Word play in translation

Библиографическое описание:

Никольская, Ю. В. Some words about challenges in translation (through the example of wordplay in movies) / Ю. В. Никольская, М. В. Куимова. — Текст : непосредственный // Молодой ученый. — 2015. — № 3 (83). — С. 827-829. — URL: https://moluch.ru/archive/83/15518/ (дата обращения: 15.04.2023).

All translation is a compromise – the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic

Teo Savory

There is no doubt that translation is a serious intellectual activity. It requires a lot of skills, experience and cultural awareness of both source and target languages. Translation is not just a simple substitution of words from one language to another. That is why the main task of a translator is to use a variety of literary devices to render the author’s thought as carefully as possible.

Translation has been discussed by a number of translation theorists. They claim that the central problem of translation is to find “equivalence” instead of rendering word for word. Any language is culture-oriented and differs with respect to sentence arrangements or syntax [3, 8, 9, 11, 12].

W. Wilss defines translation as “a text-oriented event. Translation is a procedure which leads from a written source language text to an optimally equivalent target language text and requires syntactic, semantic and stylistic and text — pragmatic comprehension by the translator of the original text” [13].

A lot of scholars state that a translator is forced to overcome phonological, lexical, grammatical, morphological, syntactic and semantic features [2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10].

The major problems in translating are divided into four groups:

—         pragmatic;

—         cultural;

—         linguistic;

—         text-specific [1].

Moreover, there are other challenges:

—         archaisms;

—         neologisms;

—         abbreviation;

—         culture-specific items;

—         collocations, fixed expressions;

—         idioms;

—         metaphors;

—         similes;

—         proverbs;

—         wordplay, etc.

Wordplay is the general name indicating the various textual phenomena in which certain features inherent in the structure of the language; these features are exploited in such a way as to establish a communicatively significant, (near)-simultaneous confrontation of at least two linguistic structures with more or less dissimilar meanings (signifieds) and more or less similar forms (signifiers) [6].

Wordplay has the “signature” of a language. It is mostly used to amuse and reinforce the meaning. Wordplay deliberately exploits an ambiguity and multiple meanings of words. Wordplay is achieved by puns, phonetic mix-ups, oddly formed sentences, clever rhetorical expressions / sentences, clever repartee, obscure words and meanings, etc.

Wordplay is almost always a funny, witty utterance. Here there are some examples from movies:

“She Done Him Wrong”:

Lou: When women go wrong, men go right after them.”

“Enough”:

Slim: You can call me Mum or you can call me Erin, but you cannot call me Slim.

Gracie: I never call you Slim.

Slim: I know, but just in case somebody asks you someday…

Gracie: I don’t think you are that slim.

Slim: Thanks a lot.

“The Devil Wears Prada”:

Miranda Priestly: You don’t read Runway, do you?

Andy: No

Miranda Priestly: And before today, you had never heard of me, had you?

Andy: No

Miranda Priestly: And you have no style or sense of fashion.

Andy: That depends on …

Miranda Priestly: That wasn’t a question.

“The World is Not Enough”:

Bond: “I was wrong about you.”

Christmas Jones: “Yeah, how so?”

Bond: “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.”

Elektra King: I could have given you the world.

James Bond: The world is not enough.

Elektra King: Foolish sentiment.

James Bond: Family motto.

“The Mirror Has Two Faces”:

Henry Fine: I don’t date these girls because they’re well-read. I gave one of them a copy of “Farewell to Arms”. She thought it was a diet book.

“Forrest Gump”:

Jenny Curran: His name’s Forrest.

Forrest Gump: Like me.

Jenny Curran: I named him after his daddy.

Forrest Gump: He got a daddy named Forrest, too?

Jenny Curran: You’re his daddy, Forrest.

[Forrest Gump referring to Apple Computer]

Forrest Gump: Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don’t have to worry about money no more. And I said, that’s good! One less thing.

“Troy”:

Patroclus: Prince Hector, is he as good a warrior as they say?

Odysseus: The best of all the Trojans. Some would say...

[sidelong glance at Achilles]

Odysseus:... he’s better than all the Greeks.

[Achilles snorts]

Odysseus: Even if your cousin doesn’t come, I hope you’ll join us, Patroclus. We could use a strong arm like yours.

Achilles: Play your tricks on me. But not on my cousin.

Odysseus: You have your swords. I have my tricks. We play with the toys the gods give us.

“Die Another Day”:

Reporter: We’ve been hearing rumors about the Icarus space program. What’s the big secret?

Graves: It’s not a secret, it’s a surprise.

“Octopussy”:

 [after Bond has escaped]

Kamal Khan: Mr. Bond is indeed of a very rare breed… soon to be made extinct.

“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”:

Elizabeth: Whose side is Jack on?

Will Turner: At the moment?

“Richard III”:

Panthino: Launce, away, away, aboard! thy master is shipped and thou art to post after with oars. What’s the matter? Why weepest thou, man? Away, ass! You’ll lose the tide, if you tarry any longer.

Launce: It is no matter if the tied were lost; for it is the unkindest tied that ever any man tied.

“Hamlet”:

Claudius: “… But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son…

Hamlet: [aside] “A little more than kin, and less than kind…

Claudius: How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Hamlet: Not so, my lord; I am too much I’ the sun.

In summary, wordplay is a rhetorical device. It often implies either different meanings of a word or bringing words together to produce a witticism. A good translator should be fully aware of words which may be highly emotive in one language and may not be so in another language. Thus the translator should consider the meaning and try his best to convey the original idea into another language using various means and translation methods.

References:

1. Al-Nakhalah A. Difficulties and problems facing English students at QOU in the translation process from English to Arabic and their solutions. http://www.qou.edu/english/conferences/firstNationalConference/pdfFiles/ahmadMaher.pdf (accessed January 30, 2015).
2. Baker M., Venuti L. The translation studies reader. Routledge, 2000. 544 p.
3. Bell R. T. Translation and translating: theory and practice (Applied Linguistics and Language Study). Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1991. 298 p.
4. Biguenet J., Schulte R. The craft of translation. University of Chicago Press, 1989, 170 p.
5. Cronin M. Translation and Globalization. Routledge, 2003. 208 p.
6. Delabastita D. Introduction. In wordplay and translation. Special issue of the translator. Studies in intercultural communication, 1996. 2.2., pp. 127–139.
7. Eco U., McEwen A. Experiences in translation. University of Toronto Press, 2001. 112 p.
8. Grossman E. Why translation matters. Yale University Press. 2010. 160 p.
9. Gutt E. Translation and relevance: cognition and text. Blackwell Publishers, 2000. 271 p.
10. Munday J. Introducing translation studies: Theories and Applications. Routledge, 2001. 240 p.
11. Robinson D. Becoming a translator: an introduction to the theory and practice of translation. Routledge, 2003. 320 p.
12. Steiner G. After Babel: Aspects of language and translation. Oxford University Press, 1998. 560 p.
13. Wilss W. The science of translation. Problems and methods, Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen. 1982. 292 p.

Humour is a relative, idiosyncratic and generally complex phenomenon, which also varies according to culture and time. It is therefore not surprising that scholars in various fields of research (e.g. Palmer, Attardo, Oring amongst others) struggle to provide a unified definition of humour. However, they attempt to unveil the mechanisms that this phenomenon involves and the function(s) it has within the text in which it occurs. In Translation Studies, some scholars (e.g. Delabastita, Zabalbeascoa, Chiaro to name just a few) have produced a fair amount of literature on the audiovisual translation (henceforth AVT) of humour, concentrating in particular on those language and culture-specific features (punning, wordplay, allusive wordplay, etc.) that pose significant problems in translation. In doing so, they have taken into account those factors that influence the translator’s decision making process such as time pressure and expertise. On the grounds of these considerations, this study aims at contributing to this on-going research in the AVT of humour, and dubbing in particular. To this end, I have carried out an in-depth analysis of the original North-American and the Italian dubbed version of the first series of the TV comedy programme Friends (aired for the first time in U.S.A. in 1994, in Italy in 1997). My investigation is obviously based on the scholarly research on the AVT of humour but it also draws insights from various fields (e.g. Film Studies, Corpus Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and Stylistics). More importantly, I have supported my textual and contrastive analysis of the source text (ST) and target text (TT) by means of the Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH, Raskin 1985) and in particular the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH, Attardo and Raskin 1991, Attardo 1994, 2001). By means of this eclectic approach, I have attempted to explain how the scriptwriters of Friends exploited wordplay, culture-specific allusions and creative metaphors for humorous purposes. Moreover, I have found that they use these devices in order to convey idiosyncratic clues about the six main characters and to enhance the themes of the series (i.e. friendship, interpersonal relationships, work, and sex). My contrastive analysis of the ST and the TT indicates that the Italian translators were sensitive to the role these mechanisms play in the success of the series. Hence, they deployed several translation strategies to retain them, which often resulted in a high level of manipulation of the ST. More importantly, my research demonstrates that such a manipulation produced some interesting differences between the two datasets in terms of humour potential. Finally, it confirms that dubbing can greatly influence the translators’ decision making process. As a matter of fact, this translation mode allows translators to adopt creative solutions that are not applicable in subtitling.

Popular and multimodal forms of cultural products are becoming increasingly visible within translation studies research. Interest in translation and music, however, has so far been relatively limited, mainly because translation of musical material has been considered somewhat outside the limits of translation studies, as traditionally conceived. Difficulties associated with issues such as the ‘musicality’ of lyrics, the fuzzy boundaries between translation, adaptation and rewriting, and the pervasiveness of covert or unacknowledged translations of musical elements in a variety of settings have generally limited the research in this area to overt and canonized translations such as those done for the opera.
Yet the intersection of translation and music can be a fascinating field to explore, and one which can enrich our understanding of what translation is and how it relates to other forms of expression. This special issue is an attempt to open up the field of translation and music to a wider audience within translation studies, and to an extent, within musicology and cultural studies.
The volume includes contributions from a wide range of musical genres and languages: from those that investigate translation and code-switching in North African rap and rai, and the intertextual and intersemiotic translations revolving around Mahler’s lieder in Chinese, to the appropriation and after-life of Kurdish folk songs in Turkish, and the emergence of rock’n roll in Russian. Other papers examine the reception of Anglo-American stage musicals and musical films in Italy and Spain, the concept of ‘singability’ with examples from Scandinavian languages, and the French dubbing of musical episodes of TV series. The volume also offers an annotated bibliography on opera translation and a general bibliography on translation and music.

Dirk Delabastita’s definition of wordplay is dense but comprehensive:

References

Antonopoulou, Eleni

2002 “A cognitive approach to literary humour devices: translating Raymond Chandler.” In Translating humour, Jeroen Vandaele (ed.), 195–220. Special issue of The Translator 8 (2).  TSB

Antonopoulou, Eleni & Nikiforidou, Kiki

2009 “Deconstructing Verbal Humour with Construction Grammar.” In Cognitive Poetics, G. Brône & J. Vandaele (eds), 289–314. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Attardo, Salvatore

1994 Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  BoP

Delabastita, Dirk

1996 “Introduction.” In Wordplay and Translation: Essays on Punning and Translation, Dirk Delabastita (ed.), 1–22. Special issue of The Translator 2 (2).  TSB

Delabastita, Dirk

2004 “Wordplay as a translation problem: a linguistic perspective.” In Übersetzung, translation, traduction, Harald Kittel, Armin Paul Frank, Norbert Greiner, Theo Hermans, Werner Koller, José Lambert, Fritz Paul (eds.), 600–606. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  TSB

Gottlieb, Henrik

1997 “You got the picture? On the polysemiotics of subtitling wordplay.” In Traductio: essays on punning and translation, Dirk Delabastita (ed.), 207–232. Manchester / Namur: St. Jerome and Presses Universitaires de Namur.  TSB

Henry, Jacqueline

2003 La traduction des jeux de mots. Paris : Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.  TSB

Klitgård, Ida

2005 “Taking the pun by the horns: the translation of wordplay in James Joyce’s Ulysses.” Target 17 (1): 71–92.  BoP

Marco, Josep

2010 “The translation of wordplay in literary texts. Typology, techniques and factors in a corpus of English-Catalan source text and target text segments.” Target 22 (2): 264–297.  BoP

Vandaele, Jeroen

2001 “Si sérieux s’abstenir: le discours sur l’humour traduit.” Target 13 (1): 29–44.  TSB

Vandaele, Jeroen

2010 ”Spaanse humor vertalen.” Idioma. Revue de linguistique et de traductologie 20: 189–200.

Further reading

Delabastita, Dirk

1993 There’s a Double Tongue: An Investigation into the Translation of Shakespeare’s Wordplay, with special reference to Hamlet. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Heibert, Frank

1993 Das Wortspiel als Stilmittel und seine Übersetzung am Beispiel von sieben Übersetzungen des ‘Ulysses’ von James Joyce. Tübingen: Narr.  TSB

Tęcza, Zygmunt

1997 Das Wortspiel in der Übersetzung. Stanislaw Lems Spiele mit dem Wort als Gegenstand interlingualen Transfers. Tübingen: Niemeyer.  BoP