Jokes and Translation

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JOKES AND TRANSLATIONDiana-Elena Popa a

a Dunrea de Jos University of Galai, Romania

Online Publication Date: 09 September 2005

To cite this Article Popa, Diana-Elena(2005)'JOKES AND TRANSLATION',Perspectives,13:1,48 — 57

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JOKES AND TRANSLATION

Diana-Elena Popa, Dunărea de Jos University of Galaţi, [email protected]

AbstractThis 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

IntroductionExistence, 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 to open up to the researcher.

Lacking a pre-theoretical definition, humour is here defined according to the purpose for which it is used. Therefore, I use an operative definition of humour: “Humour is the ability to appreciate the situations when wordplay is funny or amus-ing.” (Popa 2003: 54)

This definition may be vague and over-simplified, but it has the advantage of not reducing humour to a purely linguistic definition. It merely presupposes that all speakers are competent enough to generate humorous text by virtue of its linguistic elements and also to recognise a text as humorous by means of these very components.

This definition also comprises the ability to recognise humorous text. But the definition primarily focuses on the speaker’s ability to do so by means of situational, social, and cultural parameters, not merely linguistic mechanisms. Moreover, ability takes pride of place over competence, since humour apprecia-tion ceases to be uni-dimensional. Viewed as a multi-dimensional process, it relies on mutually independent elements such as the text, the speaker and listener(s), and the context, and which all fall under the systemic common de-nomination of system-incorporating network. The definition does not purport to explain why some texts are funny while some others are not. The definition also abstains from any exclusivist quest of the linguistic conditions necessary for a text to be funny.

The keywords in the definition are ability, situations, and wordplay. By fore-grounding ability, I wish to emphasise cultural differences that determine whether one is able or not to perceive a situation to be funny. The word situa-tions refers to the fact that humour is socially dependent and depends on inter-action in a process between people. Wordplay refers to the language content in

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humour. (Popa 2003: 54) Finally, I wish to stress that my approach is not meant to provide a formal def-

inition of humour for canonising notions of an idealised speaker or listener(s)’ competence for recognising or creating humour. My concern is with discussing the linguistic mechanisms in texts and the external factors that contribute to the recognition of a text as humorous.

CorpusThis 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-

tions and answers;2. the jokes must be syntactically correct; and3. they should contain socio-cultural references to either a British or a Roma-

nian framework.

Purpose of studyIn 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.

Popa: Jokes and Translation 49


A systemic functionalist approach to joke translationMy analysis borrows points from Hans Vermeer’ Skopos Theory and Chris-

tiane Nord’s functionalist approach to translations. For my work at the dis-course-semantical and lexico-grammatical levels, I incorporate Halliday and Martin’s co-tangential circles model (1993: 25), as it relies on the lexical choices - language – in a social context. In such a social context, I address the commu-nicative levels of genre (cultural context) and register (situational context). The la�er is analysed in terms of field, tenor, and mode.

Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopos Theory views translation as a process in which it is of prime importance to determine the purpose of a translation. Consequently, the main focus is the function a translation has for the target audience, which, in turn, determines the methods and strategies for a�aining this purpose. Skopos-oriented translation procedures are highly relevant for humorous texts, in particular jokes: clients, senders, and translators have to be fully aware of the function of jokes in the target-language socio-cultural framework.

For the sake of clarity, it is worth distinguishing between two levels of translation. The first level is the pragmatic function of translations of humorous texts. This involves the genre-related function of humour in general, namely, to produce amusement and even cause laughter. The second level concerns the interpersonal functions involved at the moment joke translation goes further than to amuse. This works in the target-language socio-cultural context. As a function, it may illustrate how laughter builds consensus (the ingratiation function), as in the following first example (1), or repairs by dissolving awkward situations or teases by introducing criticism (as in the following second example (2)), just to mention a few interpersonal representations. Usually, the two levels co-exist in jokes.

(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.”

In order to establish the adequacy (which would involve procedures and strategies in translation), we need to know exactly what purpose the translated joke should serve. This is also the case with the following Romanian joke (3):

(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-

2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 150


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)

Functional constancy is important for at least one reason: if translations (here target jokes) fulfil the same function they had in the source culture, this is argu-ably closer to a�aining the Skopos of the translation, since the Skopos of any translation is a successful translation.

There is no such a thing as a perfect translation. Yet, methodologically speak-ing, it is impossible to get anywhere near a good translation unless we take into account Christiane Nord’s clear-cut distinction between translation problems and translation difficulties (Nord 1991). According to Christiane Nord, transla-tion problems are objective and pertain to differences between communicative, pragmatic, cultural, linguistic, and textual systems, whereas translation diffi-culties are subjective and relate more to individual translators’ pragmatic, cul-tural, linguistic, and textual competence. Below, this distinction is used to study methodological difficulties when there is no obvious ‘equivalence’ between the source and target languages and cultures.

Example (4) above, at first glance seems to be unproblematic for translation, while the joke about the Romanian President (3) is not easily rendered into the target language and target culture. Joke (3) challenges us with several transla-tion problems due to differences between the source and target communica-tive situations at the pragmatic levels. There are cultural differences or, be�er, culture-specific elements in the Romanian socio-cultural background: who was Ceauşescu, who is Iliescu, what are cizme (‘boots’)? There are linguistic and text-specific issues that make a translation difficult – in this case the use of the homophones şiret (meaning shoe lace) and şiret (meaning ‘cunning’).

Wolfram Wills posits that there are aspects of translation that “transcend cultural boundaries and are, in some sense, universal” (1992: 38). In other words, translation is “a specimen of socio-culturally determined linguistic behaviour containing both cul-ture-specific and culture-universal components”. (1996: 90)

(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.”

A translation of this joke requires balancing between culture-bound elements (Prince Charles), culture-universal components (walking the dog early in the morning, greeting somebody) and a word-play: the greeting ‘Morning!’ and ‘mourning’ for somebody who has died.

Hans Vermeer perceives culture as “the total of conventions to be observed in a society” (Vermeer 1992: 9), thus emphasising its social side. Consequently, Vermeer argues that when they translate culture-specific text-types, translators must also “introduce into a society and its literary tradition, new aspects either of form or of content or of meaning and thereby new aspects of the world, thus enriching the target culture” (1992: 13). A translator of the above joke (5) there-fore implicitly must introduce into the target language, Romanian, the informa-tion that Britain has a royal family, that Prince Charles is a member of the royal family, that his former wife, Princess Diana, died in a controversial car accident,



that it is public knowledge that Charles did not really love Prince Diana, etc.Let us have a look at a Romanian joke (6):

(6) - Cum vorbeşte Iliescu engleza? - Ca şi chineza.- Dar de ce nu mai vorbeşte acum engleza? - Pentru cã l-au rugat chinezii sã nu-i mai înjure.[- How does Iliescu speak English? - In the same way that he speaks Chinese.- Why doesn’t he speak English anymore? - Because the Chinese asked him to stop calling them names.]

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 translators to “anticipate the possible effects different translation alternatives may leave upon the target receptor.” (Wi�e 1994: 74)

In joke translation, such a culture shock generally annuls all laugh-provoking aspects, hence preventing the joke from achieving its translation Skopos (provided this is to cause amusement). At least, the translation does not render the goal and function it had in the source culture. In order to illustrate this, we may turn to one of the jokes that used to travel in Romania during the Communist Golden Era:

(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!”]

Example (8) belongs to the same category:

(8) -Ce-i mai rece ca apa rece?- Apa caldă.[- “What’s colder than cold water?”- “Hot water.”]3

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



co-tangential circles that describe language as included in the larger circle of context of situation (register), which is integrated into an even wider circle, namely that of the context of culture (genre) (1993: 25). Register is sub-divided into the sections of field, tenor, and mode. So (7) and (8) can be described as:

Field: political jokeMode: interactive face-to-faceTenor: friend to friend

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 by means of lexico-grammatical choices and because all lexico-grammatical choices can be predicted from the situational and cultural context, the Hallidyan functional contextual elements are highly pertinent to a translation analysis, and particularly, to humour translation. The next example (9) is a case in point. I shall discuss features about translating this joke into Romanian:

(9) - “Why are families like fudge?”- “They are mostly sweet with a few nuts in it.”

An analysis of the situation provides us with relevant information about language use in the source and target texts. A configuration that derives from the actual layout of the joke could be:

Field: family jokeMode: interactive face-to-faceTenor: friend to friend

In determining the mode, we look at (a) the interpersonal or spatial distance, and (b) the experiential distance. In order to translate the joke, we must deter-mine whether, at the interpersonal distance, we have to deal with a face-to-face encounter or are reading (writing) a collection of jokes.

The experiential distance level ranks situations according to the distance between language and the social process it refers to. Thus, the experiential distance determines whether language is an action (in which it ‘is outside’, or ‘accompanies’ the social process) or a reflection (in which language constitutes the social process). It corresponds to the difference between playing games and writing fiction. However, a joke hovers between being a means for achieving on-going action (which is illustrated in the functions of humour) and being a means for reflecting on experience (e.g., most political and family jokes).

Using this distinction between the two dimensions of mode, we can now



characterise a basic difference between situational spoken and wri�en language use, which is a prerequisite for an adequate target rendition of a joke.

In the following example (9), we must choose the spoken language for the target text. The spoken language has a dynamic structure; it is typically organ-ised according to turn-by-turn sequencing; it also includes spontaneity features such as hesitation and repetition. At the tenor level, I presuppose that this is friend-to-friend interaction. In such interactions, the interlocutors’ social roles will influence their language use. A friend-to-friend interaction will normally presuppose equal power, frequent contact, and a highly affective involvement. These features point to the fact that the situational se�ing is ‘informal’. This therefore implies that the vocabulary is informal as well. Knowing that we are dealing with an informal target text, we may also, if necessary, use slang, ab-breviated forms, and vocatives, although this would not apply to this particular joke (9).

Field defines the focus of the activity we are engaged in and varies from being highly technical to being down-to-earth. The joke at hand is down-to-earth and only requires a superficial knowledge of families as a phenomenon.

Halliday argues that the three variables of tenor, field, and mode are the three kinds of meanings that language is structured to produce. Each situational vari-able has a predictable and systemic relationship with lexico-grammatical pat-terns.

In the family joke (9), an analysis reveals the following lexico-grammatical choices.

The clause structure illustrates that it is an informal situation that uses the interrogative. This interrogative (“Why?”) is an imperative in the sense of “Let me tell you a joke!” or “Let me tell you why families are like fudge.”

There is no problem in translating this interrogative into Romanian. But there is a difficulty at the lexical level. The English joke playfully compares families and “fudge”. The English word “fudge”, meaning ‘a so� creamy light brown sweet made of sugar, milk, bu�er’, is encoded in the English semiotic system and belongs to British culture. This feature cannot be realised in Romanian. Two other lexical items also limit the lexical elbow-room for a Romanian translation: they are “sweet” and “nuts”, which define the semantic content of “fudge”.

A possible choice in Romanian would be cozonac (‘pound cake’), which is quite sweet and has nuts in it. Yet this is not adequate: nuts is a key element in the English joke, which plays on the ambiguity between nuts that belongs to a cooking frame of reference and nuts that represents a mental state.

In order to transfer the joke’s function, it seems to me that there are two possible solutions: (a) to transfer the semantic content of the word nuts in Romanian, but use it in the singular and re-arrange the grammatical structure of the sentence so that it follows from the word order that nut (nucă) is a metaphor for lunatic like in:

(9a) In general dulce dar mai are si câte o nucă.[Mostly sweet but it also has some nut(ty characters)]

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



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, 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:

Field: family jokeMode: interactive face-to-faceTenor: friend to friend

is culturally recognised in British culture. Before rendering it into other lan-guages and target cultures (in this case Romanian), it is wise to see whether the register configuration also works in the target culture. In the case at hand, it does: it is culturally appropriate to joke about families in Romanian.

ConclusionAs 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



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.

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.

Notes1. 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).



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.

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Jokes and Translation