Chapter 10. How funny am I?

Abstract

This paper explores and responds to the question: how funny am I in self-translation? Taking up Eco’s notion that translative processes involve negotiation (2004), the authors explore the way in which the self is negotiated in the process of moving across and between texts-in-translation. They examine and discuss examples of their own self-translation of short comedic forms of writing across English, Italian and Serbian. The similarities and differences in their approaches are used as a springboard for analysing how subjectivity informs and infuses the translation process. Following the work of Bhaba (1994), Braidotti (2011), Chiaro (2010), Palmieri (2018) and others, the author-translators uncover the importance of humour to multicultural, multi-lingual, hybrid and in-between identities. Through the collaborative practice of their writing and self-translation, they discover that humour functions as a drawbridge between languages, cultures and national identities: sometimes meeting, and sometimes not.