European ethnic scripts and the translation and switching of jokes

Abstract

AbstractMany European jokes depend on local ethnic scripts that by convention pin a comic characteristic on a particular ethnic group such as the canny Cardi in Wales, the slow Swiss in France, the stupid Belgian incessantly eating freedom fries in the Netherlands. How are such jokes to be translated into the language of another country with a different culture and comic conventions? Sometimes it is straightforward because similar jokes about the same group exist throughout Europe as with, say, jokes about cowardly Italians. In other cases there exists a similar set of jokes told about a local group so that, say, British jokes about the stupid Irish can easily be turned into jokes about Belgians, Ostfrieslanders, Gallegos, Pontians in the appropriate country. Problems arise only if a script is unique to one group or country, in which case the device of indirect explanation by internal conversation is used. One of the people in the joke reveals to another the nature of the script on which the joke depends, and thus the joke teller conveys the information to his audience without appearing didactic or giving too much away. It is fairly easy to convey implicit cultural assumptions in this way, far easier than it is translate a complex play on words. Language is far more idiosyncratic and arbitrary than culture.