laughter. Next, there is a higher, interpersonal
56 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 1
level that plays on the functions of humour (e.g., to build consensus, to dissolve
awkward situations, and discourse management). These la�er functions are
o�en situation and culture dependent and may differ from one joke to another
as well as from one joke category to another. As the two levels usually co-exist,
translators must strive to convey both of them in translation.
The concept of functional constancy is also relevant to joke translation.
Basically, it implies that the original function of a joke is transferred to target
cultures. Functional constancy will normally mean that the Skopos of the
translation is a�ained, unless there is linguistic incompatibility between the
source and the target language.
In practical translation, there are obstacles to the a�ainment of the Skopos of a
joke translation: these concern Nord’s distinction between translation problems
and translation difficulties, which I discussed above. I posit that when jokes
seem impossible to translate, it is not primarily because of the ‘objective’
translation problems but because of ‘subjective’ translation difficulties that
relate to the translator’s competence. As pointed out by Anne Marie Laurian
(1989: 6), it is the effort, imagination, and creativity required for the translation
of humour (including jokes) that make translators feel they are confronted with
an untranslatable text.
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My study has identified some factors that appear to be relevant for the
practice of translation. When they generate culture-specific text-types needed
for introducing new form, content, and elements of meaning, translators enrich
target cultures. Humour and jokes are based on ‘secret’ agreements or shared
information between the speaker and the audience in the source culture. If this
information is not introduced (or does not already exist) in the target-language
and socio-cultural world, there can be no ‘secret’ agreements between the
parties. This eventually annuls a joke’s ability to amuse and cause laughter.
If translators fail to introduce the new elements and simply project the source
text’s cultural frame of reference to the target environment, their translations
will have a negative impact on the target audience, and cause a “culture shock”
in Wi�e’s sense. This also annuls a joke as humorous in the target culture.
I hope that this analysis has succeeded in showing that joke translation is
neither exclusively humour-type dependent, as Debra S. Raphaelson-West
(1989: 130) argues, nor simply linguistically bound. By approaching the issue
from a functionalist perspective, I submit that all jokes are unique in the way
they encompass situational, cultural, and linguistic features.
It should also be noted that my aim was to draw a�ention to the fact that
joke translation is a complex phenomenon that requires transfer of the features
discussed to a target text in a way that is in keeping with the translation Skopos
and the overall purpose of achieving a successful translation. There are no
ready-made solutions and there is no guarantee that a successful transfer of all
the features of a joke in the target language also implies that this is a successful
translation. A�er all, there is always going to be a source-language joke and its
translation in the target language. Although the two jokes co-exist in terms of
time, they do so in different spatial frames of reference.
Notes
1. This collection includes more than 1,000 wri�en English and Romanian short narrative
jokes and question-and-answer jokes. It was used as data for my MA thesis (Popa 2003).
Popa: Jokes and Translation 57
All translations in this article have been done by the author.
2. In my experience, ‘projection’ seems to be found in most cases of joke translation.
3. This category of jokes and the cultural gap in translation are discussed in Popa (2002:
13).
4. In the original textual contexts (as part of a complete linguistic event), the two jokes
clearly did have a Skopos. By ‘li�ing’ the translations out of these contexts, these Skopoi
are obscured, and most of the jokes’ humour becomes unavailable.
5. Deduction refers to our intuitive ability to deduce context from text. It is just as
important as our equally, highly developed ability to predict language from context.
Both abilities provide evidence of the language-context relationship.
6. Genre is here used in the meaning of ‘class of texts marked by a particular style, form,
or subject.’
7. Genre is here used as in a Hallidayan framework, namely that of all the linguistically-
achieved activity types recognised as meaningful and appropriate in a given culture.
Works cited
A�ardo, Salvatore. 2002. Translation and Humour. The Translator 8. 173-194.
Bassne�-McGuire, Susan. 1980. Translation Studies. London: Methuen.
Halliday, M.A.K. & J. R. Martin. 1993. Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. Pi�s-
burgh: University of Pi�sburgh Press.
Laurian, Anne-Marie. 1989. Humour et traduction au contact des cultures. META XXX-
IV. 5-14.
Leibold, Anne. 1989. The Translation of Humour; Who Says It Can’t Be Done. META
XXXIV. 109-111.
Nord, Christiane. 1991. Text Analysis in Translation. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi.
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