Translating Audio-Visual Humor--A Case Study

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TRANSLATING AUDIOVISUAL HUMOUR. A CASE STUDYJuan José Martínez-Sierra a

a Castellón, Spain

Online Publication Date: 13 April 2006

To cite this Article Martínez-Sierra, Juan José(2006)'TRANSLATING AUDIOVISUAL HUMOUR. A CASESTUDY',Perspectives,13:4,289 — 296

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TRANSLATING AUDIOVISUAL HUMOUR. A CASE STUDY

Juan José Martínez-Sierra, Castellón, [email protected]

AbstractThis article presents a descriptive and discursive analysis of how elements in humorous ex-

tracts from an animated American television show (The Simpsons) fared in overcoming linguistic and intercultural barriers in dubbing (English-Spanish). The analysis is based on several Transla-tion Studies and Pragmatics methods and on a taxonomy of humorous elements in audiovisual texts. These were used to (1) quantify and (2) analyse the humorous elements in the source and target texts, (3) calculate the percentage of humour in the source texts that had been realised in the target versions, (4) make observations on humour translation in animated serials; and, finally, (5) create a list of translational tendencies – potential norms – in humour translation in audiovisual texts.

Key-words: English-Spanish; audiovisual translation; humour; intercultural communi-cation; norms; relevance.

ObjectivesThe objectives of the study discussed here were: • firstly, to set up a method for the analysis of humour in audiovisual trans-

lation by means of the relevance theory, descriptive studies, and certain intercultural communication approaches;

• secondly, to describe some mechanisms in the translation of humour in audiovisual texts; and,

• thirdly, to identify translational tendencies that could serve in future stud-ies, which might confirm or disprove the existence of translational norms in humour translation in audiovisual texts.

CorpusFor this study, I selected The Simpsons, an animated American television serial

that is telecasted in many countries. The focus was on the translation – mainly via dubbing – of excerpts from the series in order to identify tendencies in hu-mour translation in audiovisual texts. The programme was ideal for this pur-pose, since most segments in the source version were humorous and should be so in the translated versions as well. Besides, the humour in a good many of these comical segments was based on elements of the cultural context.

The choice of this series was determined by several factors: (a) it is popular, (b) it has been aired for about fi�een years, (c) I personally like it, and (d) all epi-sodes show two characteristics that I consider relevant to the study: a humorous nature and cultural specificity. Thus, the only selection criterion applied to the twenty episodes initially screened was that they were available to me (on VHS tapes or DVDs).

I chose four episodes from different seasons (namely the 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 11th). The reason for this selection was that these episodes would reflect – to a degree – the logical evolution of the series in the course of not simply one year, but over the fi�een years of running time.

The episodes eventually selected were (including the title of the English

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0907-676X/05/04/289-8 $20.00Perspectives: Studies in Translatology

© 2005 Juan Rosé Martínez-SierraVol. 13, No. 4, 2005

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2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 4

source text and the title of the dubbed (Castilian) Spanish version):

• Bart vs. Thanksgiving - Bart en el Día de Acción de Gracias• Cape Fear- El Cabo del Miedo• Treehouse of Horror VII - Especial Halloween VII• Beyond Blunderdome - Más allá de la Cúpula del Fracaso

In the four source versions, I identified a total of 365 examples of humour. These were analysed as a whole, while 63 of them were singled out for specific study.

Theoretical frameThis study is primarily encompassed within the communicative-sociocultur-

al approach of Translation Studies. The framework of the study is based on de-scriptive, manipulation-school, functionalist, and relevance theories, since, ac-cording to my own concept of ‘translation’, it is not possible to conduct a study like this by limiting it to a single approach. There is, in addition, some influence from Cultural Studies (as culture is a key element) and Pragmatics (which was used in the analysis).

A taxonomy of humorous elements My study elaborates the taxonomy of jokes formulated by Patrick Zabalbeas-

coa (1993 and 1996).1 This ad hoc taxonomy came to consist of 8 levels and was used for analysing the audiovisual jokes in the chosen sample. Below, I provide (in bold) one illustrative example of each element - all from the episode ‘Tree-house of Horror VII’:

1. Community-and-Institutions Elements refer to cultural or intertextual fea-tures that are rooted and tied to a specific culture.

Example: [Situation] Homer has been abducted by aliens. He witnesses how two aliens adopt the appearance of two well-known American politicians (Rob-ert Dole and Bill Clinton).Homer: [screaming in terror] Oh, no! Aliens, bio-duplication, nude conspiracies... Oh my God! Lyndon LaRouche was right!

These types of elements can include, like here, politicians (Dole, Clinton, and LaRouche), celebrities, an organisations, a newspapers, books, films, etc. The reference can be explicit or implicit and acoustic as well as visual. Elements in this category present or evoke the image of some specific ref-erent in the culture.

2. Community-Sense-of-Humour Elements, the topics of which appear to be more popular in certain communities than in others, an idea that does not imply any cultural specificity, but rather a preference. Hence, they are not tied to specific cultural elements, but to “the deposit of knowledge, expe-rience, beliefs, values, … acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving” (Samovar and Porter 1997: 12-13); in short, to culture in its broadest sense. Again, the reference can be explicit or implicit, acoustic or visual.

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Example: [Situation] Lisa has been transported to a mini-world she has created. The mini-world’s leader welcomes her.Leader: Welcome to our world, most gracious Lisa.Lisa: Your world is incredible. And you speak English!

3. Linguistic Elements are based on linguistic features. They may be explicit or implicit, spoken or wri�en.

Example (which follows the previous one): Leader: Welcome to our world, most gracious Lisa.Lisa: Your world is incredible. And you speak English!Leader: We have listened to you speak since the dawn of time, oh Creator. And we have learned to imatoot you exarktly.

4. Visual Elements comprise a differentiation between the humour produced by what we can see on the screen and those elements that in fact constitute a visually coded version of a linguistic element.

Example: [Situation] Homer is trying to escape from the aliens. He reaches the space ship’s cockpit. We can see and hear how he hits the control panel in his a�empts to start the engine.

5. Graphic Elements: This type includes the humour derived from a wri�en message inserted in a screen picture.2

Example: [Situation] Two aliens are about to a�ack the White House. In front of the president’s residence we see a banner. On the banner we read that this is the day the president takes office.“Inauguration Day”

6. Paralinguistic Elements. In my view, both quantitatively and qualitatively paralinguistic features are significant enough for them to constitute a cat-egory of their own. This group includes the non-verbal qualities of a voice, such as the intonation, the rhythm, the tone, the timbre, the resonance, etc., which are associated with expressions of emotions such as screams, sighs, or laughter (Frederic Chaume 2003: 222). I also include narrative silence (Fernando Poyatos 1995) in this category. These elements are characterised as being humorous and adding information to the plot. They are explicit and oral.

Example: An element is found in the first example noted (above).Homer: [screaming in terror] Oh, no! Aliens, bio-duplication, nude conspira-cies... Oh my God! Lyndon LaRouche was right!

7. Non-Marked (Humorous) Elements represent miscellaneous instances that

are not easily categorised as one of the other categories but are, neverthe-less, humorous. They may have either an acoustic or a visual form, and can be either explicit or implicit.

Example: [Situation] The Simpson family starts searching for Bart’s wicked twin brother who poses a threat to them. Homer orders everybody to search some specific place. When he turns to his son Bart, his command is: Homer: Bart, you stay home and tape the hockey game.

8. Sound Elements. This final category is inspired by the sound jokes defined by

Adrián Fuentes (2001).3 They are sounds that by themselves or in combi-

Martínez-Sierra. Translating Audiovisual Humour. A Case Study. 291



nation with others may be humorous. They are explicitly and acoustically found in the soundtrack and the special effects when these contribute to the humour.4

Example: This is evident in the situation referred to in Visual Elements (above), where we could see and hear how Homer hits the space ship’s control panel. A second later, we can also hear the noise of the ship’s engine starting.

The AnalysisThe analysis occurred in two stages: 1. A global analysis of all source jokes and their translations, in which the

humorous elements were classified and subdivided according to the ab-sence (Group 1) or presence (Group 2) of changes or losses – quantitative or qualitative, total or partial – in their humorous loads a�er their transla-tion (‘humorous load’ refers to the number of discrete humorous elements that the joke includes, so it is a quantitative concept). And

2. A pragmatic-intercultural analysis of jokes in Group 2 in order to explain why their ‘humorous loads’ had experienced some kind of change or loss. In this context, the principle of relevance became prominent in terms of ex-isting and contextual assumptions, as well as concerning cognitive effects (which are the ones that, ultimately, determine each fragment’s relevance and pragmatic reward in the form of humour). In order to illustrate how each Group 2 segment was analysed, I can use an analysis of Card 43:

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Card: 43Season: 2Episode: Bart vs. Thanksgiving – Bart en el Día de Acción de Gracias Joke Number: A 23Context: The Simpson family gathers to have dinner on Thanksgiving Day.American source version: A taxi arrives at the Simpsons’ house with Marge’s mother. The driver gets out of the taxi to open the door for her, but she gets out through another one. So� background music.Spanish target version:The same: There is no dialogue. At first glance, it is a 100% match between the source and the target versions.Load difference:

Cognitive environment and effects on the American audience:

• Existing assumptions:1. Families usually gather for dinner to celebrate Thanksgiving.2. It is not unusual for a taxi driver to open the door for an elderly person.3. The music is from We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing, a hymn that is

traditional on Thanksgiving Day.

• Contextual assumptions:1. Marge’s mother turns up at her daughter’s to have dinner with her family.2. The taxi driver gets out of his car to open a door for her, but she gets out through

another one.3. There is music.

• Cognitive effects:1. Contextual assumption 1 reinforces existing assumption 1 (families gather).2. Part of contextual assumption 2 reinforces existing assumption 2 (the possibility

that a taxi driver gets out to open the door for an elderly person). 3. Contextual implications:In view of existing assumption 2 and contextual assumption 2, it is surprising that

the woman ignores the taxi driver’s gesture. In combination with existing assumption 3, contextual assumption 3 produces sat-

isfaction (the background music is the hymn).The combination of existing assumption 2 and contextual assumptions 2 and 3

makes for a disparity between the action seen and the music that the audience hears.

Comment: This joke remains successful in the target version because it plays both on visual ele-ments (grandmother ignores the taxi driver) and sound elements (the music). Since the visual element does not vary, both existing assumption 2 and contextual assumption 2 are possible in the Spanish version, just like cognitive effects 2 and 3.1. However, in the American source version, the sound element, being a hymn, also implies a community-and-institutions element. This element is not realised by the target audience, since the hymn is unfamiliar to the Spanish viewers. Even so, the sound ensures some measure of amusement by providing a contrast to what happens on the visual side. To a Span-ish audience, the music suggests something harmonious, a mood that is broken when grandmother ignores the taxi driver’s gesture (the cognitive effect 3.3).


American source version: Community-and-institutions + visual +

sound elements

Spanish target version: Visual + sound elements



Quantitative materialThere were 365 items that I identified as jokes. Of these, 264 (72.3%) belong

to Group 1, while 101 (27.7%) fall in Group 2 and, roughly and quantitatively speaking, were rendered as follows:

Out of these 101 jokes, 81 suffered a partial loss of humorous load in the Spanish version; 6 lost their humorous load totally; 9 had the same degree of humorous load but with a different content; and for 5, the load was increased.

Overall, the humorous load of the 365 jokes was diminished in the Spanish version in 22.2% of the cases. In the same terms, only 1.7% of the renditions con-tained no humorous element at all, whereas 1.4% had a higher humorous load than did the original English.

In sum, only 14.4% of all the elements that had a potential for producing humour in the source texts were not realised in the Spanish target texts. These instances comprised primarily community-and-institutions, community-sense-of-humour, and graphic elements.

Conclusions and tendenciesThe most obvious conclusion from my analysis is that in the selected audio-

visual sample, most humour is translatable, as is shown by the small percent-ages of diminished humorous load in the target versions.

Secondly, the analysis shows the importance of having shared background knowledge - existing assumptions - between the source- and target-language audiences. This also highlights the crucial role of translators as mediators: the be�er they are at identifying intercultural barriers, the be�er the inferential process, and very likely the more successful their translation.

Thirdly, the study confirms that translation of humour in audiovisual texts is a line of work of its own, since it demands that translators render sets of hu-morous elements that interact in ways that do not co-exist in other genres or discourses.

Fourthly, rather than restricting translators, visual components o�en contrib-ute to a be�er understanding of target texts. Accordingly, it might be advisable to vary the approach with which audiovisual translation is usually analysed and to cast doubt on the notion of the image as a restrictive factor, at least quan-titatively.

The categorisation of humorous elements in this study has proved useful for se�ing up a means for gauging and quantifying humorous elements, their ren-ditions, and their occurrence and nature in source texts and translations. It is worthwhile noting that even when the form and the content of a target humor-ous element is different from the one it corresponds to in the source version, it may still have comical potential – o�en reduced but occasionally improved – in terms of humorous load.

Overall, the study shows that there is a clear tendency to convey the humour in the jokes, which is accomplished, mainly, by rendering the same humorous elements in the target version. In so far as the humorous load is diminished, it appears that translators strive to make the reduction (‘loss’) minimal. This un-willingness to accept a total absence of humorous load in target texts shows that they give high priority to the translation of humour. It also indicates that most humorous and cultural elements are translatable. A�er all, the percentage

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of source texts jokes for which the humorous load was not rendered at all was 1.7% – and the load actually increased for 1.4% of the jokes.

Other identified tendencies included the following: The Simpsons’ humour is compound humour in terms of humorous load, and the intention to keep that same type of compound humour in the translated version is evident; even though dubbing is the dominant translational practice for the series, there should be li�le hesitation to resort to subtitling in order to maintain the humour; there is also a tendency toward the use of foreignising solutions; and, finally, the preceding tendency entails another one, to avoid the use of community-and-institutions and community-sense-of-humour elements specific to the target cultural system.

Future Perspectives The results call for reception studies to confirm whether the quantitative re-

duction of humorous load in the target version also implies a qualitative reduc-tion in the humorous effect on the audience.

The results also justify additional descriptive studies to falsify, revise, or con-firm the generalising validity of the tendencies I have identified, for use in other audiovisual corpora and, possibly, to define them as translational norms.

A further descriptive study might explore the tendencies that depend on whether humorous elements appear alone or in combination with others.

Finally, I also want to emphasise the idea of developing a comparative, dia-chronic study that focuses on whether the humour in the series has changed and the ways in which translators have dealt with it.

Notes1. I prefer the term ‘element’ to ‘joke’, because a joke may comprise several ‘elements’. I suggest that we can easily distinguish between simple jokes (with one element) and compound jokes (with two or more elements). 2. For this category, I use Chaume’s terminology (2004). He refers to wri�en language that appears on the screen. I understand that we may receive humour from the merging of visual and wri�en components. 3. Díaz-Cintas (2001) has a fine discussion of the sound category, in which he seems to include paralinguistic information.4. Although certain types of elements (‘content elements’) can convey meaning and pro-duce humor by themselves, others (‘vehicular elements’) o�en function as vehicles of meaning for the former, although they may also produce humor on their own. In the content group, we find the non-marked, community-and-institutions, and community-sense-of-humor categories (all directly connected with the cultural context). The other elements are located within the vehicular group.

Works citedChaume, Frederic. 2003. Doblatge i subtitulació per a la TV. Vic: Eumo.Chaume, Frederic. 2004. Cine y tradución. Madrid: Cátedra.Díaz-Cintas, Jorge. 2001. Aspectos semióticos en la subtitulación de situaciones cómicas.

In: Pajares, Eterio & Raquel Merino & José M. Santamaría (eds.). Trasvases Culturales: Literatura, Cine, Traducción 3. Vitoria: Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. 119-130.

Fuentes, Adrián. 2001. La recepción del humor audiovisual traducido: estudio compara-tivo de fragmentos de las versiones doblada y subtitulada al español de la película Duck Soup, de los hermanos Marx. [PhD thesis. University of Granada].

Poyatos, Fernando. 1995. Paralanguage and extrasomatic and environmental sounds in literary translation: Perspectives and problems. TextconText 1. 25-45.

Samovar, Larry A. & Richard E. Porter (eds.). 1997. Intercultural Communication. New York: Wadsworth & Peter Lang.

Zabalbeascoa, Patrick. 1993. Developing Translation Studies to Be�er Account for Au-diovisual Texts and Other New Forms of Text Production. [PhD thesis. University of Lleida].

Zabalbeascoa, Patrick. 1996. Translating Jokes for Dubbed Television Situation Come-




dies. In: Delabastita, Dirk (ed.). The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication. Manchester: St. Jerome. 235-257.

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