Comedy and humour are among the most difficult types of language to translate, from both a linguistic and a cultural point of view. Verbal jokes often rely on wordplay and double meanings, which often make absolutely no sense when they are translated directly. In works of literature, translators often have to simply transcreate, which means that instead of translating the joke or funny phrase directly, they use an equivalent joke in the target language that might have a very different literal meaning, but a similar comedic impact.
That’s already pretty difficult, but now imagine the plight of the translator who is rendering a movie script in another language. She needs to not only translate or transcreate the joke to be both funny and culturally appropriate, but also ensure that the new joke isn’t much longer or shorter, and that it will work reasonably well when the voice actors dub the movie into a new language.
Translating the funnies really is no joke!
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