UMORUL ÎN COMEDIILE FRANCEZE: A TRADUCE FĂRĂ A TRĂDA EMOȚIA

Angela GRĂDINARU Universitatea de Stat din Moldova

Abstract

HUMOUR IN FRENCH COMEDIES: TRANSLATING WITHOUT BETRAYING EMOTION Translation is a process of intercultural communication, a mediator between two cultures that transmits a great part of the other culture. This fact determines us to rethink the role of sociocultural elements in films since one of the main challenges in audiovisual translation is the transfer of humour. The article represents a study of humour translation and the transformations that occur in this process of transfer from one language/culture to another. The transfer of humour and its understanding in audiovisual translation may take place at nonverbal level (images, sounds, sound effects) and at verbal level (humorous expressions, play-on-words). Humour may be conditioned by the words that are used intentionally (play-on-words) and unintentionally. Therefore, translating these words by replacing them with others (synonyms, equivalents) sometimes leads to the loss of the humorous effect of the word. The word in the audiovisual speech does not aim at convincing the target public, but rather at obtaining an aesthetic emotion that leads to laughter. The message is interpreted at plurisemiotic level through the common effort of the verbal language and the nonverbal characteristics of communication i.e., the actions and words that coexist simultaneously in creating humour. To translate means to create “an equivalent” of the original film for the target-public, i.e., to obtain a film with the smallest possible distortion of the content. Hence, we aimed at analysing the way in which the humour in the comedy La ch’tite famille (English title Family is Family) is subtitled into Romanian. The translator is the one who plays an important role in the process of transfer both as an expert in receiving as well as in producing humour in a context in which the triad image – word – sound should be transferred between two cultures. Consequently, the translator’s mission is to identify the intention of the one who laughs at the other one, who ironizes on his behalf, in order to be faithful to the source and to adapt the humour to the target-public. Keywords: comedy, equivalence, humour, subtitling, translation technique, audiovisual translation, source text, target text.