English Translation of Verbal Humour in Egyptian Comedy Films

Abstract

Humour is deeply rooted in culture and may differ remarkably across societies. Translating humour interlingually necessitates navigating cultural variations and references, mainly because humour often relies on language-specific elements such as puns, idiomatic expressions and wordplay. Translating these linguistic features while preserving the comedic effect can be particularly challenging. This study investigates the complexity of translating humour that depends on a combination of both cultural and linguistic elements involving play with words and sounds from the Egyptian Arabic vernacular into English. To explore this area, the researchers examine three films in which humour is deemed by viewers as unique. The verbal humour investigated depends heavily on the replacement of words and sounds in a vast array of expressions that include puns, irony, jokes, spoonerisms, malapropisms, collocations, and proverbs. The results of the analysis of 34 examples extracted from the three films demonstrate that the translators of the films rejected several puns in the sense that they disregarded the translation of most puns, while resorting to communicative translation with some other puns. However, with other linguistic humorous devices such as malapropisms, irony, jokes, and spoonerisms, the translator used strategies including explicitation, transposition, literal translation (calque), and omission.