A Case Study of Rush Hour 2 film

Translating Humour in AVT: A Case Study of Rush Hour 2 film

This essay will depict the challenges and strategies in translating humour in AVT, particularly the analysis of a selection of subtitles from English into Romanian belonging to the film Rush Hour 2.

Even from the early 18^th-century, humour has been used as a synonym for the quality of being amused, comical and funny. Moreover, the Cambridge dictionary defines humour as the “ability to find things funny, the way people see that some things are funny, or the quality of being funny” (Cambridge). Therefore, humour forms the essence of human interaction and adds more value to people’s day-to-day lives.

Although humour might be easy to define in a dictionary, scholars have tried to classify humour differently. According to Vandaele, “humour as a meaning effect has an undeniable, exteriorised manifestation. This manifestation can be understood as laughter or a smile (2002:150). Moreover, he differentiates between intentional, unintentional and even unachieved humour (2002:159). In his particular study, words are used to achieve a humorous effect in the forms of puns, riddles or jokes. In addition, the amusing impact may be achieved visually as well, as in the case of comedy films, with a clear focus on what the audience can see. Hence, humour has different facets in obtaining relevance and influencing its effect on the receiving audience. However, other languages worldwide affect the ability to comprehend humour which brings us to the primary key issue of this essay: translating humour.

As previously mentioned, scholars had difficulty classifying humour mainly due to its multitude of angles of relevance. Undeniably, translating humour is a more complex process involving great fluency in the source text and a perfect sense of humour. The VEH (verbally expressed humour) elements can pose many challenges for the text translators as “the reproduction of VEH into another language depends on several variables mainly regarding the translator’s personality which range from whether or not they generally have a good sense of humour to the mood they are while translating” (2005:135). On the other hand, Vandaele highlights that although the translator might be able to identify the joke in the source language and appreciate it, he might be unable to reproduce it in the target text. Hence the sense of humour alone might not suffice in rendering a humorous product: “Individuals may be very sensitive to humour but unable to produce it successfully; translators may experience its compelling effect on themselves and others (laughter) but feel unable to reproduce it. Thus, there are good reasons to think of humour (re)production as talent-oriented, not learnable (Vandaele 2002:150). Furthermore, untranslatability is another key issue faced by translators of humour when cultural and linguistic discrepancies emerge between the source text and the target text. Chiaro has distinguished this concept: “The translation of Verbally Expressed Humour (VEH) concerns one of the most complex types of language to translate owing to the fact it needs to come to terms with the very tenets of translation theory, those of equivalence and (un)translatability” (2005:135).

Building on the idea of untranslatability, one of the best strategies is to use formal equivalence when the translator is dealing with cultural or linguistic issues. According to Nida, equivalence is classified into formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. In the words of Munday, formal equivalence focus is “on the message itself, in both form and content” (2008:43). According to this critical concept, the message of the target text should be as similar as possible to the message present in the source text. This situation positions the translator to select the closest possible equivalent for the source text, as finding an exact equivalent term in the target language is often impossible. On the other hand, dynamic equivalence implies achieving an equivalent effect in the target language, as Nida emphasises that the target text should have a similar influence on the target reader as the source text has on the source reader (2004:161).

When translating humour, particular issues arise in trying to achieve an equivalent effect on the target language reader. Hence, the skopos theory is another crucial theoretical concept in better assisting the translator in the complex process of rendering humour. Vermeer highlighted that the source text is concerned with the source culture, whereas the target text is oriented towards the target culture. Hence, the source text and the target text may pose huge discrepancies as Vermeer states: “every text has a given goal, function or intention, and also an assumed set of addressees (2004:233). Therefore, the rendered text may have the same function as the source text or not, but it must be target culture oriented.

Moreover, another crucial aspect of translating humour is the translator’s invisibility. Venuti emphasises that the translator’s purpose is to render his text invisible to the target reader. This is often perceived through fluency “….the appearance, in other words, that the translation is not in fact a translation but the ‘original’ (2008:1).

As mentioned above, translating humour with direct equivalents is impossible. Therefore, there are several strategies that the translator may adopt highlighted by Chiaro, which are most helpful in translating VEH (Verbally Expressed Humour). One of the techniques proposed by Chiaro is the substitution of the VEH in the source language with an example of VEH in the target language. Therefore, the substitution strategy involves the replacement of a joke from the source language with a different joke that is coherent and funny for the target culture. This method is primarily relevant when the translator faces huge cultural discrepancies, and the desired result is the effect of amusement.

Another strategy may be the replacement of the VEH in the source language with an idiomatic expression in the target language. This method might prove very useful when the object of the joke or humour is present on the screen, and the translator cannot substitute the joke entirely with another one. Chiaro differentiates another strategy by replacing the VEH in the source text with a compensatory example in the target text (2005:200). This method proves successful when the translator faces an untranslatable joke and needs to be able to compensate for the loss of a joke that can not be translated into the target language by introducing VEH in a different segment of the target text.

Audiovisual translation (AVT) has gained immense popularity and attention due to increased video streaming and sharing on websites and social platforms. Due to the increase of international multimedia texts circulating online and the growing film industry, AVT holds a vital role in contemporary human life. Although translating audiovisual material for television and cinema is generally perceived as screen translation, the language transfer from the source language to the target language is required not only for films and TV shows but also for videogames, videos, and DVDs, plays and operas. Ranzato and Zanotti emphasise that audiovisual translation coins the translation of an audiovisual text from a source language into a target language. On the other hand, an audiovisual text implies a higher degree of difficulty mainly due to the semiotic modalities present in the translation process. For example, watching a film or a TV show involves audio-verbal features like dialogues and words and visual signs mixed with non-verbal sounds like the background noise.

Although there are various forms of AVT like subtitling, dubbing, voice-over, surtitling, etc., this essay will only focus on subtitling as a method of linguistic transfer from the source text to the target text. Diaz Cintas and Ramael highlighted that subtitling is “a translation practice that consists of presenting a written text, generally on the lower part of the screen, that endeavours to recount the original dialogue of the speaker, as well as the discursive elements that appear in the image, and the information that is contained on the soundtrack (2007:9). According to European standards, subtitles should be displayed at the bottom of the screen in the centre or left-aligned. According to Diaz Cintas, subtitles have been classified into three main categories: intralingual, interlingual and bilingual (2010:437).

Intralingual subtitles involve transferring spoken language into the written form within the same vocabulary. This type of subtitles is beneficial for people trying to learn the language or for those who are hard of hearing. The use of different colours better assists deaf people in recognising which of the characters is talking by visually differentiating the dialogue. On the other hand, interlingual subtitles involve translating a written text from the source language into the target language. This type of subtitles translation is viral among online streaming services like Netflix, Disney + and Amazon Prime since their services can be accessed on thousands of internet-connected devices. Bilingual subtitles are very common in countries with more than one official language or international film festivals.

The main advantage of subtitling is its low cost. A dubbed version of a film or a TV show is fifteen times more expensive than the production of a subtitled version. Another considerable benefit greatly appreciated among the young viewers is that the film retains its originality compared to the dubbed version. Hearing the actors’ authentic voices while performing is an excellent bonus of watching a subtitled film. Moreover, watching a film with subtitles can help acquire or improve foreign language skills, even allowing the viewer to identify or familiarise with different accents or dialects.

The most critical disadvantage of subtitling is that it requires a high literacy level from the audience. The young and the old viewers might find reading and watching a film or a TV show impossible or too tiring. Furthermore, the viewer’s attention is divided between the image and the subtitles, making it difficult to concentrate on the performance itself.

The subtitling process imposes essential constraints on the translator: time and space limitations. Time limitations arise because people talk much faster than they read. Therefore, it is almost impossible to render the whole dialogue as this would impede the reading of the conversation before the new caption is displayed.

In Gottlieb’s words, there are several reasons for removing or condensing a text and classifies intersemiotic and intrasemiotic redundancy. In Gottlieb’s words, most television broadcasters require the translators to limit 60-70 characters displayed on the screen for five or six seconds (2000:247). On the other hand, Diaz Cintas and Ramael highlight that only 30-40 characters can be displayed on the screen (2007:247). Furthermore, the subtitles cannot exceed three lines of text on the screen. As a result, the translator needs to adopt the shortening/deletion of the source text. This is a difficult decision in trying to preserve the understanding of the message and still omit some parts of the speech that are not essential. The translator decides to use the intersemiotic redundancy to “enable the viewer to supplement the semiotic content of the subtitles with information from other audiovisual channels” (2000:247).

On the other hand, intrasemiotic redundancy is best suited for spontaneous speech. In the words of Gottlieb that “not only the informative content but also the verbal style of the speaker is better served with some reduction in the subtitles” (2000:247). Therefore, the translator can omit different repetitions, definitions, or synonyms. This way, long and complex sentences with subordinate sentences can become shorter and more straightforward. In the case of humour translation, the translator’s task is even more complicated as he needs to be able to convey the information of the text and achieve a humorous effect in the target language. Furthermore, the translator needs to consider the dialogues of the film and elements like images, music, other sounds, and written details, taking the complexity of audiovisual translation way above the rendering of a source text into a target text.

As previously mentioned, this essay will analyse the rendering of some subtitles from English into Romanian for the film Rush Hour 2 to exemplify some of the challenges and strategies faced by the translator in the complex process of translating humour in an audiovisual context.

Please consider the following table:

In the first example, the translator chose a direct translation of the source text by retaining the cultural reference to the American rock band. Moreover, he decided to keep the expression ‘Greatest Hits’ as this would be common on any musical CD in Romania, thus a usual term for the Romanian audience and culture.

The second example is a clear strategy of omission. The translator decided to omit “you’re going to show me” and just keep “good time” (on my own).

The third example contains the slang word “trade” generalised in Romanian with the word “action”.

In the fourth example, the translator decided to substitute “Women think I’m cute” with “Women like me” in Romanian and keep the cultural reference of Snoopy.

The fifth example highlights the translator’s decision to convert the imperial units (USA) into metric units (EU) by using an official equivalent for the Romanian audience and still achieve a humorous effect-that Lee is short.

In the sixth example in the table, the translator decided to use a calque, a rigid literal translation of the word “you”. There is no name “Tu” in Romanian, but this strategy was used to retain the same wordplay from the target language and achieve a humorous effect in Romanian.

The final example presented in this study is the strategy of explicitation, an expansion of the text. The translator decided to give a short definition of the “Gefillte fish”-“salmon mini-rolls” (cornulete cu somon).

In conclusion, translating humour in the AVT context involves great difficulty due to the semiotic modalities present in the source text, mainly due to cultural and linguistic dissimilarities between the two languages. The main task of the translator is to achieve a humorous effect in the target language by employing various strategies like direct translation, addition, omission, substitution, etc. These several strategies have been exemplified by analysing a selection of seven English subtitles with their Romanian translated version.