HUMOUR IN AUDIOVISUAL TEXTS: TRANSLATION ISSUES (BASED ON THE AMERICAN COMEDY “SIXTEEN CANDLES”)

Abstract

The article considers the problems of conveying verbal means of expressing humour in translation taking the American comedy “Sixteen Candles” by John Hughes as an example. The comparison of the original and its three translations (two voice-over translations and subtitles) made it possible to analyse in detail the verbal and non-verbal means of creating a humorous effect in the film and assess their interpretation in Russian in specific comic situations. Furthermore, in some cases we offer our own translation solutions. The problem of conveying humor is still one of the most difficult problems in audiovisual translation; it is often related to specific cultural peculiarities reflected in the speech of the source language speakers and the speakers of the target language. The relevance of the paper lies in the need for further research on the means of creating humour and the problems of its preservation in translation. The goal of the paper was to study the verbal and non-verbal means of creating humour in a particular comedy film, as well as to analyse and assess the effectiveness of their transfer in Russian translations. The following methods of analysing the data were employed: comparative-contrastive analysis, linguistic analysis, lexicographic analysis, situational analysis and functional-stylistic analysis. The study revealed some losses in translation usually caused by unjustified lexical replacements (mainly generalization), a change in the word‟s register (for instance, using a neutral literary word for a slang word) and resorting to outdated vocabulary. Besides that, translators often ignore non-verbal, situational means of creating humour and their influence the verbal description of the situation.