Translation Of Puns Research Articles

Translation of Puns Based on Dirk Delabastita’s Theory on Pun Translation: A Case Study of The Trials of Apollo 2: The Dark Prophecy

Pun is a prominent linguistic structure in English literature and its translation has always been a major problem for translators. This thesis agrees with Dirk Delabastita’s view that puns, with certain techniques, can be translated into another language with their functions intact. With Dirk Delabastita’s theory on the translation of puns, this thesis analyzes The Trials of Apollo 2: The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan and its Simplified Chinese version Yuyan Anying translated by Weiming Gao, focusing on the accuracy and the use of the language of the pun translations. The results show that the Simplified Chinese version has some excellent translations and some flaws. It obtains a better use of editorial techniques to help explain the translation than the other methods mentioned in Dirk Delabastita’s theory. Furthermore, since the main readers of the original book and the translated version are both children and teenagers, the request for humorous language will rise and the translated version needs improving to meet this request. Some of the author’s suggestions for improvements are given accordingly.

On the E-C Translation of Puns in English Advertising Slogans from Delabastita’s Theory of Puns Translation

On the E-C Translation of Puns in English Advertising Slogans from Delabastita’s Theory of Puns Translation

Chinese Translation of Puns in Russian Humor Jokes from the Perspective of Delabastita’s Theory of Pun Translation

Chinese Translation of Puns in Russian Humor Jokes from the Perspective of Delabastita’s Theory of Pun Translation

The Study of Pun Translation in Zhu Shenghao’s Chinese Version of King Lear from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

As one of the most commonly used rhetorical devices by Shakespeare, pun plays a significant role in Shakespeare’s works. In the translation of pun, it is quite important to handle it well so that the target text readers can understand Shakespeare’s works better. There are plenty of puns in King Lear, which brings great challenges to translators. By analyzing the pun translation in Zhu Shenghao’s version of King Lear from the perspective of relevance theory, this paper attempts to prove the explanatory power and guiding role of relevance theory in pun translation. By analyzing the translation of puns, it can figure out whether the translators have provided the best contextual effects and realized the optimal relevance in their translations.

The Translation of Shakespearean Legal Puns into Standard Arabic: Macbeth and Hamlet as a Case Study

Translation can be impacted by metalinguistic factors that lead translators either to render literal meanings or try their best to communicate what they believe is the intended message of the author of the source text (ST). One of the cases that can best illustrate this situation of the translator is the translation of puns. This study scrutinizes legal puns in Khalil Mutran’s Arabic translations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, translated in 1950 and Hamlet, translated in 1974. This study aims to investigate how Mutran manipulates the occurrences of puns in the source text when he translates them into Standard Arabic. The study examines puns in the source texts by referring to Shakespeare’s Legal Language: A Dictionary (2004) and Mahood’s Shakespeare's Wordplay (2003), and in the Arabic translations by referring to Faruqi’s English-Arabic Law Dictionary (2008). Results show that Mutran opts for either a literal translation of puns using Standard Arabic terms, a literal translation using legal terms or omission of puns in his translation. Results also indicate that Mutran adopts stage-worthy translation rather than law-worthy one.

The Translation of Puns in Shakespeare’s Plays into Arabic

The term "pun" refers to a literary device that is described as a play on words. This term means using words in an amusing and tricky manner, to produce a pun. However, it is difficult to translate puns between English and Aabic because of their distinctively different linguistic systems, especially the phonology and morphology which are the basic skills in the use of puns. This study aims to study the influence of context in discovering the intended meaning of the pun and also to investigate the problems that translators may face when they translate puns from English into Arabic in some selected Shakespeares’ plays. Two main problems and interrelated issues are discussed: How puns are translated? And how they should or can be translated? It is obvious that, in some cases, the translator fails to convey the intended meaning of SL puns due to the fact that they involve more than one meaning (many shades of meaning). Thus, they lead to ambiguity and serious loss or a distortion of meaning. For analysis the data, three models are eclectically adopted, namely: Delabastita's model of translation puns (1996), Kasper's model of pragmatic transfer (PT) (1992), and Hatim and Mundy's model of pun decomposition process (PDP) (2004) to determine the appropraite translation of puns.

The application of Puns in English Advertisements and translation strategy analysis

Advertisement, a single word is worth a thousand pieces of gold. Therefore, advertising language should not only greatly reflect the characteristics of products, short and to the point and humorous, eye-catching, advertised. Puns are a common rhetorical device in English advertisements. Puns will apply the previously familiar phrases, idioms, proverbs, etc. It not only increases the readability and cultural interest of advertising language but also brings economic benefits to cultural utility, killing two birds with one stone. However, pun translation itself is very complex, and pun translation in advertising is even more difficult. this paper start with the types of puns, expounds on the application skills of puns, and on the basis of considering the double meaning of puns and the style of advertising style, makes a preliminary discussion on the translation of English advertising puns from the aspects of set translation and compensation translation.

The application of Puns in English Advertisements and translation strategy analysis

Advertisement, a single word is worth a thousand pieces of gold. Therefore, advertising language should not only greatly reflect the characteristics of products, short and to the point and humorous, eye-catching, advertised. Puns are a common rhetorical device in English advertisements. Puns will apply the previously familiar phrases, idioms, proverbs, etc. It not only increases the readability and cultural interest of advertising language but also brings economic benefits to cultural utility, killing two birds with one stone. However, pun translation itself is very complex, and pun translation in advertising is even more difficult. this paper start with the types of puns, expounds on the application skills of puns, and on the basis of considering the double meaning of puns and the style of advertising style, makes a preliminary discussion on the translation of English advertising puns from the aspects of set translation and compensation translation.

TRANSLATION AS TRANSFORMATION: ON THE TREATMENT OF PUNS AND WORDPLAY IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF JINPINGMEI

The novel Jinpingmei is rife with various forms of language play, which produces special stylistic or poetic effects and contributes to characterization. Language play in Jinpingmei gives rise to cognitive effects on the reader and poses a serious challenge to interlingual translation. However, it has hitherto received little attention from translation studies researchers. The issue of how different forms of language play are treated in English translations of Jinpingmei has not been touched upon. This article aims to fill the gap by analyzing and discussing the translation of puns and wordplay in Jinpingmei. It takes a cognitive-pragmatic view and draws upon a relevance-theoretic approach to examine the way in which puns and wordplay is rendered into the target language. Within the relevance-theoretic framework, translation is viewed as an “interpretive use of language” and the relation between source and target texts is based on interpretive resemblance rather than equivalence (Sperber & Wilson, 1986; Gutt, 1991). The analysis undertaken in the article is based on two English translations of Jinpingmei. Following Delabastita’s (1996) taxonomy of puns and transferring strategies, the article examines the translators’ translation strategies and assesses the degree of relevance and interpretive resemblance achieved in the two translations vis-à-vis the source text. Research results demonstrate that most puns and wordplay are lost or misconstrued in translation and that the translators exhibit different patterns in their approaches to translating wordplay in Jinpingmei. Moreover, the degree of interpretive resemblance achieved in the two translations differs significantly. The article concludes that the translators’ choice is influenced by translational skopos, the sociocultural context of translation and reception, and the (un)translatability of wordplay effected by the linguistic and cultural difference between Chinese and English.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0935/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

On Translation of Puns in Sitcoms Based on Functional Equivalence Theory—Taking Yes, Minister as an Example

In situation comedies, pun is one of the most effective means of creating comic effect and takes up a considerable part. However, if incorrectly or improperly translated, it can be almost impossible for puns to get across its audience, even when the audience is somewhat capable of English. The reason is that pun, in essence, is a figure of speech, which requires certain knowledge of English literature and culture. The translation of English movies and TV series has become fairly sophisticated, but studies on the translation of pun are relatively rare. This article will introduce and study pun both in Chinese and English literature by the approach of contrast, and discuss the translation methods of puns from the perspective of functional equivalence theory; and then it will take the Chinese subtitle of the famous situation comedy series Yes, Minister as examples to analyze and study the translation methods and strategies of puns used in situation comedies.

The Impact of Chinese and Western Cultural Differences on Pun Translation: The Case Study of A Dream of Red Mansion

The Impact of Chinese and Western Cultural Differences on Pun Translation: The Case Study of A Dream of Red Mansion

WORDPLAY IN DICKENS’S NOVELS AND WAYS OF THEIR TRANSLATION

The article deals with the general problem of wordplay and its translation. The relevance of the problem is accounted for by the powerful role of wordplay or puns in creating in special artistic atmosphere of any belle-letter sample and difficulties in its translating. The novels by Ch. Dickens have drawn attention of hundreds, if not thousands, researchers. A greater part of them pays attention to the literary side; the papers dealing with his language are quite versatile as well. But we have not yet met the comprehensive description and classification of Dickens’s puns. The aim of our paper is to classify cases of wordplay in the novels by Ch. Dickens and some possible ways of their translation. To achieve this aim we solved the following tasks: a) to choose a reliable definition of wordplay, or pun; b) to create a set of examples taken from Dickens’ novels and their translation into Russian and Ukrainian which are available at the site Gutenberg Project (https://www.gutenberg.org); c) to classify the puns; d) to analyze ways of their translation. The translation of puns is a really great problem and there exist different ways of solving it. Having analyzed Dickens’ puns and wordplay we can summarize that these ones can be subdivided into personal and common; alphabetical, morphemic and word; homonymic, patronymic and polysemantic. The correlation between puns in the original and translation can be described as their direct relation (pun – pun), asymmetric relation (pun – no pun; no pun – pun) and extralinguistic additions. The prospects of our investigation are connected with the study of Dickens’ art of creating individual manner of speech.

A Quantitative Analysis of the Romanian Translations of Shakespeare’s Bawdy Puns

This article proposes a quantitative analysis of the Romanian translations of 325 ribald Shakespearean puns, which originate in 20 plays and 71 renditions, with special focus on assessing the impact of translator-subjective and objective factors on the rendition process in the pre-communist, communist, and post-communist periods. The findings invalidate several widespread beliefs: Dragoș Protopopescu’s renditions, banned by the communist regime for their ‘modernizing’ approach to the Shakespearean text, bowdlerized more bawdy puns than ‘ESPLA’, which replaced it as the Party-approved Romanian edition of the dramatist’s plays; Adolphe Stern’s translations, harshly criticized in his period, fare better in terms of ribald pun rendition than Scarlat Ghica’s and Dimitrie Ghica’s, hailed as the most successful of their time; modern translations of Shakespeare display a heterogeneous distribution of target-text puns across the surveyed rendition strategies, despite enjoying similar availability of and access to pun translation studies.

Audiovisual translation of puns in animated films: strategies and procedures

The translation of the pun is one of the most challenging issues for translators and interpreters. Sometimes puns, especially those containing realia, are considered to be untranslatable. Most translation strategies and procedures offered in previous findings for the translation of realia-based puns are not appropriate for audiovisual translations of animated films, for either dubbing or subtitling. It is caused by the specificity of the target audience, and the genre. The problem of choosing the most relevant strategy and procedures for realia-based puns is underexplored. To narrow the gap, the metamodern and semiotic approaches are applied to the translation of puns. In accordance with the semiotic approach, a pun is considered as a type of language game, based on the use of the asymmetry of the form, and the content of the sign. The “Quasi-translation” strategy offered in this paper reflects the attitude to the game in metamodernism, where the “game change” is one of the basic postulates. “Quasi-translation” involves three types of translation procedures: quasi-localisation, quasi-globalisation, and quasi-glocalisation. The term, “quasi-glocalisation”, is also used to denote the general strategy for the translation of audiovisual works containing realia-based puns, which involves: 1) oscillation between the need to adapt the translation to the target culture, and the need to preserve the culturally-marked components of the original; and 2) the reproduction of “atmosphere” (the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived). This insight can be used by audiovisual translator-practitioners, and university teachers in the course of translation theory and practice.

Audiovisual translation of puns in animated films: strategies and procedures

The translation of the pun is one of the most challenging issues for translators and interpreters. Sometimes puns, especially those containing realia, are considered to be untranslatable. Most translation strategies and procedures offered in previous findings for the translation of realia-based puns are not appropriate for audiovisual translations of animated films, for either dubbing or subtitling. It is caused by the specificity of the target audience, and the genre. The problem of choosing the most relevant strategy and procedures for realia-based puns is underexplored. To narrow the gap, the metamodern and semiotic approaches are applied to the translation of puns. In accordance with the semiotic approach, a pun is considered as a type of language game, based on the use of the asymmetry of the form, and the content of the sign. The “Quasi-translation” strategy offered in this paper reflects the attitude to the game in metamodernism, where the “game change” is one of the basic postulates. “Quasi-translation” involves three types of translation procedures: quasi-localisation, quasi-globalisation, and quasi-glocalisation. The term, “quasi-glocalisation”, is also used to denote the general strategy for the translation of audiovisual works containing realia-based puns, which involves: 1) oscillation between the need to adapt the translation to the target culture, and the need to preserve the culturally-marked components of the original; and 2) the reproduction of “atmosphere” (the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived). This insight can be used by audiovisual translator-practitioners, and university teachers in the course of translation theory and practice.

On the translatability of Qur’anic pun

AbstractThis paper explores the translatability of Qur’anic pun. With reference to a phalanx of authoritative Qur’anic exegetes and three leading Qur’anic translations, and by drawing onʿAtīq’s (1985)taxonomy of Arabic pun, andDelabastita’s (2004)model of pun translation, the study examines a four-fold classification of pun: (1)abstract pun, (2)immediate-meaning-oriented pun, (3)far-meaning-oriented pun, and (4)aided pun. Given the semantic indirectness and sophistication immanent in punning, it is argued that Qur’anic pun, as a rhetorical device, is quite thorny from a translational standpoint. The study reveals that three out of nine translation strategies have been used: theliteral strategy, themanipulative strategy, and thesituational strategy. Theliteral strategycapitalizes on the immediate meaning, and ‘auctions off’ or ‘pulverizes’ the punning meaning, which, subsequently, may result inincommensurate translation damage. Thesituational strategyinvolves adding,for the entire translation, a descriptive word or phrase between brackets, and themanipulative strategyadvocatestext-in-contextperspective. The study wraps up with a proposal for theinterpretive strategy, which hinges uponexegesis-driven paraphrasing. This particular translation strategy has a greater emancipatory potential.

The English Translation of Arabic Puns in the Holy Quran

ABSTRACTThe pun is a tricky use of a word or phrase which has very different meanings that are closely interrelated, or of words with the same sound but different meanings. The Pun is a term with a dual meaning: “close” using obvious reference, and “far” using obscure reference. The hidden is usually meant. The close meaning is the sooner that comes to the listener’s mind. However, the speaker targets at the far one yet use the close to hide it. Translating the Quran text always raises several serious challenges in translation; these challenges are due to the different translations of puns and the misinterpretations between the intended meanings of a pun with their basic concepts, which could result in a certain amount of ambiguity. The study examines the Quranic corpus and its three versions of English translations. The study utilizes the typology of Delabastita᾿s for horizontal puns, Nida’s techniques of dynamic and formal equivalent and Newmark’s translation methods. This research attempts to investigate the semantic meaning of puns in the Quran translation and to define the translation techniques applied in translating the Quranic puns from Arabic into English.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЯ ПРИЕМА КОМПЕНСАЦИИ В ПЕРЕВОДЕ АЛЛИТЕРАЦИИ

The article deals with the use of the compensation strategy in the translation of puns, word play and characters’ contaminated speech. Particular attention is paid to the ways to preserve alliteration when translating a fiction text and the methods to compensate for the components of the semantic content. The use of multi-functional alliteration in a target text contributes to the preservation of the author’s stylistic and artistic intention. The analysis is based on the examples taken from the tale “The BFG” by the British writer Roald Dahl.

SEMANTIC SHIFT IN THE ENGLISH - INDONESIAN TRANSLATION OF DESSEN’S WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE

This study focused on the semantic shift in the English – Indonesian Translation of Dessen's What Happened to Goodbye. The main purposes of the study was to explain shift or transposition is termed as shift is a translation procedure involving a change in the grammar from source language to target language. Translation shift is termed involves replacing one word class with other without changing the meaning of the message. This study carried out in order to find out the kinds of semantic shift are found in English – Indonesian Dessen’s What Happened to Goodbye. This study assess the quality of English – Indonesian translation of semantic shift in Dessen’s What Happened to Goodbye. This research was a descriptive qualitative research. The object of this study is English - Indonesian pun translation of Dessen’s What Happened to Goodbye. The quality assessment of this study is obtained from the respondents. The respondents are divided into two, they are expert rates (the lecturers) and target readers (the teenager). In the analysis of semantic shift in the What Happened to Goodbye, from the results of analysis, the writer found the first type of shift (The change from Singular to Plural and the position of Adjective); the second type of shift (in SL Grammatical Structure does not exist in TL); the third type of shift (the one where literal translation is grammatically possible but may not accord with natural usage in the TL) and the fourth type of shift (the replacement of a virtual lexical gap by a grammatical structure). The analysis on the translation quality shows that 108 translations (23%) are considered as accurate, and 287 translations (77%) are considered as less accurate. In clarity level, 176 translations are belong to clear (47, 7%), and 219 translations are belong to unclear (52, 3%). Naturalness level shows that 246 translations (54, 7%) are categorized as very natural, and 149 translations (45, 3%) are categorized as sufficient natural.

An Investigation of Pun Translatability in English Translations of Sa’di’s Ghazals Based on Delabastita’s Proposed Model

The rich cultural connotations behind puns and the distinctive features of the puns’ form, sound and meanings pose great challenges to the translator. Furthermore, given puns’ non-negligible effects in Persian literary texts, it has been the aim of the present study to analyze and measure how puns in Sa’di’s Ghazals have actually been treated in two available English versions. For the purpose of carrying out a meaningful analysis of translated puns, Delabastita’s (1996) proposed model was considered as the main theoretical framework of the study. The data were compiled from a corpus comprising 92 ghazals along with their two target versions. Following an exact contrastive analysis of data based on Delabastita’s classification and considering the results from the two selected statistical systems of traditional and SPSS in the study, it concluded that the two Iranian translators have applied eight different strategies included in Delabastita’s (1996) model. These strategies arranged in descending order based on their total frequencies were Pun>RRD (Related Rhetorical Device); Pun>Non-Punning expressions (both senses); Non-Punning expressions> Pun; Pun>Non-Punning expressions (one sense); Zero>Pun; ST Pun=TT Pun; Pun>Zero and Pun>Pun. Finally, the applicability and feasibility of Delabastita’s (1996) model to English translation of puns created in Sa’di’s Ghazals were proved. Keywords: language-play, pun, ambiguity, homonymy, homophony, homography, paronymy, translation strategy