Verbally Expressed Humour on Screen: Reflections on Translation and Reception

Abstract

As is well known, the translation of Verbally Expressed Humour (VEH) is an especially thorny issue both practically and theoretically. This paper sets out to discuss the sphere of VEH on screen and how it is received by audiences who are exposed to instances which are mediated linguistically by means of dubbing. 1. Humour and Screen Translation The results of an interview survey carried out in 120 companies involved in the Italian dubbing industry and based in Rome and Milan shows that operators unanimously consider Verbally Expressed Humour (VEH) the most challenging factor in producing good quality translations for the screen (Beninca, 1999: 58-59 and 83-86). This of course fits in perfectly with the wider issue of humour and translation which has traditionally been considered to be a problematic area both from the perspective of its practical translation, in the sense that VEH is notoriously difficult to translate, and from a theoretical point of view owing to the fact that it is at odds with the very tenets of translation theory, the concepts of equivalence and translatability (Vandaele, 2002; Chiaro, 2005). However, no matter how complex issues concerning the translation of written and spoken instances of VEH may be, they are relatively simple when compared to the intricacy of having to translate them when they occur within a text created to be performed on screen. Films are multifaceted semiotic entities simultaneously communicating verbal signs acoustically (dialogue, song lyrics, etc.), visually (written texts, such as letters, newspaper headlines, banners, etc.), non-verbally but acoustically (music, background noises, etc.), and non-verbally but visually (actor's movements, facial expressions, setting, etc.). Yet, the translator's intervention is limited to only one of these aspects, i.e. the dialogue, leaving all the other features unchanged. In a comedy, which may well

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