Translating/interpreting different senses of humor: A simple joke or an unceasing torture?

Does everybody laugh about another person’s physical appearance or the way somebody speaks? Is it funny for everybody to laugh when somebody falls to the ground? Or laugh about feminist or male chauvinistic jokes?

                Humor changes according to contexts and cultures. American sense of humor is not the same as the English or the German one. However, generally speaking, we laugh and make jokes about several topics: religion, politics, famous people, etc.

                But, what happens when we need to translate/interpret these kinds of jokes? Can we translate/interpret them literally? Will they mean the same for the other culture?

Clearly, it is not easy, but we have to make some decisions and modify the jokes so the other audience laughs. This is one of the hardest parts of our job, to create equivalences in both cultures.

Some obstacles are specific cultural references, for example, typical characters, places and beliefs; but also there are some polysemic concepts and play on words that may cause difficulties. To share a signs code is not enough. To understand allusions or references it is necessary that as much the sender as the receiver share the same cultural, historical and social knowledge. Also, it is very important to keep in mind that LANGUAGE and CULTURE are INDIVISIBLE.

When translating, we face two kinds of problems: Linguistic problems and sociocultural or situational problems. For example, within linguistic problems, there are phonological considerations. If in English you have:

A Chinese diplomat attended a gala reception in Washington Senate. A lady, trying to make polite conversation, asked:

"Dr. Wong, What 'nese' are you? 

Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese?". 

- "Chinese" -he replied- "and you,

   madam? What 'kee' are you? "Monkey,  

   donkey, or Yankee?".

You cannot translate/interpret it literally into Spanish; it won’t have the same phonological effect.

And regarding sociocultural problems, when in two cultures jokes refer to similar topics and they are treated similarly, there is no much problem. For example: a situation which includes a Spanish man (Paquito), a Chilean (Juanito) and an Italian (Pierino). The translator can choose another name depending on the target audience.

                The most important principle is that the translator/interpreter should comprehend all the linguistic and extra-linguistic information in the source text so he or she can find the functional or pragmatic equivalence over the formal one.

By Estefanía Sanhueza Vásquez