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... more
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.
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Humosexually Speaking - Laughter and the Intersections of Gender investigates the social function of humour produced in , against and about gender variant communities of speakers, in both verbal and multimodal forms. The editors’ leading... more
Humosexually Speaking - Laughter and the Intersections of Gender investigates the social function of humour produced in , against and about gender variant communities of speakers, in both verbal and multimodal forms. The editors’ leading idea was to ignite an academic discussion on the several and often hidden ways through which humour succeeds in constantly strengthening and/or re-interpreting, but also dismantling, the social dimension of language. One of the possible results of such a political and social act is the fostering of the cultural exclusion of some gendered, or rather de-generated – as some discriminated groups tend to be commonly alleged to be – minority communities. Additionally, since humour may also work to signify the recurring upsetting of pre-established social beliefs through the systematic threatening of the familiar, the normative, and what is universally deemed as socially acceptable or “normal”, debates on any form of humorous self-representation of gendere...
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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... more
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...
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This essay explores the implementation of a stereotypically Italian attribute, passion, in the promotion of Italian beverages via the Internet. Twenty websites promoting different types of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages were... more
This essay explores the implementation of a stereotypically Italian attribute, passion, in the promotion of Italian beverages via the Internet. Twenty websites promoting different types of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages were examined in order to see how the concept of passion was adopted and whether, and if so, how the concept of passion changes according to the size of the company and the type of beverage being promoted. Findings showed that the more alcoholic content the promoted beverage contains, the stronger and more transgressive references to passion became. Furthermore, larger companies tended to opt for a more humorous use of the stereotype when compared to smaller companies.
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1. Translation and Humour, Humour and Translation Delia Chiaro Part I. Translating Humour in Society 2. Linguistic Factors in Humour Graeme Ritchie 3. Translating English into English in Jokes and Humour Christie Davies Part II.... more
1. Translation and Humour, Humour and Translation Delia Chiaro Part I. Translating Humour in Society 2. Linguistic Factors in Humour Graeme Ritchie 3. Translating English into English in Jokes and Humour Christie Davies Part II. Translating Humour in Antiquity 4. Translating Aristophanes into English Michael Ewans 5. Translating Greece to Rome: Humour and the Re-Invention of Popular Culture I. A. Ruffell Part III. Translating the Humour of the Great Literary Tradition 6. Rewriting the French Tradition: Boccaccio and the Making of the Novella Charmaine Lee 7. Translating Humour For Performance: Two Hard Cases from Inoue Hisashi's Play, Yabuhara Kengyo Marguerite Wells 8. The Laughing Word of James Joyce Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Samuel P. Whitsitt 9. Translating Humphry Clinker's Verbal Humour Marta Mateo 10. Language-Based Humour and the Untranslatable: The Case of Ziad Rahbani's Theatre Nada Elzeer Part IV. Coda 11. Tripartite: Cross-Talk Acts Walter Redfern ...
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Despite the fact that women have a reputation for talking abundantly, in this essay I shall argue that the comedic styles of female cinema actors are seldom founded on language. Based on a small, self-selected sample of comic films, what... more
Despite the fact that women have a reputation for talking abundantly, in this essay I shall argue that the comedic styles of female cinema actors are seldom founded on language. Based on a small, self-selected sample of comic films, what clearly emerges is that, at least as far as the big screen is concerned, the use of language does not seem to be women's preferred means of achieving a humorous effect. It would appear that, in order to get their laughs, most often funny women rely on their physicality or on the situations they spark off, rather than on their verbal repartee. Yet, when women do resort to Verbally Expressed Humour, they are likely to adopt a variety which is unique to their gender alone.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that verbal humor travels badly. While visual incongruity and slapstick may raise a smile universally, once words enter the cross-cultural equation, the issue of what may or may not be intended as... more
It is a truth universally acknowledged that verbal humor travels badly. While visual incongruity and slapstick may raise a smile universally, once words enter the cross-cultural equation, the issue of what may or may not be intended as humorous becomes less clear cut. Furthermore, when verbal humor is part of an audiovisual product, the fact that it may be strongly anchored either visually or acoustically to other elements in the audiovisual text, will complicate translation and as a result possibly influence viewers’ reception of the instance of humor in question. This chapter sets out to explore the impact of language, and more particularly, of translation, on the reaction of Italian end-users of humorous stimuli contained within translated audiovisual products. The research design created to measure these responses is described and results pertaining to a number of studies in which the same protocol was applied are reported. As the appreciation of humor is not solely cognitive—in...
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Scholarly debate in screen translation (ST) regarding quality issues often hinges on the complexity of specifying quality standards for such a heterogeneous market in terms of typology of translation (i.e. dubbing, subtitling, voice-over... more
Scholarly debate in screen translation (ST) regarding quality issues often hinges on the complexity of specifying quality standards for such a heterogeneous market in terms of typology of translation (i.e. dubbing, subtitling, voice-over etc.) and the wide range of credence attributes which might contribute to the creation of quality standards for these products. Moreover, the situation is further complicated by the issue of “Quality according to whom?”: operators; service providers; end users, or all three? However complicated these problems may seem, this paper attempts to look for answers. Total Quality Management (TQM) and attribute-based approaches already widely used to measure customer satisfaction in media studies will be put forward as tentative instruments to determine quality in ST.
... SYLVIA: Fran, you're my daughter I remember every detail of your birth like it was yesterday I remember I ... (Literally: Have you heard that Monica Lewinsky is ... be an adequate so-lution and neither would substitution with... more
... SYLVIA: Fran, you're my daughter I remember every detail of your birth like it was yesterday I remember I ... (Literally: Have you heard that Monica Lewinsky is ... be an adequate so-lution and neither would substitution with well known alcoholic beverages like Strega, Campari or ...
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Forthcoming beginning of 2016 with Routledge, the follow-up to my 1992 "The Language of Jokes".
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This paper examines occurrences of humour in Twitter-fed celebrity-follower communities. Using a small, one-month sample of the Twitter feeds of 12 British celebrities, we examined political and humorous content of celebrity tweets and... more
This paper examines occurrences of humour in Twitter-fed celebrity-follower communities. Using a small, one-month sample of the Twitter feeds of 12 British celebrities, we examined political and humorous content of celebrity tweets and the first five responses from their followers. From this preliminary study, we found that the notion of “weirdisation” strongly emerges, together with the new conceptual tool of “shards of humour”.
Despite the fact that both state owned (RAI) and privately owned (Mediaset) Ital-ian television channels habitually adopt scantily dressed women in provocative poses to fulfill a purely decorative function on daytime television, a closer... more
Despite the fact that both state owned (RAI) and privately owned (Mediaset) Ital-ian television channels habitually adopt scantily dressed women in provocative poses to fulfill a purely decorative function on daytime television, a closer look at Italian TV reveals that it is far less liberated than it seems. In fact, in stark contradiction to the apparent unrestraint of autochthonous studio productions, references to sex and sexuality in imported fictional products tend to be severely mitigated in their translated forms. Furthermore, it also appears that sexual behaviour beyond traditional male/female ‘mainstream’ sexual practices becomes in-creasingly taboo in translation, as they too are either toned down or totally eliminated. Relegated to cable and satellite channels or late-night/early morning viewing on one of the privately owned Mediaset channels, programs containing very explicit sexual content such as US produced ‘Sex and the City’ are moderated quite significantly for Ital...
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This paper examines the work of Billy Wilder whose rich cinematic production frequently involves the collision of different languages as well as the clash of dissimilar cultures. As an Austrian living in the USA, the director had the... more
This paper examines the work of Billy Wilder whose rich cinematic production frequently involves the collision of different languages as well as the clash of dissimilar cultures. As an Austrian living in the USA, the director had the privilege of gaining insight into his adopted culture from the point of view of an outsider – a bilingual ‘other’ who made 25 films in almost 40 years of working in Hollywood. His films recurrently depict foreign characters at which Wilder pokes fun whether they are English, French, German, Italian, Russian or even the Americans of his adopted country. More precisely, the paper offers an overview of the multi-modal portrayals of diverse ‘foreigners’, namely Germans, Russians, French and Italians, with examples taken from a small but significant sample of Wilder’s films. The subtitling of dialogue in the secondary language for the target English-speaking audience and the specific translation solutions are not within the scope of this discussion, instead ...
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The law and lawyers are so pervasive in US life and culture that it should come as no surprise that they invite the kind of parody that the cinematic tradition has displayed from the birth of the movies to the present day. By examining a... more
The law and lawyers are so pervasive in US life and culture that it should come as no surprise that they invite the kind of parody that the cinematic tradition has displayed from the birth of the movies to the present day. By examining a small number of well-known courtroom comedies, this short essay will examine how these movies often use an unlikely character, an outsider and an underdog in terms of class or education who is unable to adhere to the rules of judiciary procedures. While it is true that this outsider is there to be laughed at, humor also emerges from the ridiculousness of many aspects of the legal system and especially of legalese.
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... Comparable to an automatic translation which can provide a rough translation for many, but not for all, Steele's (1994) objective is 'authentic-tasting Indian dishes'... more
... Comparable to an automatic translation which can provide a rough translation for many, but not for all, Steele's (1994) objective is 'authentic-tasting Indian dishes' rather than 'genuine food in your own home', which was the objective of Dharamjit Singh in 1970 (3.2). ...
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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... more
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
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... research has revealed similarities in joke forms across cul-tures (Davies 1998), personality research has examined the concept of sense of hu-mour and suggests that it varies individually in terms of personal state and trait as does... more
... research has revealed similarities in joke forms across cul-tures (Davies 1998), personality research has examined the concept of sense of hu-mour and suggests that it varies individually in terms of personal state and trait as does the concept of gelatophobia (fear of laughter ...
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Despite the widespread emergence of translations and diverse types of language mediation in contemporary society, our knowledge of the processes and operators involved in the "translation industry" is still very sketchy. With... more
Despite the widespread emergence of translations and diverse types of language mediation in contemporary society, our knowledge of the processes and operators involved in the "translation industry" is still very sketchy. With most translation scholars working within the liberal arts paradigm, research to date has tended to adopt methodologies pertaining to the humanities while overlooking more practical approaches typical of the more ‘scientific’ disciplines. This paper outlines the necessity for empirical methods that aim at gathering information regarding basic aspects of translation, ranging from typologies of translations to the operators involved in their production as well as aspects regarding end user perception. Such maps and atlases delineating the status quo of translation and interpreting would provide information for fresh insights.
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ABSTRACT
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Despite the widespread emergence of translations and diverse types of language mediation in contemporary society, our knowledge of the processes and operators involved in the... more
Despite the widespread emergence of translations and diverse types of language mediation in contemporary society, our knowledge of the processes and operators involved in the "translation industry" is still very sketchy. With most translation scholars working within the liberal arts paradigm, research to date has tended to adopt methodologies pertaining to the humanities while overlooking more practical approaches typical of the more ‘scientific’ disciplines. This paper outlines the necessity for empirical methods that aim at gathering information regarding basic aspects of translation, ranging from typologies of translations to the operators involved in their production as well as aspects regarding end user perception. Such maps and atlases delineating the status quo of translation and interpreting would provide information for fresh insights.
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... personnel, slaphappy quality control etc.) 63.2% of respondents judged their company's translations as being good, 22.2% as being quite good and 4.9% as being sat-isfactory; 6.9% even judged their company's translations as... more
... personnel, slaphappy quality control etc.) 63.2% of respondents judged their company's translations as being good, 22.2% as being quite good and 4.9% as being sat-isfactory; 6.9% even judged their company's translations as being Page 14. Delia Chiaro and Giuseppe ...
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This paper will present and discuss the results of an empirical study on perception of quality in interpretation carried out on a sample of 286 interpreters across five continents. Since the 1980’s the field of Interpreting Studies has... more
This paper will present and discuss the results of an empirical study on perception of quality in interpretation carried out on a sample of 286 interpreters across five continents. Since the 1980’s the field of Interpreting Studies has been witnessing an ever growing interest in the issue of quality in interpretation both in academia and in professional circles, but research undertaken so far is surprisingly lacking in methodological rigour. This survey is an attempt to revise previous studies on interpreters’ perception of quality through the implementation of new Information Technology which allowed us to administer a traditional research tool such as a questionnaire, in a highly innovative way; i.e., through the World Wide Web. Using multidimensional scaling, a perceptual map based upon the results of the manner in which interpreters ranked a list of linguistic and non-linguistic criteria according to their perception of importance in the interpretative process, was devised.