Translating Humour Is No Joke: 5 Ways to Handle Funny Business
Ironically, nothing has the power to wipe that smile right off your face than encountering a joke while you’re translating. Once you’ve finished chuckling at the pun, sarcasm, etc., horror quickly settles in: how do I translate this into my target language? Jokes have a habit of incorporating wordplay, often making use of double meanings and grammar structures that may not exist in your target language. You also have to think about tone and cultural references that may or may not make sense to your target audience. Basically, jokes have a way of combining some of the trickiest aspects of translation, but here’s the worst part: jokes have to be funny.
It’s a well-known rule of comedy that a joke stops being funny if you have to explain it. You want your reader to “get it” the first time around. This often leaves you with one of only two choices – either you let the joke go or, as Jascha Hoffman writes, you:
“Abandon the idea of perfect fidelity and instead try to find a joke that rings some of the same bells as the original.”
Since everybody loves a good list, I’ve once again joined forces with fellow translator Belinda Fischer, and we’ve gathered together 5 examples that illustrate how you can relay funny business in another language. Just in case you’re looking for some inspiration!
1. Going Over to the Dark Side
This might seem like a strange place to start, but I wanted to show that sometimes you can translate a joke literally and not lose much in the process. A few years back, I used to translate a lot of product descriptions for a German e-commerce company that sold Star Wars merchandise. Whenever I came across a Darth Vader product, I’d usually see a phrase like: “Mit diesem Produkt wechselt ihr zur dunklen Seite” [literal translation: “With this product, you’ll switch to the dark side”].
A joke like this is pretty easy to translate into English, because all you have to write is something like: “This product will make you turn to the Dark Side”. Since the Star Wars movies were originally filmed in English, there’s little danger that this cultural reference will be lost on your target reader (especially since they’re probably already a Star Wars fan!), so you don’t need to do much work here. I’m very much of the belief that there’s no point in transcreation for the sake of transcreation. If your joke works, then leave it be – no need to use the Force ;-)
2. Is It a Bin or a Child?
If only things were always that easy. Recently, I was translating a blog post and the author was talking about emptying her bins after dropping her son off at school. She joked that “he” was always excited to slip through her fingers and then added: “ich überlasse jetzt Deiner Fantasie, ob mit "er" der Jüngste oder der Eimer gemeint ist” [literal translation: “I’ll leave it up to you to imagine if “he” refers to my son or the bin”].
Now obviously, this doesn’t make a lot of sense in English. Since English doesn’t have grammatical gender, “he” could only ever be a reference to her son (unless you’re somebody who likes to treat all your household objects as if they’re people – no judgement). This is one of those situations where you’re forced to either let the joke go, over-explain it (which not only makes it less funny, but also draws attention to the fact that the post is a translation), or think of an alternative.
Since this blog post was supposed to be a fun, entertaining read, I went with the final option. I completely transcreated the section, writing: “Once I’ve got rid of one smelly friend, it’s time to deal with another: the bin.” This is a major departure from the original and definitely something you’d need to run past your client (in case they feel uncomfortable blatantly mocking their child) but it keeps the whimsical flavour of the original text and it’s accessible to the audience. In this situation, I chose to prioritise the function of the text over literal meaning.
3. No Pun Intended
A while back, I was translating a blog post about moss and it was all going great until I got to the final sentence: “Ohne Moos nix los.” [literal meaning: “Without moss, nothing goes”]. This is a German idiom based around the fact that “Moos” is slang for “money”. It’s basically the German way of saying, “Money makes the world go round”, and the author had clearly used it because it’s a pun involving the word “moss”. The problem: there are no moss-related money proverbs in English (that I know of anyway).
So, what do you do? Well, once you’ve finished crying (just kidding!), you’ve got to decide what’s more important – the reference to money or the reference to moss. Since in this case the article was about moss (and why it’s a good thing), it was an easy choice. I spent a while googling moss puns before settling on “Remember: moss has a way of growing on you”. Problem solved.
4. Humour on TV
Have you ever watched your favourite (English) TV show in a foreign language? You may have even created subtitles for an episode, wondering what to do with all these funny jokes: you have to laugh but you want to cry.
One approach to translating jokes is to not translate them at all and come up with an entirely new joke instead. Sounds tricky? No doubt.
The American medical comedy series “Scrubs” handles humour brilliantly, both in English and German.
Here’s an example of a joke told by main character JD in season 4 episode 9:
“Did you hear the one about the skeleton who couldn’t go to the party? He had noBODY to go with.”
The ambiguous meaning of “nobody” doesn’t exist in German. That’s why this joke wouldn’t have landed with a German audience, no matter how much time the translator may have spent on a clever but hopeless transcreation.
Instead, the German “Scrubs” translation team took it upon themselves to come up with a new joke for German TV, which was very similar in length:
„Wissen Sie, was der größte Vorteil bei Alzheimer ist? Dass man täglich fremde Leute kennenlernt.“ (English: “Do you know what the best thing about Alzheimer’s is? You get to meet new people every day.”)
Side note: I recently told both versions of this joke at a cocktail party. The German version was actually perceived as (even) funnier than the English original. Well done, team!
5. It’s an Animal Party
There’s a German saying that goes: ,,In der Kürze liegt die Würze“ (English equivalent: “Keep it short and sweet”). Some of the best jokes in the world are so-called one-liners (German: Einzeiler). And if you’re lucky, you’ll find that some of them even work in more than one language:
German: „Kommt ein Pferd in eine Bar. Der Barkeeper: ,Warum das lange Gesicht?‘“
English: “A horse walks into a bar. The bar tender: ‘Why the long face?’”
Are you a fan of animal humour? Great! Here comes another one:
German: „Wie nennt man eine Gruppe Wölfe? – Wolfgang!“ (note: the „gang“ is pronounced in an American English style)
English: „What do you call a group of wolves? – Wolfgang!”
Still not tired of it? Okay, one last Einzeiler for good luck:
German: „Kann ein Känguru höher als ein Haus springen? – Ja! Weil ein Haus nicht springen kann.“
English: “Can a kangaroo jump higher than a house? – Yes! Because a house can’t jump.”
Tip: If you’re stuck for clever puns, check out this tool here. Type in your search term, e.g. “Pferd” (horse), to find a collection of puns with your search term in it. You may find that the phrase you’re looking to translate already has an equivalent in another language.
Don’t shy away from a good laugh
When it comes to translating humour, creativity trumps accuracy. The main point of a joke or a clever pun is to tickle your reader’s/viewer’s funny bone – whether that’s achieved through a roundabout phrase or a new joke altogether.
As a translator, make sure to take your time and play around with a variety of ideas for your target language. Remember that being culturally appropriate and actually funny, no matter how you go about it, matters more than relaying a joke in its original sense.
If you would like to share your experiences or spark a conversation about translating humour, feel free to get in touch (see below for details)!
This blog post was written in collaboration with fellow marketing translator Belinda Fischer. After our article on transcreation, we felt that the time was right to embark on another project together. One thing’s for sure: we had a good laugh! :-)
