Culture · 6 pages · 12 min

Why translation cannot keep every joke

A joke built on one language's accident has nothing automatic to stand on in the next.

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From the opening

A joke often spends a feature that only one language happens to have, such as a sound match, a double sense, or a grammatical accident. Translation can carry the situation of the setup, but it cannot automatically carry the feature the laugh was built on. The opening covers what a joke spends locally, why a dictionary line can kill it, and which jokes are free to travel.

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Inside

What a joke spends locally
Why a dictionary line can kill it
Which jokes are free to travel
How a rebuild differs from a gloss
Where the idea stops applying
A distinction worth keeping

Sources

Jokes that depend on a language-specific double meaning
The gap between translating a situation and translating a pun

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Why translation cannot keep every joke

From the opening

Inside

Sources

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