Puns Lost in Translation. Contrasting English Puns and Their German Translations in the Television Show "How I Met Your Mother" E-Book

Julie Dillenkofer

• Herausgeber: GRIN Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 190

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Translating a text into another language is a process mostly known in the area of literature. At the same time (even though often disregarded in this connection), translation is a central part of filmmaking. Since the emergence of sound films in the 1930s, screen translation (that is, subtitling, dubbing and voice-over) has become a tradition in Europe. In Germany, dubbing has been the universalized means of defying language barriers in the field of movie and television ever since. However, it is commonly believed that translated movies and television series lack certain features as compared to their original. Disapproval of dubbed movies and television shows has become quite frequent in Germany, not necessarily among linguists and/or multilingual people exclusively. In the case of dubbed sitcoms which originate in the United States, it is safe to say that the German audience repeatedly stumbles upon scenes that are entirely incomprehensible and, even more perplexing, end in the laugh track which is typically inserted in US situation comedies. Clearly, the source text contains a joke that has been lost in translation. But what are the reasons for such ineffective adaptations? Is it the fact that the original jokes include a culturespecific term that is only understandable in the source language or is simply the translators’ carelessness to blame? Research in media, humor and translation studies reveals that wordplays2 are a universal phenomenon which is generally considered untranslatable. In this paper, I argue that the German dubbed versions of US American sitcoms lose a great deal of their humor since language jokes, particularly puns, are rarely successfully translated. The dubbed versions include a remarkably large number of literal translations and even direct copies of English words which not only are no longer funny, but are also incomprehensible in the target language. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that no research on English puns and their German dubbed translations has been conducted to date. Therefore, I will examine how English puns are adapted in the corresponding German translations. For this study, I will analyze the popular US television series How I Met Your Mother, which ran in the United States from 2005 to 2014 and is well-known for its jokes and frequent use of puns.

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Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations

1 Introduction

2 Contrasting English Puns and Their German Translations

2.1 Previous Studies on Pun Translation in Dubbed Television

2.2 Defining Puns

2.3 Classification of Puns

2.4 Translation of Puns

2.4.1 Problems Involved in Pun Translation

2.4.2 Humor Translation

2.4.3 A Note on Television Translation

3 Puns Lost in Translation: A Case Study of the Puns in How I Met Your Mother

3.1 Material

3.2 Method

3.3 Results

3.3.1 Linguistic Classification

3.3.2 Translation Modes

3.3.3 Successful Pun Translations

3.3.4 Unsuccessful Pun Translations

3.4 Discussion

4 Conclusion

5 Bibliography

5.1 Corpora

5.2 Secondary literature

5.3 Electronic Resources

6 Appendix

List of Tables

Table 1: Linguistic categories of puns

Table 2: Linguistic and formal types of spoken and written puns

Table 3: Categories of spoken puns

Table 4: General pun translation techniques

Table 5: Pun translation techniques for dubbed television

Table 6: Occurrences of source text puns in HIMYM

Table 7: Translation types of puns in HIMYM

Table 8: Source text puns and their successful translation modes in HIMYM

Table 9: Translation modes of the successful pun translations in HIMYM

Table 10: Successful adaptations in form of direct translations in HIMYM

Table 11: Successful adaptations in form of punoids in HIMYM

Table 12: Source text puns and their unsuccessful translation modes in HIMYM

Table 13: Translation modes of the unsuccessful pun translation in HIMYM

List of Figures

Figure 1: Square translation model, adopted from Low 2011: 63

Figure 2: Pentagon translation model, adopted from Low 2011: 64

Figure 3: Hexagon translation model, adopted from Low 2011: 64

Figure 4: Circle translation model, adopted from Low 2011: 65

Figure 5: Translation challenge of a visual homophone, both screenshots adopted from HIMYM 2012, E11

Figure 6: Translation challenge of a metaphorical extension

Figure 7: Translation challenge of non-paronymic equivalents

Figure 8: Translation challenge of non-polysemous equivalents

Figure 9: Translation challenge of non-polysemous compound equivalents

Figure 10: Translation challenge of non-polysemous forename equivalents

List of Abbreviations

1 Introduction

Translating a text into another language is a process mostly known in the area of literature. At the same time (even though often disregarded in this connection), translation is a central part of filmmaking. Since the emergence of sound films in the 1930s, screen translation (that is, subtitling, dubbing and voice-over) has become a tradition in Europe. In Germany, dubbing has been the universalized means of defying language barriers in the field of movie and television ever since (cf. Cedeño Rojas 2007: 13, 30, 82; Herbst 1994: 19; Jüngst 2010: 4, 59; Leinert 2015: 51; Naumann 2015: 29; Tveit 2005: 11).

However, it is commonly believed that translated movies and television series lack certain features as compared to their original. Disapproval of dubbed movies and television shows has become quite frequent in Germany, not necessarily among linguists and/or multilingual people exclusively. In the case of dubbed sitcoms which originate in the United States, it is safe to say that the German audience[1] repeatedly stumbles upon scenes that are entirely incomprehensible and, even more perplexing, end in the laugh track which is typically inserted in US situation comedies. Clearly, the source text contains a joke that has been lost in translation. But what are the reasons for such ineffective adaptations? Is it the fact that the original jokes include a culture-specific term that is only understandable in the source language or is simply the translators’ carelessness to blame? Research in media, humor and translation studies reveals that wordplays[2] are a universal phenomenon which is generally considered untranslatable (cf. Delabastita 1993: 173-177; Heibert 1993: 155, Pisek 1997: 37, 43; Schröter 2010: 141-142).

In this paper, I argue that the German dubbed versions of US American sitcoms lose a great deal of their humor since language jokes, particularly puns, are rarely successfully translated. The dubbed versions include a remarkably large number of literal translations and even direct copies of English words which not only are no longer funny, but are also incomprehensible in the target language. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that no research on English puns and their German dubbed translations has been conducted to date. Therefore, I will examine how English puns are adapted in the corresponding German translations. For this study, I will analyze the popular US television series How I Met Your Mother, which ran in the United States from 2005 to 2014 and is well-known for its jokes and frequent use of puns. I will first categorize the translation of puns in the fields of contrastive linguistics and translation studies and reflect on the question of translatability of puns in general. Then, I will give a brief overview of the studies that have focused on the translation of puns in screen translation and literary works. The next section defines the term pun and illustrates how wordplays can be classified linguistically. After demonstrating the various possibilities of translating puns, I will explain the central problems involved in translating lexical items from one language into another. Next, the area of humor translation and the technical features of television translation, which may complicate a successful pun translation, will be briefly displayed. I will then investigate how English puns in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother are adapted in the German dubbed version and whether they uphold their comical effect. Thereafter, I will determine the reasons for the various unsuccessful translations, while examining whether certain pun types appear easier to translate than others. Lastly, I will discuss whether puns in the field of dubbing are actually translatable or not. The last three seasons of How I Met Your Mother include 72 episodes, contain a total of 155 puns, and provide a solid base for the contrastive study of English puns and their German translations.

2 Contrasting English Puns and Their German Translations

Translating from one language into another often entails certain difficulties. Contrastive linguistics, which studies the synchronic comparison of two languages, illustrates the typical linguistic as well as culture-specific challenges involved in translation. The related field of translation studies visualizes additional problems concerning media-specific and human constraints.

Apart from the basic difficulties translators have to deal with (see section 2.4.1), puns turn out to be even more problematic to adapt into another language. On the one hand, puns do not serve the purpose of communication per se but are rather a means of amusement. Consequently, their translation cannot simply be compared to other kinds of translation (cf. Vandaele 2002: 150) and should be discussed against the background of humor translation as well.[3] On the other hand, puns are based on particular graphe-mic, phonological, morphological, lexical as well as syntactic structures, which makes the translation process even more difficult. Therefore, puns are universally considered as one of the major challenges in the field of translation studies (cf. Delabastita 1994: 223, 229; Tęcza 1997: 1; Tveit 2005: 43).

In fact, it appears to be a widespread belief that puns can be understood only in their original form and exclusively by native speakers (cf. Heibert 1993: 155). As a result, puns are often believed to be untranslatable (cf. Delabastita 1993: 173-177; Heibert 1993: 155; Pisek 1997: 37, 43; Schröter 2010: 141-142) – unless the source and the target language coincidentally share the same cultural meanings and linguistic structures (cf. Attardo 2002: 190; Heibert 1993: 155). Needless to say, such parallels in different languages are quite infrequent.

An opposing point of view derives from a few scholars who claim that nearly all puns can be translated (cf. Gottlieb 1997: 226; Low 2011: 59, 67; Schröter 2010: 142-143; Tęcza 1997: 207) – even in the area of dubbing (cf. Schröter 2010: 143). Given that there are specific tools as to how translators can successfully adapt a wordplay into another language, the following case study will investigate the actual reasons for an ineffective pun translation.

2.1 Previous Studies on Pun Translation in Dubbed Television

Even though the literature on puns in general is vast, it seems that only little research has focused on the translation of puns in the media. In fact, there are no studies that linguistically analyze the translation of verbal puns from English to German on the basis of a US American television series and its German dubbed version.

There is one work that investigates the translation of jokes, including wordplays, in dubbed television comedy (the British sitcom Yes Minister), yet in consideration of their Catalan and Spanish adaptations (see Zabalbeascoa 1996). Unfortunately, this paper does not present a contrastive linguistic examination of the translations but instead aims to find solutions to the apparent difficulty of the translation of jokes. In summary, the author suggests specific stylesheets for the translators, so they not only become skilled at correct language use but are also trained for the translation of humor.

Considerably more attention has been directed to the translation of puns in the area of television subtitling. For instance, Gottlieb (1997) analyzes the Danish subtitled wordplays in the British television program Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown. The small study reveals that puns that are based on an identical phonological or graphemic representation of lexical items are more difficult to translate, as compared to other kinds of puns. The analysis also illustrates the reasons for the loss of puns in translation, such as language- and media-specific challenges. For the most part, however, Gottlieb holds human constraints (that is, the translators’ lack of talent, interest and/or experience, as well as time pressure) accountable for the loss of wordplays in general.

Jaki (2016) examines verbal humor in three American television shows (The Big Bang Theory, New Girl, as well as Grace and Frankie) and their German subtitles. Her study discloses that a high number of literal translations neutralize the majority of language plays (which, however, not only include puns, but also rhymes, alliterations, lexical blends, creative neologisms, literalizations of figurative language, phraseological modifications, misunderstandings and slips of the tongue). The author holds the technical restrictions in subtitling (reading speed and the maximum number of characters per line) as well as visual jokes responsible for the great loss of humor in subtitled television.

Schauffler (2015), on the other hand, contrasts two different approaches to the subtitling of wordplays using the short animation Wallace and Gromit in A Matter of Loaf and Death. Two German audiences were presented two versions of subtitling: one translation concentrates on the transfer of humor, whereas the other translation prioritizes the correspondence to the original conversations. The study reveals that the former approach is substantially preferred over the original subtitles that focus on equivalence. In other words, the tested German-speaking audiences consider subtitles with close translations less appealing than subtitles that are not too similar but maintain the jokes instead.

In a theoretical paper, Schröter (2010) claims that all kinds of language-plays in movies and television programs are translatable – both in dubbing and subtitling. He refers to his doctoral dissertation in which he compared the quality of dubbed and subtitled language-plays in American and British movies in terms of their German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish translations. Unfortunately, the reader has no insight into the material or the results; on the other hand, puns are not analyzed in isolation from other types of language-plays (such as modified expressions, nonce formations, nonce pronunciations, rhymes, half-rhymes and alliterations). Therefore, the essay is beneficial to the present study only with reference to Schröter’s postulation of a general translatability of language-plays in voice synchronization.

Further studies on pun translation can be found in the field of literature. For example, Grassegger (1985) analyzes the plays on words in the Asterix comics from French into English, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Swedish and Norwegian. His results show that the translators succeeded in translating wordplays while upholding the play on words and the sense. His study thus suggests that written wordplays can actually be translated into another language.

Heibert (1993) compares English wordplays in James Joyce’s Ulysses with numerous translations in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He concludes that wordplays may or may not be translated into another language. In his view, it is essentially a question of coincidence whether the target text translations comprise the essential technical, textual and functional aspects as the source text wordplays.

Tęcza (1997) examines Polish wordplays in eight works by Stanisław Lem (science fiction grotesque and science fiction fairy tales) and the quality of their German translations. As compared to Grassegger and Heibert, her study presents a relatively low translation rate of wordplays in written works.

Moreover, Delabastita (1993) studies a great number of wordplays in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and their translations into Dutch, German and French. His work is extremely meaningful for this paper since it comprises a precise translation model as to how puns can be translated into another language (successfully as well as unsuccessfully). In fact, Delabastita’s nine pun translation techniques are the base for the following categorization of puns and their translations from English to German. Complementary to Delabastita’s model, Low (2011) presents four linguistic tools for exclusively effective wordplay translations, which are also fundamental for the following examination of pun translations.

Regarding the linguistic description and categorization of wordplays, the earliest and simultaneously most dominant study derives from Hausmann (1974). In his investigation of wordplays in the French satiric newspaper Canard enchaîné, he organizes wordplays into several categories with regard to their lexical, phonological and graphemic ambiguity and/or similarity. The majority of academics examining the translation of puns adopted Hausmann’s classification model (e.g. Attardo 1994; Delabastita 1993/2004; Gottlieb 1997; Grassegger 1985; Heibert 1993; Tęcza 1997). It appears that Hausmann’s work on wordplays has served as a linguistic foundation not only in the past, but still provides a solid starting point for linguistic studies on puns today.

2.2 Defining Puns

The Oxford English Dictionary (2016a) defines pun as

[t]he use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations, or of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect.

In other words, the term pun refers to words which imply further connotations of an expression by means of playing on words that have multiple denotations and/or sound similar or even alike. The result is an amusing “play on words” (Oxford English Dictionary 2016a) which appears to be known universally as wordplay.

Wordplay, on the other hand, is defined as “the action of playing with words; witty use of words” (Oxford English Dictionary 2016b). It is therefore, literally, a play on words. At first, the term appears to have the same meaning as pun, particularly when considering the additional description of wordplay as “a pun” (Oxford English Dictionary 2016b).

Comparing the respective definitions in A Dictionary of Stylistics (Wales 2011: 349), pun is defined as a lexical ambiguity which involves

the use of a polysemous word to suggest two or more meanings [...] or the use of homonyms, i.e. different words which look or sound the same but which have different meanings […] to produce a humorous or witty effect.

Wales’ description thus agrees with the definition of pun in the Oxford English Dictionary. The term wordplay, however, does not have a separate definition within A Dictionary of Stylistics; the entry merely refers to the description of pun, suggesting yet again a synonymous denotation of the two terms.

When contrasting further definitions of these two terms, it becomes apparent that there actually is “not a universal definition of wordplay or pun” (Giorgadze 2014: 271, my emphasis). Some scholars employ wordplay and pun interchangeably (e.g. Delabastita 1993, 2004; Schröter 2010), while others understand wordplay as an umbrella term for all kinds of plays on words and consider pun as one of the many types of wordplay (cf. Giorgadze 2014: 271-272; Pisek 1997: 42). Even though there seems to be no agreement about the difference between wordplay and pun to date, both expressions consistently implicate a witty play on words that involves multiple meanings of one or more words or phrases.

However, on closer examination, it appears that puns always have a humorous effect, while wordplays may comprise wit but do not necessarily have to. As a matter of fact, further research verifies that wordplays in general do not have to be humorous (cf. Knospe et al. 2016: 1). In addition, only puns are related to the similar (sometimes identical) phonological representation of words with different denotations. In the end, “puns are spoken jokes [...] or jokes meant to be interpreted as if read aloud” (Attardo 1994: 109). In consideration of the fact that this paper analyzes comical plays on words in a sitcom (which are obviously communicated orally), I propose the following definition of pun for the purpose of this study:

Puns are universal jokes that play on words. Their linguistic units contain a similarity or an actual identity in writing, sound or both at the same time, while the meanings of the words differ respectively. The speaker deliberately employs the terms in order to joke on their ambiguity, which results in a humorous effect to the hearer. A pun is a type of wordplay that distinguishes itself from other kinds of plays on words (such as rhymes, anagrams or spoonerisms) in that it exclusively jests with the phonological representation of similar or identical appearing words. Therefore, puns are most common (and probably more effective) in verbal communications, as opposed to in writing.

As a result, this study considers not all types of wordplays but deals exclusively with verbal puns.[4] Even though this paper analyzes puns specifically, the words pun and wordplay will be used interchangeably hereafter.

2.3 Classification of Puns

From a linguistic perspective, puns can be divided into four categories: homonymy, homophony, homography, and paronymy (cf. Attardo 1994: 110-111; Delabastita 1993: 79-80; Delabastita 2004: 601; Hausmann 1974: 60-61; Heibert 1993: 44). The differentiation between these types is based on the lexical, phonological, and graphemic ambiguity of the pun constituents. The following table depicts their characteristics:

Table 1: Linguistic categories of puns

(adopted from Attardo 1994: 110-111; Delabastita 1993: 79-80; Delabastita 2004: 601; Hausmann 1974: 60-61; Heibert 1993: 44)

The first type, homonymy, illustrates lexical items which have the same spelling as well as the same pronunciation (cf. Attardo 1994: 111; Delabastita 1993: 80; Hausmann 1974: 60-61; Heibert 1993: 44). A case in point is the word bear which, as a verb, means to carry, while as a noun, refers to the animal (cf. Delabastita 1993: 80). Both terms differ in their meaning, yet are written and sound alike. The second kind, homophony, describes words which are identical in their pronunciation but differ in their spelling (cf. Attardo 1994: 111; Delabastita 1993: 79; Hausmann 1974: 60; Heibert 1993: 44), such as write and right (cf. Delabastita 1993: 79). Homography can be understood as the counterpart of homophony, as it represents words which have the same spelling yet are different regarding their pronunciation (cf. Attardo 1994: 111; Delabastita 1993: 79; Hausmann 1974: 60; Heibert 1993: 44). For instance, lead, the verb, indicates to guide, whereas lead as a noun denotes a metallic element (cf. Delabastita 1993: 79). The fourth linguistic category of puns, paronymy, refers to words which are nearly identical and only differ slightly in their pronunciation and/or their spelling (cf. Attardo 1994: 110-111; Delabastita 1993: 80; Hausmann 1974: 61-62; Heibert 1993: 44). Such paronymic puns can be near-homographs, as in the case of anagrams (for example, the letters of the term silent can be rearranged and form the word listen). On the other hand, they can be near-homophones, such as minimal pairs (cf. Delabastita 1993: 80). A case in point can be the near-homophonic terms pat and bat.

Some scholars make an additional distinction when classifying the various pun types (see e.g. Attardo 1994; Delabastita 1993; Grassegger 1985; Heibert 1993 – all leaning on Hausmann 1974). They differentiate between horizontal puns and vertical puns, which alludes to the usage of the pun categories that have just been outlined. A pun on a vertical axis denotes the occurrence of the pun components concurrently within a text (cf. Attardo 1994: 118; Delabastita 1993: 79; Grassegger 1985: 21; Hausmann 1974: 17, 19; Heibert 1993: 44). The following pun in William Shakespeare’s The First Part of King Henry the Sixth serves as an example: “Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son, Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon” (adopted from Delabastita 1993: 78). The pun is created by means of the two components sun and son, which sound alike and only differ in their writing (homophones). Even though just one pun constituent is presented (son), the second constituent (sun) is implicit even though not explicitly mentioned to the reader or listener. Vertical puns are displayed in a paradigmatic manner, that is, the respective pun elements can be substituted for each other (cf. Attardo 1994: 118; Delabastita 1993: 79; Hausmann 1974: 17, 19).

A pun of a horizontal nature, in contrast, indicates that the two pun constituents appear one after another (cf. Attardo 1994: 118; Delabastita 1993: 79; Grassegger 1985: 21; Hausmann 1974: 17, 19; Heibert 1993: 44). A case in point is the following extract of Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John: “The shadow of myself formed in her eye, Which, being but the shadow of your son, Becomes a sun, and makes your son a shadow” (adopted from Delabastita 1993: 78). As in the former example, the pun is formed on the two words son and sun; however, in contrast to the vertical pun, both pun components are displayed within the same text. Puns on a horizontal axis are represented in a syntagmatic manner, that is, its elements occur consecutively (cf. Attardo 1994: 118; Delabastita 1993: 79; Hausmann 1974: 17, 19).

Hausmann (1974), the initiator of the linguistic organization of puns, makes the distinction between horizontal and vertical axes only in the case of homonymy (16-19) and discusses homophony, homography and paronymy as individual categories without dividing them further according to the arrangement of the pun components (60-62). Other academics (such as Attardo 1994, Delabastita 1993, Grassegger 1985 and Heibert 1993) adopt Hausmann’s concept of horizontal and vertical forms of pun (meaning the idea as well as the terminology). However, they do not restrict this division to homonymic puns but instead apply it to the other linguistic categories as well. As a result, puns can be categorized into the following eight categories:

Table 2: Linguistic and formal types of spoken and written puns

(adopted from Attardo 1994: 110-111, 118; Delabastita 1993: 79-81; Hausmann 1974: 17, 19, 60-62; Heibert 1993: 44)