Humour in translation can be caused by translation errors, because of irregularities and discrepancies between certain items that translators attempt to translate. This could be due to the ignorance of the translator, as well as the untranslatability of the text as a result of linguistic or cultural differences. In addition, translation errors can be caused by the language incompetence of the translator in the target language, resulting in unintended ambiguity in the message conveyed. Translation errors can distort the intended meaning of the author or speaker, to the point of absurdity and ludicrousness, giving a humorous and comedic effect.
Translation errors can cause accidental humour, which is similar in effect to intentional humour. Like intentional humour, accidental humour is also a combination of linguistics and culture-specific features, with humour generating devices (like words and phrases) embedded in it, and is just as competent in conveying humour.
Most translation errors are due to the
untranslatability
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a ''lacuna'', or lexical gap. The term arises when descr ...
of the language and the failure of linguistic
domestication
Domestication is a sustained multi-generational relationship in which humans assume a significant degree of control over the reproduction and care of another group of organisms to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that group. ...
and
foreignization processes. For instance, idiomatic expressions of Chinese like 多多少少 (
duɔ duɔ ʃaʊ ʃaʊˈ) means ‘to an extent’ in English. However, if literally translated, the same phrase can mean ‘many many few few’, losing its original meaning and creating a ludicrous expression of meaning.
A case of untranslatability was evident when Coca-Cola first entered the Chinese market in 1928. Initially, Chinese transliterations of "Coca-Cola" used Chinese characters that, when they were combined as a written phrase, resulted in ridiculous readings such as "female horse fastened with wax", or "bite the wax tadpole". There was hence a need to find four Chinese characters with
pronunciations
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
that approximated the sound of "Coca-Cola", without producing a nonsensical or adverse meaning. This
brand blunder
A brand blunder is an error associated with the branding of a product, especially a new product in a new market. Reasons for such slips include the lack of understanding of the language, culture and consumer attitudes in the new market.
There ar ...
was eventually solved with the characters
可口可乐, which could be translated as "to allow the mouth to be able to rejoice".
Hence the combination and translation of words expressed must conform to the target culture and literal
language interpretation or it would result in hilarious misunderstandings. Prime examples of such errors come in the form of poorly translated sign posts, notices and menus that fail to cater the intended meaning to both foreign and local speakers. A famous early example was the nineteenth Century Portuguese-English phrase book, ''
English as She Is Spoke
, commonly known by the name ''English as She Is Spoke'', is a 19th-century book written by Pedro Carolino, with some editions crediting José da Fonseca as a co-author. It was intended as a Portuguese–English conversational guide or phrase b ...
''.
Translation difficulties
Colloquial expressions and conventions in the source language can cause humour or result in a strange interpretation from the listener or reader in instances when they are not translated into equivalent expressions or conventions in the target language, and instead are translated mechanically or word-for-word.
Difficulties with translation can arise from differences in word order, or from culture-bound expressions, and often also because of the inflexibility of
machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...
. Also, it is due partly to the existence of multiple cultural, linguistic and semantic factors which requires machine translation to be supplemented by a human translator to convey the intended message of the source text.
Translation difficulties can therefore cause translation errors, which can result in humour. A more specific elaboration of various causes of translation errors is discussed below.
Translation error types and resultant humour
Below are some components of linguistic stimulus theories that attempts to explain the way humour might be derived from translations, as adapted from "Accidental Humor in International Public Notices Displayed in English" by M. Farghal in 2006.
External factors like cultural awareness, time considerations, social class and educational considerations, along with internal factors like situation and narrative strategy also plays a big part in the effect of translation on humour.
Ambiguity
Words that are
homonym
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones ( equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definiti ...
ic, paronymic,
alliterative
Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
or rhyming, or metalinguistic devices of language can be used to produce humour. Also, wordplay which includes the use of puns, one liners,
limericks
A limerick ( ) is a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude, in five-line, predominantly trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and ...
, witticisms, among various others, can be another way to produce humour.
For example, these are some funny translations done by machine translators:
* In the office of a doctor in Rome: ''Specialist in women and other diseases''.
* In a Japanese hotel: ''You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid''.
* In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: ''Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar''.
Semantic overlap
Humour can result from the interlocutor's inability to understand
homonyms
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones ( equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition ...
,
homographs
A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
or semantically related
synonym words. Similarly, words with superordinate and subordinate relationships are confused.
Overlapping semantics are difficult to distinguish, especially in translation. Words with multiple meanings (
polysemous
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a single ...
words) are mostly untranslatable, especially if they contain many connotations. Confusion of sense relations can also result because of semantic overlap. Confusion of sense relations in the set includes the improper use of superonym for hyponym, hyponym for superonym, a whole word for a partial word, a partial word for a whole word, antonym, confusion of co-hyponyms, and misuse of near-synonyms.
An example of semantic overlap found in a golf course:
"''ANY PERSONS (EXCEPT PLAYERS) CAUGHT COLLECTING GOLF BALLS ON THIS COURSE WILL BE PROSECUTED AND HAVE THEIR BALLS REMOVED''"
The interlocutor's erroneous choice of word ''removed'' instead of ''confiscated'' results in accidental humor in the context as shown in the example above. Semantically, ''removed'' is a commonly used word to express the action ‘take away’ and both are related in terms of sense. ''Removed'' thus may be used as a superordinate form that includes the action of ''taking away''. The humorous aspect of this situation is intensified by the strong use of word ''removed'' in the phrase ''have their balls removed'', which suggests an
orchidectomy (removal of the testicles) instead of the much less extreme action of confiscation. With the overlapping of semantics, the intended message is thus misinterpreted and accidental humor is resulted.
Lexico-semantic clusterings can result in paradigmatic errors. It reflects the relations between related words and expressions, which is mainly of paradigmatic relations. The humor above is triggered by the translated text consisting of a script-switch trigger, which then results in the double reading. The irony is not lost in the contexts provided.
Lexical gaps (Pragmatics)
Lexical gaps concerns words or phrases having no direct translation in any given language.
Humor, then, results from the interlocutor's inability to grasp the lexical gaps in the target language and linguistic representations may either be over generalised or under-generalised to the point of absurdity.
The humour comes from the translator filling in an English lexical gap based on the lexical noun, "miss" by adding a prefix ''mis-''. English employs the two verbs ''miss the carriage'' and ''miscarriages'' to mean vastly different actions. There is a lexical gap in English because the action of ''missing a carriage'' cannot be expressed with the same import and the same economy of verbalisation. The misuse of this lexical gap and overgeneralisation conflates the ludicrous idea of the horse-driven tours with no miscarriages.
From this example , the interlocutor did not understand English derivations of ‘doer’ nouns such as, ''specialist'', or
suppletion such as, ''experts'' and mistakenly uses the derivational pattern to coin a lexeme from ''method''. Accidental humour ensues as a result of the same word coinciding with the unlikely homophone ''Methodist'', which refers to the Christian religious denomination, creating a ridiculous situation in the context of dentistry.
An American slogan for Salem cigarettes was, "Salem - Feeling Free,". When translated for marketing in the Japanese market, it means, "When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty". This is an example of the translator trying to fill in the connotations of the lexical unit "free", perhaps because of limited vocabulary competency; this thus resulted in an intralingual error. In this case there are actually Japanese terms equivalent to the adjective, "free" (e.g., 自由な).
All being said, languages do have a
productive (linguistics)
In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. It compares grammatical processes that are in frequent use to less frequently used ones that tend toward ...
and recursion property that can also allow words and phrases to combine creatively to fill in the lexical gaps.
For example,
Telugu expressions above can seem nearly impossible to translate. But with the usage of English to translate and establish the context, the meanings of the expression can be derived to be understandable.
Morpho-phonological similarity
In some cases, incidental humor is produced when interlocutors erroneously use
lexemes based on vague morpho-phonological similarity to the target word.
Japan's second-largest tourist agency was bewildered when it initially entered English markets and began receiving overwhelming requests for sexual tours. When they finally understood the problem with their name, Kinki Nippon Tourist Company decided to change it.
An interesting and amusing example would be the pronunciation of English words with Chinese translatability by actor Xiao Xiao Bin in the 2010 comedy-martial arts film ''
Just Call Me Nobody
''Just Call Me Nobody'' () is a 2010 comedy-martial arts film directed by Kevin Chu. The film is about a bumbling cobbler ( Xiao Shen Yang) who becomes a martial arts master.
Plot
In ancient China, a poor shoe repair man Wu Di ( Xiao Shen Yang) ...
'':
The examples from (1) to (7) illustrate the complete loss of the original meaning of the English words. Though the Chinese-to-English words sound almost phonetically correct, the pronunciation is easily translatable to a Chinese lexeme of a depressing meaning (e.g. : ‘All die’). With the juxtaposition of the intended and accidental meaning with the cheerful
pragmatics
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the in ...
of the film, the translation becomes a hilariously erroneous one.
Misspelling
Misspelled words can be portrayed as the most basic level of inducing unintentional humor that occurs in all translations, especially in signs or restaurants' menus. The ability to create humor out of misspelled words in translations happens in particular when the lexical items in a phrase or sentence are well-known and common to English speakers but in a particular context; the lexical items appears to possess a totally different meaning that could be inappropriate at times.
References
Using the wrong reference may change the translator's intended meaning and lead to multiple comical interpretations for the readers, thus, producing various humorous scripts. For example,
(1) A sign in a Chinese Safari Park states "大象在此 请留在车上 Elephants Here Please Stay In Your Car"
The translator intended to refer the general public that are visiting the park as the implicit reference marker of the sign by using the co-referential anaphor 'your', but failed to do so and instead, the explicit anaphor 'Your' unintentionally picks up 'elephants' as the textual referent. Thus, this give rise to a humorous script that looks as though that the sign is meant for the elephants and not the people. This example also highlights the importance of having punctuation to serve as a cohesion device because if the translator were to put a full stop or exclamation point after the word 'Elephants Here', the anaphor 'your' would have been interpreted literally by readers. It would have also eliminated a humorous reading.
(2) An article in ''Soviet Weekly'' reports "There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years."
Similarly, there is a mishap of the anaphoric reference marker 'these', which to the interpretation of readers, refers to 'Soviet Republic painters and sculptors'. Thus, it conveys the idea that thousands of painters and sculptors were
executed
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
over the past two years. In terms of the translator's intentions, the reference marker 'these' actually refers textually to the referent 'Arts' or, perhaps, 'the painters and sculptors' works' and not the 'Soviet Republic painters and sculptors' themselves. Hence, this script lacks an eligible textual referent to accurately bring across the intended message. Although this script is easily decipherable based upon one's basic knowledge, it still causes laughter.
Word order
Word order is the way in which syntactic constituents of a language arrange itself in a phrase or a sentence. Different languages employ different structures of word order. Direct translation of one language to another may result in wrong placement of a phrase in relation to the other constituents in the sentence. This may cause a change to the initial meaning of the translator and hence, may trigger a humorous script.
Because of to the incorrect placement of the adverbial phrase ‘daily except Thursday’ at the end of the sentence, this script generates unintentional humor in its translation. The adverbial phrase ‘daily except Thursday’ becomes a post-modifier which misguides the reader into thinking that the script is about the act of burying ‘famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers’, instead of conveying the act of visiting the cemetery. Apparently, the translator wanted to avoid a possible awkwardness of phrasing the post-modifier after the appropriate act, but was unaware that the parentheses applied would also enclose another awkward and comical adverbial at the same time.
Likewise, the humour in this case is also caused by the wrong placement of the prepositional phrase ‘with nuts’ as a post-modifier of ‘the ladies’ instead of its intended referent ‘cocktails’ as a post-modifier. Although the mishap is triggered by the mistaken word order, which can be changed to "Special cocktails with nuts for the ladies", it would still have remained as an awkward sentence because of the polysemous word ‘nuts’. Thus, if the word ‘nuts’ were to be replaced with ‘cashews’, a humorous translation error could have been avoided. Therefore, attachment sites of prepositional phrases are a notorious source of ambiguity in English.
[Farghal, M. (2006). Accidental Humor in International Public Notices Displayed in English. ''Journal of Intercultural Communication'', (12), 2. Retrieved from http://immi.se/intercultural/nr12/farghal.htm]
See also
*
Humour
Humour ( Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in ...
*
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
*
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...
*
Engrish
''Engrish'' is a slang term for the inaccurate, nonsensical or ungrammatical use of the English language by native speakers of Japanese, as well as Chinese and other Asian languages. The word itself relates to Japanese speakers' tendency to ...
, mistakes in the English produced by Japanese speakers can be humorous to native speakers.
* ''
English as she is spoke
, commonly known by the name ''English as She Is Spoke'', is a 19th-century book written by Pedro Carolino, with some editions crediting José da Fonseca as a co-author. It was intended as a Portuguese–English conversational guide or phrase b ...
'', a phrase book full of mistakes.
* "
Prawo Jazdy", an alleged criminal in Ireland whose name comes from the Polish phrase for "driver's licence" (as erroneously entered by the Irish police onto their records).
References
{{Reflist
Humour
Translation
Interlinguistics