Shared problems and challenges in Humour Studies and Practices and translation Studies and practices

What is it about?

The overlap between translation and humor has often been controversial at both theoretical and practical levels. For this purpose, a critical perspective was adopted to approach these overlaps between the two domains and their respective theoretical models. This paper explores the intellectual and professional challenges posed by the common ground between translation studies and practices compared to humor studies and practices, as a development of a prior publication that has been highly influential over the years, Zabalbeascoa (2005). This study aims to highlight the lines of demarcation between translation practices and humor production as a social phenomenon within the framework of textual communication. It reflects the impact of social factors (social dynamics, biases, and traditions) on translation and humor. To this end, the paper classifies translation theories according to the degree to which they are sensitive to or able to account for humor in source texts and their translations, thus revisiting the main theories (including Vermeer, Toury, Lefevere, Delabstita, Attardo) in the ‘new’ light of how they deal with humor. The paper also includes a proposal for the ideal conditions for humor translation, including translator competencies, translation criteria, distribution, reception, and other social factors. This paper provides a new list of common factors between translation and humor practices pertaining to social bias and acceptance.

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Why is it important?

It raises awareness of and method for integrating humor translation or the translation of humour in so-called 'general' theories or claims about both translation and humour. Traditionally and too often when talking about humour in general terms the (real-life) translation of humour is forgotten as a part of humour awareness, and likewise when developing claims and models for translation in general, the translation of humour is also too often discarded or ignored.