Universiteit Gent
The translation of wordplay in fansubs and original subtitles A comparative study
Promotor: Prof. Dr. Klaas Willems Copromotor: Dr. Ludovic De Cuypere Vakgroep Duits, afdeling Algemene taalwetenschap
Nakita Verbruggen [email protected] Master Engels – Zweeds (2009-2010) Doolaegepark 8, 9070 Destelbergen Abstract
The origin of fansubs lies in anime, a very sophisticated and popular Japanese form of motion-picture animation. As the popularity of anime increased outside Japan a need for subtitles emerged. This need was originally met by American anime fans who were proficient in both Japanese and English. Since the coming of the internet the creation of fansubs has boomed and other types of motion picture are now receiving subtitles by their fans. More and more people venture to translate series or films out of discontent with the original subtitles or just out of interest. This paper investigates the differences between the original Dutch subtitles and the fansubs of the tv-series Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying circus as well as the movie series Shrek in the hope that it will reveal two totally different approaches to translating subtitles and will result in a greater understanding of fansubs. This might result in a greater appreciation for them and might even lead to some changes in perception of what a subtitle should be and do. I focus in particular on the translation of puns to find differences between original subtitles and fansubs. The wordplay and its various translations are categorised using primarily Delabastita’s categorisation model found in his There’s a double tongue (1993). The central question in this paper is: do fansubs translate more puns into puns than official subtitles or not? The results of this paper suggest first of all that the original subtitles translate more puns into puns than fansubs, but secondly, and perhaps more importantly, that there are striking differences between the three different fansubs, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the “typical” fansub.
2 Index
1 Introduction...... 5 1.1 Introduction to the corpus...... 5 1.2 The cultural specificity of humour...... 6 1.3 The corpus...... 7 1.4 Theoretical and methodological positioning...... 8 1.5 Hypotheses...... 8 2 Status quaestionis...... 9 2.1 Subtitling...... 9 2.1.1 General...... 9 2.1.2 Subtitling humour...... 9 2.2 Fansubs...... 10 2.2.1 General...... 10 2.2.2 Process...... 10 2.2.3 Illegal...... 10 2.3 Wordplay...... 11 2.3.1 Definition and categorisation...... 11 2.3.2 (Un)translatability...... 14 2.4 Translation techniques...... 15 2.4.1 General...... 15 2.4.2 Translating wordplay: Delabastita...... 15 2.4.3 Translating idioms: Veisbergs...... 17 3 Theoretical background...... 17 4 Methodology...... 17 5 Research...... 18 5.1 Categorisation in general...... 18 5.1.1 Categorisation of wordplay: Delabastita and Veisbergs...... 18 5.1.2 Categorisation of translation: Delabastita...... 22 5.2 Categorisation of Fawlty Towers...... 25 5.2.1 Categorisation of wordplay in Fawlty Towers...... 25 5.2.2 Categorisation of translation in Fawlty Towers...... 27 5.2.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in Fawlty Towers...... 31 5.2.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in Fawlty Towers.....34 5.3 Categorisation of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (MPFC)...... 36 5.3.1 Categorisation of wordplay in MPFC...... 36 5.3.2 Categorisation of translation in MPFC...... 39 5.3.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in MPFC...... 41 5.3.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in MPFC...... 44 5.4 Categorisation of Shrek...... 45 5.4.1 Categorisation of wordplay in Shrek...... 45 5.4.2 Categorisation of translation in Shrek...... 47 5.4.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in Shrek...... 51 5.4.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in Shrek...... 53 5.4.5 Comparing the Flemish subtitles with the Dutch subtitles in Shrek the Halls ...... 55 5.5 Categorisation of the entire corpus...... 57 5.5.1 Categorisation of wordplay of the entire corpus...... 57 5.5.2 Categorisation of translation of the entire corpus...... 60
3 5.5.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in the entire corpus...... 63 5.5.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in the entire corpus. 66 6 Conclusion...... 69 7 References...... 72
4 1 Introduction
The goal of this thesis is to examine the differences between the original Dutch subtitles and the fansubs (subtitles made by fans and put on the internet) of Fawlty Towers, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and most of the Shrek movies (Shrek 2, Shrek the third and Shrek the Halls). I will focus in particular on their translation of wordplay. My hypothesis is that wordplay demands a creative approach from the translator and the general notion is that untrained amateurs dare to be more creative than trained professionals. Furthermore, reasons for the differences between fansubs and official subtitles will be proposed.
1.1 Introduction to the corpus
My corpus consists of the tv-series Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus (MPFC) and the movie series Shrek (excluding the first Shrek and including Shrek the Halls). These series are selected on their diversity, on the fact that they contain wordplay and the presence of fansubs on the internet. They are also connected by the person John Cleese, who participates in all three series. Cleese co-wrote Fawlty Towers with Connie Booth and plays the leading role in the series, viz. the hotel owner Basil. He also helped to write Monty Python’s flying circus and plays different roles in the series. In Shrek Cleese is the voice of the king of “Far Far Away”. Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom by the BBC and consists of two seasons of six episodes each. The first series was broadcasted on BBC2 in 1975, the second (on the same channel) in 1979. The show centres around four characters. The first and main character is Basil Fawlty, a snobbish hotel owner who aspires to become part of the higher class by means of his hotel “Fawlty Towers”. His wife, Sybil Fawlty, helps Basil to manage the hotel. She is more effective than Basil in running the hotel, but seems to care less about the hotel as she chats away with friends on the phone during busy hours. A third and important character is waiter Manuel, a Spanish immigrant whose primitive knowledge of English often results in communication problems which is a basis for a lot of wordplay in the series. The last main character is Polly Sherman, a very competent maid who, with her knowledge of Spanish and German, manages to help Manuel and foreign guests. Monty Python’s Flying Circus (MPFC) is a British tv-series written by the Monty Python team and consists of numerous sketches woven together through animations by Terry Gilliam. This series is different from Fawlty Towers in that the former consists of series of comical sketches, interrupted by animations, while the latter consists of one storyline. The Monty Python team consists of six highly educated people. Their education was reflected in their sketches by educated vocabulary and numerous references to philosophers and literary figures. The oldest and most known member of the Monty Python team was John Cleese, who also co- created Fawlty Towers. The other members of this group were Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. The Monty Python team wanted to create humour that was ‘outside the box’ and that was impossible to categorise. They succeeded to the point that the word “pythonesque” had to be added to the dictionary to categorise their new type of humour and all similar humour that would follow. The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus was broadcasted on the fifth of October of 1969. The series consists of four seasons with a total of forty-five episodes.
5 The last part of my corpus consists of the picture series Shrek. Shrek is very different from the other two programmes in the fact that it is a computer animated movie and aimed towards a very wide audience (while Fawlty Towers and MPFC are more aimed towards an adult audience). Note that only Shrek 2, Shrek the third, and Shrek the Halls (a short movie of 30 minutes about Christmas) are included in the corpus, because Shrek 1 does not have fansubs. In the first Shrek Fiona is a princes locked in a tower cursed by a spell which changes her into an oger every night. Only when she has a ‘true love kiss’ she will ‘change into her true form’. At the end, Shrek and Fiona fall in love and share ‘a true lover’s kiss’ which breaks the curse changing Fiona for ever into an ogre. Shrek 2 continues the story of Fiona and Shrek, now married. They get an invitation by Fiona’s parents to meet them in their country called “Far Far Away”. On arrival Fiona’s parents see that Fiona has turned into an ogre. Her father is in complete shock, moreover because he promised to Fairy Godmother that her son, Prince Charming, would marry Fiona and become next in line for the throne. Shrek, feeling incompetent, decides to go to Fairy Godmother to get a potion to change him into a human so that Fiona would get her dream, a charming prince. When Fairy Godmother refuses to help Shrek he decides to steal the potion and turns into a human. When he gets back Fairy Godmother locks him up and makes Fiona believe that her son, Prince Charming, is Shrek transformed by the potion. This plan fails and Shrek and Fiona end up together again. In Shrek the third Fiona’s father, the king of “Far Far Away” dies, making Shrek and Fiona the new King and Queen. Shrek refuses the job and sets out to find Arthur, the second heir to the throne. Meanwhile a vengeful Prince Charming rallies up the fairy tale ‘bad guys’ as Captain Hook from “Peter Pan” and the Evil Queen from “Snow white” to take over the castle while Shrek is away. When Shrek returns with Arthur they get captured, but Arthur escapes. Arthur decides to fight back and succeeds at making ‘the bad guys’ change their ways and turn against Prince Charming. He then becomes king of “Far Far Away”. Shrek the Halls is a little different from the other Shrek films. It is a short film about Shrek and his three children celebrating their first Christmas. Fiona has already celebrated Christmas, but Shrek and the children have not. Shrek wants to create the perfect Christmas and goes out to buy a book which tells him how. When he tells Donkey that he wants to celebrate Christmas with his family (without him) Donkey understands it as ‘with all the fairy tale creatures’. Shrek is therefore furious when they all come by at Christmas and he throws them out. Fiona helps him understand that Christmas is about togetherness and friendship and the story ends with Shrek telling an ‘ogre Christmas tale’.
1.2 The cultural specificity of humour
A situational comedy, or sitcom, is often based on (cultural) stereotypes. Culture- specific aspects are exploited to make a sort of parody. Nash (1985) calls these kinds of parodies “pseudo-parodies”, by which he means that parody is not a central element in the text, but they “[...] wear parodic aura, and are full of echoes of half- remembered writings” (1985:99). Therefore translating this type of comedy puts a heavy strain on the translator. As Chiaro (1992: 77) argues: “for a translation to be successful, the translator has also to convey a whole store of added meaning belonging to the culture of the original language”. Not only does the translator have to
6 translate the jokes in a sufficient way, s/he also needs to take into account the cultural background of the source language as well as the target language. Zabalbeascoa (1996) points out that the translator can be confronted with many restrictions when trying to translate these kinds of comedies:
“Recurrent restrictions facing the translator of situation comedy may include differences in the background knowledge of the original and prospective audiences; differences in cultural and moral values, customs and traditions; differences in conventional themes and techniques of joke-telling; the translator’s professional context; timing and lip-synchronization; verbal humour depending strictly on features of the source language and/or on the visual context which defies manipulation, and so on.” (1996:248)
These restrictions are mainly culture-based, but the author also refers to some restrictions mentioned below, restrictions of subtitling. Zabalbeascoa (1996: 251-255) also divides jokes in a cultural way, giving the translator a sort of guideline to translate the different kinds of jokes. The first kind of joke Zabalbeascoa distinguishes is “international joke” where the clue is not based on a cultural aspect of the joke making it easy for the translator to translate it. The second kind of joke in Zabalbeascoa’s classification is the “national-culture-and-institutions joke”, where national, cultural and/or institutional aspects need to be adapted to fit a foreign audience. The “national-sense-of-humour joke” is based on a tradition or on an intertextual frame. A forth kind of joke, the “language-dependent joke” depends on language-specific linguistic structures for their effect. The fifth is the “visual joke”. Zabalbeascoa's last category is the “complex joke”, which is a combination of abovementioned types. Although it would be interesting to look at all the different kinds of jokes, this paper will only deal with the “language-dependent joke” and the “complex joke”. In this case the “complex joke” consists of a combination of the “language-dependent joke” and one or more of the other abovementioned subtypes. Chiaro (1992) rightly points out that the laughter in situation comedies makes the foreign audience pay closer attention to the joke as they might not hear it if there was none:
“if it were not for the canned laughter many jokes and humorous quips occurring in foreign versions of imported American comedies could easily pass by unnoticed. Despite signals which indicate that someone has just said something funny, it is not always the case that the audience is going to be amused by the translated quip.” (1992: 85)
This laughter will prove very useful in finding the wordplay in Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In Shrek such laughter is not present.
1.3 The corpus
The corpus consists of De complete serie: Fawlty Towers, which includes the only two series ever made, containing six episodes each, lasting about 374 minutes in total. There is also a disc of extras with interviews, profiles, etc., but it is not included in the corpus. Also included are the fansubs of both the seasons downloaded from
7 fansubs of this series is also included, downloaded the 30th of October 2009 from
1.4 Theoretical and methodological positioning
In this research paper, Delabastita’s categorisation of wordplay (1993 and 1996) will be used to categorise the wordplay found in the corpus. In addition, Veisbergs’s categorisation (1997) will be used for all the idioms. I will examine whether these two suffice to categorise all wordplay and if there are some categories which are redundant. If not, additional categories will be made and if so, redundant categories will be omitted. For the Dutch translations only Delabastita’s categorisation will be used, because Veisbergs’s idiom translation categories proved to be inadequate. These classifications will also be used to compare the fansubs with the official subtitles of the corpus and to see if there are differences in what and how they translate the different categories of wordplay.
1.5 Hypotheses
I expect that the fansubs will translate more wordplay “from pun to pun” than the official subtitles and therefore less from “pun to non-pun”. My hypothesis is that fansubbers have more time to find creative solutions for the different puns than the people who write the original subtitles, because the latter are working under time constraints. The people who translate the fansubs probably do this in their free time which might result in less time to devote to these fansubs per day, but they can decide not to release the fansubs until they are completely satisfied, something the official translators cannot do because they generally have a deadline. Fansubbers are usually also fans of the show which presumably results in a better understanding of the puns and/or a more accurate translation. Another reason why the fansubs might have more translations “from pun to pun” than the official subtitles lies with other restrictions imposed on official translators. As argued below, official subtitles can only have a maximum of thirty-five to forty keyboard spaces per line and can only stay on screen for a maximum of seven seconds, this all to add to the readability of subtitles. In contrast, fansubs are not restricted in such a way and are accordingly a bit more free to experiment. Fansubs are also directed to a more mature audience as they have to be downloaded and attached to a video, something young children do not know how to do. This might allow the fansubs to use a more elaborated translation. Also the categories based on sound likeness like “paronymy” and “phonological structure” will probably have more pun to pun translations than the other wordplay categories because the meaning and structure of a word in such a pun are not as set as in other wordplay categories allowing more freedom in translation.
8 2 Status quaestionis
2.1 Subtitling
2.1.1 General
According to Baker and Malmkjær (1998: 244-5), subtitles, also known as captions, are “transcriptions of film or TV dialogue presented simultaneously on the screen”. From this definition above, one can derive the difficulties a subtitler encounters or can encounter when subtitling. Firstly, subtitles are “a transcription of film or TV dialogue”. This means that, in subtitling, there is a “shift in mode from speech to writing” (Hatim and Mason 1997:78-79). The first restriction a subtitler encounters is that s/he cannot represent all features of speech like dialects or intonation in the subtitle. Secondly, subtitles are “presented simultaneously on the screen”. The other restrictions result from this feature. There are spatial and temporal constraints to subtitling. Subtitles have a maximum of thirty-five to forty keyboard spaces per line and cannot stay on screen longer than seven seconds. There is also a rule stating that there cannot be more than 12 characters per second so that the viewer has time to read the subtitles. (Baker and Malmkjær 1998: 247) This leads us to a second restriction; a subtitler can only use a limited number of words when translating the source text. Also, the subtitles have to match the visual image, which means that there needs to be coherence between the subtitles and the moving image. This can also restrict a subtitler in translating the source text into the target text. Note that there are two types of subtitling, intralingual (the language in the source text is the same as the language in the target text) and interlingual (the language in the source text is translated in the target text), and that these restrictions apply mainly to the latter. According to Koolstra, Peeters and Spinof (2002) there is also another restriction that the subtitler has to take into account when subtitling, viz. the fact that viewers might be able to check the subtitles with the spoken text. This means that the subtitler must not be too creative and deviate too much from the original, because audiences tend to want a translation which is close to the original. Richie (1991:16) states that
“[…] translation should be invisible… Any oddity, any term too heightened, as well as any mistake, calls attention to this written dialogue. I won’t even use exclamation points. The language should enter the ear as the image enters the eye.”
Subtitles are not an inherent part of the film or programme they are used in; they are an addition. Therefore it is very important that the subtitles combine with the audio- visual material and do not clash with it. They should be accurate, clear, and construed in a stylistically adequate way.
2.1.2 Subtitling humour
When subtitling wordplay it is hard not to draw attention to the subtitles, since wordplay automatically draws attention to the language itself. Here the key is to translate the wordplay so that it has the same effect as the original (laughter) without deviating too much from it, so that it does not take away the attention. Translating
9 wordplay is obviously difficult. De Linde and Kay (1999:13) point out that humour “[…] highlights the interplay between the three semiotic systems of the medium. Some jokes depend on the synchronicity of a word and image, others on the interplay between spoken and written language.” So, in order to translate wordplay adequately, the translator should cause the same effect as the original and not draw too much attention to the utterance itself. Synchronizing word and image is very important to achieve this.
2.2 Fansubs
2.2.1 General
Fansubs are literally subtitles made by fans. The name “fansub” is generally used in the context of the Japanese anime (a kind of Japanese animation) and refers to an anime subtitled by fans (usually into English). I will use this term in a broader sense here, namely any subtitle (whether it is attached to an anime, film, etc. or not) made by fans and distributed over the internet. These ‘fans’ are usually individuals or groups who did not receive any formal training, but make subtitles for various programmes or films without getting compensated for it, or more practically and realistically put: without making any profit. (Nornes 1999) The origin of fansubs seems to lie in anime which was a big industry in Japan. The American fans of these anime wanted to translate them (from Japanese into English) especially for America, but also for the rest of the world. It was a small practice before the internet, working only with VHS tapes, but now people from all over the world translate a big variety of programmes, films, etc. (Hatcher 2005)
2.2.2 Process
The process of fansubbing has drastically changed over the years. Fansubs were originally attached to the anime or picture on a VHS tape. To attach their own subtitles to a picture the original tape had to be transferred to a computer first (“ripping”) in order to remove the original subtitles (if there were any) and replace them by a fansub. These new VHS tapes all were then distributed to the fans. The same process was later on extended to DVDs. (Hatcher 2005) With the rise of the internet, it has become possible to just download the fansub without the picture. In this case fansubbers type up a time-stamped file, encode it (usually to an .SRT file) and put it on the internet. The picture itself can then be ripped or downloaded from the internet. This evolution allows people to choose the fansub and the picture they like. (Kain 2001)
2.2.3 Illegal
Fansubs are considered illegal. According to J.S. Hatcher people who translate fansubs infringe at least three rules of copyright law when distributing the picture along with the fansub. Fansubs without a video attached to it (the ones used in this paper) infringe at least one.
10 2.3 Wordplay
2.3.1 Definition and categorisation
Wordplay according to Delabastita is “[…] the general name indicating the various textual phenomena (i.e. on the level of performance or parole) in which certain features inherent in the structure of the language used (level of competence or langue) are exploited in such a way as to establish a communicatively significant, (near-)simultaneous confrontation of at least two linguistic structures with more or less dissimilar meanings (signifieds) and more or less similar forms (signifiers).” (Delabastita 1993:57) To categorise Delabastita returns to his initial definition. He distinguishes three levels: “a confrontation of similar forms”, “a confrontation of dissimilar meaning“ and “an exploitation of linguistic features”. These levels are discussed in more detail below.
1. “A confrontation of similar forms”
Delabastita distinguishes two axes on this formal level of confrontation. The first axis is divided into horizontal wordplay, by which he means the confrontation of two words through a syntagmatic relationship (in praesentia), and vertical wordplay, the paradigmatic confrontation of two components in one word (in absentia). The word MessAge, for example, is vertical wordplay because two components in one word are confronted with one another, viz. message and mess age. On the other hand, in the sentence how the US put US to shame two words are syntagmatically confronted (United States and us), making it horizontal wordplay. On the second axis different types and degrees of formal confrontation are discussed. This axis is divided into “homophony” (different spelling, same pronunciation; e.g. wedding belles > wedding bells), “homography” (identical spelling, different pronunciation; e.g. the-rapist > therapist), “homonymy” (same spelling, same pronunciation; e.g. fair > honest versus beautiful), and “paronymy” (almost identical spelling and pronunciation; e.g. intrinsicate > intricate and intrinsic).
2. “A confrontation of dissimilar meanings”
This level involves the semantic aspect of the confrontation of linguistic structures. Delabastita defines this category firstly by explaining what is not wordplay: irony, speech-act ambiguity, allegory, allusion, metaphor, referential equivocality, and referential vageness. He points out, however, that these rhetorical devices can be classified as wordplay when based on linguistic structures rather than simply on “doubleness of interpretation” (Delabastita 1993:88). In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for example, the word honest is both used in an ironic context and as a polysemous word. When Hamlet ironically says to Polonius “Then I would you were so honest a man” (II.ii.177), he means that Polonius is dishonest (‘doubleness of interpretation’), but meaning not chaste instead of the more common interpretation of honest being upright and fair, thus exploiting the polysemous nature of the word. So in this context, this is an instance of wordplay. Delabastita also states that there are two major problems in semantically differentiating a pun: “relations of similarity or dissimilarity in language may be of a gradual nature on the meaning level, just as they are on the formal level” (Delabastita 1993:87), focusing on the degrees of this semantic
11 difference; and “differences in interpretation are not necessarily founded on differences in meaning” (1993:88), focusing on the difference between linguistic and non-linguistic differences. Then Delabastita returns to the “confrontation of dissimilar meanings” and discusses what kind of differences there are between the semantic components of a pun (designated as s1, s2, etc.). A first category relating to the “referential function of a language” (1993:98), he calls “conceptual meaning” (also known as denotative, logical, or cognitive meaning). Because puns can be confronted both paradigmatically and syntagmatically, Delabastita (1993:98) suggests that the categories described in the discipline of semantics (e.g. synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, hyperonymy) should be made more flexible. He suggests, furthermore, that this category be divided into three subcategories. In the first subcategory, “s1 and s2 are linked through solidarity”, i.e. through a loose variant of synonymy, hyponymy or hyperonymy (Delabastita 1993:99). For example, Egeon in Shakespeare’s Comedy of errors says
“But here must end the story of my life; And happy were I in my timely death, Could all my travels warrant me they live.” (I.i.137-139)
The word travels can be interpreted as ‘travels’ (s1), meaning ‘journeys’, or ‘travails’ (s2), meaning ‘labours’. This could be considered a loose variant of synonymy because s1 and s2 share some important semantic features: they both are a human activity, involving great effort, over a length of time. In the second subcategory “s1 and s2 are linked through opposition”, i.e. through a loose variant of antonymy. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example, the porter says “Much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and mars him” (II.iii.28-29). Here the words makes (s1), ‘to create’, and mars, ‘to un-make, spoil’ (s2) are confronted, putting the emphasis on their semantic difference. In the third and last subcategory “s1 and s2 show no semantic correspondence whatsoever”, meaning that the semantic fields of the different components of the pun do not overlap. An example of this subcategory is the word lie, which can be interpreted as ‘to lie to someone (not telling the truth)’ or ‘to lie down (in bed for example)’. These two semantic fields are totally unrelated. The second category of this “confrontation of dissimilar meanings” relates to “the personal attitude of the speaker to his/her utterance” and is called “connotative meaning” (Delabastita 1993:100). An example of this category can be found in Shakespeare’s Othello, when Desdemona says
“[...] I cannot say ‘whore’ It does abhor me now I speak the word [...]” (IV.ii.161-162)
Here the word whore (s1), which has a definite negative connotation (as compared to prostitute), is contrasted with abhor (s2), which is neutral. The confrontation of these two components is both conceptual and connotative. Conceptual because s1 and s2 can be linked through opposition and Connotative because s1 clearly shows Desdemona’s attitude. The third category, called “Stylistic meaning”, relates to what language can convey about the “social circumstances of its use” (Delabastita 1993:101). These social circumstances can include differences in register, style, dialect, sociolect, origin, etc. For example, in Merry wives of Windsor by Shakespeare, Evans says to
12 Quickly “Remember, William; Focative is ‘caret’.” And Quickly answers “And that’s a good root” (IV.i.45-46). Here the word caret (s1, Lat. ‘it is lacking’) is interpreted by Quickly as ‘carrot’ (s2, ‘kind of root eaten as a vegetable’). Besides the conceptual difference between s1 and s2 there is also a stylistic difference which arises from the difference in languages.
3. “An exploitation of linguistic features”
On this level attention is put on the genuinely linguistic aspect of the confrontation of linguistic structures, i.e. not on form or meaning separately. Delabastita (1993:102- 116) distinguishes four categories. The first one is “phonological structure”, where the sound similarities between semantically and etymologically unrelated words are exploited, for example to court and to cart (only one phoneme is different). The second category is called “lexical developments” and is divided into “polysemy” (one word with different etymologically related meanings; for example to do > ‘have sex, do something’) and “idioms” (where the meaning cannot be derived from the individual words making up the idiom). “Idioms” can be read in a compositional (non-idiomatic, literal) or a non-compositional (idiomatic, figurative) way; the distance between these two often cause wordplay. Veisbergs’ distinction of idioms (1997:156-158) will be used to further categorise the idioms because Delabastita does not further explore this category. According to Veisbergs (1997:156-158) there are two ways in which idioms can be used to create wordplay, depending on whether they undergo a semantic or a structural transformation. The semantic transformation occurs when an idiom is interpreted literally, i.e. in a ‘compositional’ way. The structure of the idiom is not changed, but there is a semantic shift. An example of a semantic transformation is the sentence They’re all so badly off these days that they can only pay compliments (to pay (compliments) > ‘to give’ versus ‘to pay with money’). A structural transformation is a transformation of the idiom where the structure is altered through ellipsis, substitution, etc. For example the idiom a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush can be altered into a competent minister in the hand is worth many generals in the bush. A third category is “morphological development”, where words are confronted because they are etymologically related (e.g. derivations, compositions, etc.), for example content-discontent. The last category is “syntactic structure”, where the grammar of the sentence is exploited to create wordplay (syntactic ambiguity, grammatical homonymy). An example of this category is found in Shakespeare’s Much ado about nothing where Beatrice says “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner” (II.iii.226-227) (> ‘against my will I am sent to [...] or against my will I bid you to come in to dinner’). Syntactic ambiguity is different from speech-act ambiguity (mentioned above as non- wordplay) in the fact that speech-act ambiguity is based on illocutionary interpretations (for example There are four large bulls in that field may be a warning, statement, threat, etc.), while syntactic ambiguity is based on the “distinct sets of syntactic relations connecting particular pairs of syntactic constructions” (compare the example “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner” cited above). (Delabastita 1993:113)
13 2.3.2 (Un)translatability
The doctrine of untranslatability is very often touched upon when talking about wordplay, which probably has to do with the language-specificity of wordplay. Over the years translators have struggled to translate wordplay into different languages and have created and applied many different kinds of theories focusing on, but not limiting themselves to wordplay. Certain scholars, for example the structuralists, maintain that it is impossible to translate wordplay from one language into another. According to Jakobson, for instance, “the pun [...] reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable [...]” (Jakobson 1959, 238; Delabastita 1993, 174), stating that the mere fact that poetry and wordplay are untranslatable is inherent to their definition, i.e. if something is translatable it cannot be poetry, nor wordplay. According to Delabastita, however, the idea of “proclaiming the ‘untranslatability’ of texts makes no sense” (1994:225). He also points out that what Jakobson probably means by ‘untranslatable’ is the fact that any translation, as good as it may be, cannot live up to its original. The balance seems to have shifted to somewhere in between translatability and untranslatability. Davis asserts that, while texts are not totally translatable, they cannot be totally untranslatable because language systems do show similarities. She points out that “translation is always relative, and relative translation is always possible” (Davis 1997:33). She adds that “[...] wordplay in translation ensures that languages encounter one another, and that through their very difference they challenge and confirm – but never resolve – each other’s identity” (Davis 1997:40). Also Delabastita seems to take a standpoint somewhere in between the two extremes. He says that wordplay is translatable, but that it does “tend to resist certain kinds of translation” (Delabastita 1997:10). A theory based on the translatability of texts is the theory of equivalence. According to this theory, the source text and the target text should show equivalence (or some degree of similarity) on one or more levels. These levels are defined by different theorist in very different ways. A. Popovič, for example, distinguishes four types of translation equivalence: “linguistic equivalence” (equivalence on the level of words), “paradigmatic equivalence” (equivalence on the level of grammar), “stylistic or translational equivalence” (equivalence of function), “textual or syntagmatic equivalence” (equivalence of form) (Susan Bassnett 2002, 32). But many other theorists like G. Toury, J. Catford, P. Newmark, etc. distinguish many other and different forms of equivalence. An interesting distinction for this research is the distinction that E. Nida (1964) made. He distinguishes between dynamic and formal equivalence. The first focuses on the effect a text has on its readers (the source text and target text should have the same effect on a reader), the latter on the message itself (the formal aspects of the source text should be as much as possible the same in the target text). In the context of this paper this means that a translator has three possibilities when translating wordplay. He or she can either focus on the effect the language should have, in this case laughter (dynamic); or he/she can focus on the formal aspects, in this case homonomy, paronymy, etc. (formal); or he/she can try to mix both. Obviously the latter would seem to be the best strategy, but it is arguably also the most difficult. Nida also states that historically there has been a shift from formal to a more dynamic equivalence.
14 2.4 Translation techniques
2.4.1 General
There are many ways in which a translator can translate a certain text. S/he has to choose between a number of translation strategies depending on the genre of the text, and on the preferences of certain people (the company, the translator him/herself, customer, etc.). Chesterman (2004) distinguishes two main translation strategies: strategies of understanding (“begripsstrategieën”) and production strategies (“productiestrategieën”). The first contains those kinds of strategies that allow the translator to analyse the source text and to prepare for the translation task at hand. The latter are used to transfer meaning from source text to target text and create the translation itself. Chesterman focuses on the latter, practical production strategies, and classifies them into three categories: syntactic strategies (which involve syntactic or grammatical changes), semantic strategies (which involve lexical changes on both word and syntactic level) and pragmatic strategies (which involve the selection of information transferred to the target text). He further specifies these categories by giving the most important subcategories for each category. They will not be mentioned here because they do not focus on wordplay.
2.4.2 Translating wordplay: Delabastita
Translating wordplay is a bit different from ‘ordinary’ translation. In order to translate wordplay translators have the task to first spot the wordplay and then to translate it in an appropriate manner. As Delabastita (1997) points out, the usual translation strategies are hard to apply on wordplay:
“Being so ‘overdetermined’ as they are, puns hamper the easy compromise between source vs target, word-for-word vs free, form vs function, content vs expression, and so on, and often bring the customary and approved negotiation strategies to a grinding halt.” (Delabastita 1997:11)
Therefore Delabastita (1993:191-218; 1996:134) suggests another classification for translating puns or wordplay. He distinguishes eight categories.
1. “From pun to pun” The pun in the source text is translated as a pun in the target text.
2. “From pun to non-pun” The pun in the source text is translated in the target text, but not as a pun. This category is divided into three subcategories:
- “Non-selective non-pun” Both s1 and s2 from the source text are translated in the target text, but in a non-punning way. For example: The numbers true; and, were the numbering too -> s1: metre, s2 count; de versmaat juist; en, is de telling ‘t ook -> s1: metre, s2: count)
15 - “Selective non-pun” Or s1 or s2 is translated in the target text. For example: dear -> s1: precious, s2: scarce; translation: kostbaar -> s1: precious, no s2 meaning).
- “Diffuse paraphrase” When neither s1 or s2 is translated in the target text, but the target text can be said to be a “translational solution” to the pun from the original text For example: Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding; translation: hier ‘s logica met onzin aan het vechten
3. “From pun to related rhetorical device” The pun in the source text is translated in the target text by using “a wordplay- related rhetorical device (like repetition, alliteration, etc.)” (Delabastita 1997:134).
4. “From pun to zero” The pun from the source text is omitted in the target text.
5. “Pun ST = pun TT” This category is divided into two subcategories.
- “Direct copy” The pun from the source text is directly copied in the target text (without being translated) For example: the sentence Haud credo, twas not a haud credo can be translated into Dutch as Haud credo, het was geen haud credo, the words haud credo being Latin for ‘I do not think so’).
- “Transference” The pun from the source text is transferred to the target text, but it is adapted from the source language to the target language For example: when complexion is translated as complexie in Dutch.
6. “From non-pun to pun” A non-pun in the source text is translated as a pun in the target text.
7. “From zero to pun” A pun appears in the target text without a justification for it in the source text (it is added to the target text).
8. “Editorial techniques” The translator can add footnotes, endnotes, etc. when translating wordplay to draw attention to his translation of the wordplay while referring to the source text’s pun.
16 2.4.3 Translating idioms: Veisbergs
To categorise the translation of idioms Veisbergs suggests a classification that is somewhat different from Delabastita’s. He divides the translation techniques into eight categories. Firstly a translator can choose to translate an idiom by an “equivalent idiom transformation”. This means that the translator translates an idiom in the source text into an idiom in the target text. This is only possible when the two languages have equivalent idioms. Secondly a translator can use a “loan translation”, where the idiom itself is not really adapted to the target language. A third possibility is using an “extension”. This means that the translator adds a remark about his translation of that idiom. Fourthly the translator can use an “analogue transformation” by which he replaces the idiom from the source language into a semantically and stylistically similar idiom in the target language. A fifth option is “substitution” where the original idiom is substituted by an idiom which is not as closely related to the original idiom as the analogue idiom. “Compensation” is a sixth technique a translator can use. Here the translator recreates a bigger portion of a certain text (usually with longer texts). The seventh option is “omission”. An idiom can either be omitted altogether in the target text or translated in a non-wordplay way in the target text. The last and eighth technique is using “metalingual” comment. Here the translator uses editorial techniques as footnotes, endnotes, etc.
3 Theoretical background
Delabastita’s categorisation of wordplay (1993 and 1996) and Veisbergs’s categorisation of idioms (1997) will be used to categorise all wordplay found in the corpus. Delabastita’s wordplay categorisation is very functional (because he used it himself to categorise some of Shakespeare’s plays) and quite complete because of his division into three levels. Veisbergs’s categorisation of idioms was more complete in the field of idioms, because that is what he focussed on. The translations will only be classified using Delabastita’s categorisation, because it is both complete and practical. The initial intention was to use Veisbergs’s categorisation for the translation of idioms, because it was more detailed and specified, which should have made it the perfect addition to Delabastita’s categorisation. However, Veisbergs’s idiom translation categories proved insufficient to categorise most of the idiom translations as it does not include idioms being translated into other wordplay categories (homonymy for example). Hence, the translations of idioms are also categorised with Delabastita’s categorisation.
4 Methodology
Firstly, I watched the full corpus on DVD and transcribed all the wordplay. All examples can be found in the appendix. (It might be that some of the wordplay was missed when watching the show because I am not a native speaker of English). I categorised all the examples of wordplay according to Delabastita’s model. The original Dutch translations of the corpus were then transcribed and categorised using Delabastita’s translation categorisation. I downloaded the Dutch fansubs from the internet in an .srt-file. To make more practical this .srt file was converted into a .doc
17 file so that it became a word document. Finally, the fansubs were placed next to the original subtitles to be able to compare them. The wordplay category is mentioned under each pun. Also the translations and their categorisation of both the fansubs and the official subtitles are put under each pun. Delabastita’s method was used to categorise all the wordplay, because it is both complete and practical. Veisbergs’s categorisation of translation of idioms came up short and was therefore not used.
5 Research
5.1 Categorisation in general
5.1.1 Categorisation of wordplay: Delabastita and Veisbergs
All the wordplay found in the corpus will be categorised using Delabastita’s method of categorisation. As already mentioned Delabastita distinguishes three levels of wordplay. This division into categories and also subcategories makes finding all the wordplay a difficult process, because there is so much that you need to think about and to keep in mind. These three levels can also overlap each other, which makes it very difficult to accurately categorise all wordplay. I will therefore investigate if all three levels are necessary. On the first level “a confrontation of similar forms” (Delabastita 1993:78) words are confronted in a formal way, i.e. having to do with the spelling of the word. These words can be confronted both vertically (in one word) and horizontally (between two words); and can be further divided into “homophony” (different spelling, same pronunciation), “homography” (same spelling, different pronunciation), homonymy (same spelling, same pronunciation), and “paronymy” (almost identical spelling and pronunciation). In the following table, examples from the corpus are used to make these confrontations more concrete.
Homophony Homography Homonymy Paronymy = pronunciation ≠ pronunciation = pronunciation ≠ pronunciation ≠ spelling = spelling = spelling ≠ spelling
Vertical Fawlty towers Shrek the third Shrek the Halls
C: Two, small S: You want Smashing and dry eggs with that through the snow B: I wouldn’t say ham And laughin' all that the way Too small and ¨ meat > actor ¨ smashing > dry who overacts dashing horizontal Flying Circus Shrek 2 Flying Circus
P: But not the D: Bet your P: I think what same as we bottom...? McTeagle's have S: Bet my pottery... poetry with "bow" and bottom? is doing "bough"— the last > ¨ poetry > behind pottery
18 The category “homography” does not contain any wordplay, probably because the corpus is taken from a spoken medium. Sometimes, however, wordplay is created by the visual, by showing something written. In Monty Pythons Flying Circus, for example, a group of people is shown which is protesting against the use of mice in experiments. On a banner it says mice is nice, which is based on “phonological development” (see below), but even these written puns are never based on “homography” in the corpus.
Since this level does not suffice to categorise all the wordplay found in the corpus a closer look at another level is needed. The second level “a confrontation of dissimilar meanings” (Delabastita 1993: 86) seems to be less clear-cut and dependent on the other levels to cause wordplay, therefore the third level “An exploitation of linguistic features“ (Delabastita: 102) will be focused on first. On this level words are confronted in a linguistic way, i.e. the combination of form and meaning. In the first category “phonological structure” sound similarities between semantically and etymologically unrelated words are exploited. This category is much like the category “paronymy” on the first level, but a distinction will be made. The group “paronymy” will contain those words which are almost identical spelling and in pronunciation, but where the sound similarities are not really exploited, or are not the main reason the words are confronted. For example in Shrek the Halls donkey sings smashing through the snow (in original song dashing through the snow). Even though the words smashing and dashing rhyme they are not classified as phonological structure, because the main reason for this confrontation is that Donkey literally smashes through the snow. “Phonological structure” on the other hand, will be used to categorise words which are confronted only by sound similarities. In Shrek this type of wordplay is often used. For example in Shrek the third prince Charming says:
C: Upon my regal steed Princess, my love At last you shall be freed
This type of wordplay will be classified as “phonological structure” because the main reason for this confrontation is the rhyme. The reason for making this distinction is that it may be easier to translate “phonological structure”, because the meaning of a word in such a confrontation is less important than its effect. Therefore the translator can be a little more free in his or her translation. The second category “lexical development” is divided into “polysemous words” and “idioms”. According to Delabastita “polysemy” is different from “homonymy” in the fact that it entails that one word has different related meanings, while with “homonymy” two totally different words happen to have a same form. This difference, however, does not seem that clear-cut. When are meanings related and when are they not? It proved very difficult to make the distinction when categorising the corpus, therefore all polysemous words will be categorised as homonymy. “Idioms” can be defined as a combination of words where the meaning cannot be derived from the individual words making up the idiom. To make this category totally workable a more loose definition was used, that of collocation, meaning lexical items that often co- occur. According to Delabastita (1993) idioms can be used as wordplay when interpreted literally, but according to Veisbergs (1997) this, what he calls “semantic transformation”, is only one way in which idioms can be used as wordplay. He adds
19 that they can also undergo a “structural transformation” by which he means that idioms can be altered structurally (through substitution, ellipsis, etc) to create wordplay. In the corpus idioms are sometimes used to create wordplay. In Fawlty Towers, for example, Polly says:
P: She doesn't mean any arm
This is an example of a “structural transformation” of an idiom. The ‘normal’ idiom is not to mean any harm, but Polly wants to make Basil aware of the fact that the arm of the man who past away is sticking out of the closet and therefore transforms the idiom. The following passage from Fawlty Towers can be called a semantic transformation of the idiom:
[Sybil is ill, man asks: is Syb ill? -> Syb-il and asks if Basil understands it] Man: Have you got it? B: No, I'm fine.
The idiom to get something means to understand something, but here Basil interprets it literally and answers to the question Have you got a disease? In the third category, “morphological development”, wordplay is based on the confrontation between etymologically related words or words that are confronted through derivation, composition, etc. in an etymologically ‘incorrect’ way. For example, in Monty Pythons Flying Circus a man gets a part in a BBC programme, where he only has to stand on set and then walk away. He discusses his role with his wife:
Wife: That's what they call a walk-on. Husband: Walk-on? That's a walk-off, that's what this is.
The word walk-on is the name for a part where a person does not have any lines, but is only a part of the background action. The man interprets the word literally and adapts it to what he has to do: walk off the set. This can be seen as a form of composition. A walk-on is now perceived as one word, but the man sees it as two different words and therefore changes the last part to a, what he thinks, more accurate description. The fourth and last category is called “syntactic structure”, where the grammar of the sentence is exploited to create wordplay.
B: My horse, nitwit! M: Your horse Nitwit?
In this example from Fawlty Towers Basil asked Manuel to go out and bet on a horse for him and it won. Basil does not want his wife to know that he betted and says to Manuel that he should not talk to her about the horse. Then Manuel asks “what horse” and basil answers “my horse, nitwit”, referring to Manuel as being the nitwit, but Manuel interprets it as your horse which is called Nitwit. Here the pun comes from the grammar of the sentence which gives the word “nitwit” its double meaning being a nitwit and the proper name Nitwit.
20 The second level is not needed to categorise wordplay found in the corpus. It can be used to further specify wordplay (for example the walk-on/walk-off example above can be further specified by opposition), but it does not contain wordplay by itself.
Additions
Veisbergs’s categorisation of idioms does not seem to cover all the idioms found in the corpus. The following example is an utterance of Manuel who said to Mrs. Fawlty that Basil was climbing up a ladder to look at a girl because he was “crazy about her” (meaning that it drove him crazy), while Basil wanted to catch a guest smuggling in a girl in his room. Here Manuel says to Basil what he said to Ms. Fawlty:
M: I tell her you go to see girl in room. You crazy about this girl, okay?
Here crazy about this girl should not be interpreted as an idiom (‘to be in love with someone’), but literally (‘to be driven crazy’). It is important, however, to mention that Manuel does not speak English very well and that no native speaker would utter such a sentence. Veisbergs mentions that idioms can be interpreted literally (“semantic transformation”), but does not mention the situation described above where a literal set of words is interpreted as an idiom. I will use the term “reversed semantic transformation” for these kinds of puns. Finally, there is another kind of wordplay found in the corpus which cannot be categorised by using Delabastita’s model. The word Versarchery (name of a store in Shrek 2 and 3) does not exist in the English language, but seems to be a combination of the words Versace and archery. It slightly resembles the category “paronymy”, but it differs in the fact that the two words used in the confrontation do not really resemble each other both in writing and in pronunciation. This type of wordplay will be called “contamination”.
Conclusion
To classify the wordplay in the corpus, Delabastita’s model has to be slightly adapted and supplemented. Only two levels are necessary to classify the instances of wordplay. On the first level (formal level) the subcategory homography can be omitted, because none of the puns are based on this category. The second level can only be used to further specify wordplay, but is not needed to classify wordplay. On the third (linguistic) level the category of idioms needs to be further specified. Therefore Veisbergs’s model was used, because it appears to be more detailed. There was also the need to add another category of idioms to Veisbergs’s model, viz. “reversed semantic transformation”. The category polysemy was omitted, because it could be placed under homonymy. Furthermore, a category needed to be added to Delabastita’s model to be able to categorise all the puns from the corpus. This additional category is called “contamination”.
21 5.1.2 Categorisation of translation: Delabastita
To categorise the translations of both the official subtitles and the fansubs the method of Delabastita will be used. Initially, I wanted to use Veisbergs’s method of translation for the idioms, but it proved to be inadequate as many idioms were not translated by an idiom (which is not included in Veisbergs’s translation categorisation). Therefore Delabastita’s categorisation will also be used for the idioms. Delabastita distinguishes eight categories based on how the pun is translated. In the first category “from pun to pun” the pun in the source text is translated in the target text as a pun (does not need to be translated in the same way, homonymy can be translated as paronymy, for example). The following passage from Fawlty Towers:
P: When could you collect the body? Somebody, anybody, really. [guest walked in Polly changed the subject] is translated in the official subtitles as:
P: Wanneer haalt u ‘t lijk op? Lijkt u dat wat?
So the pun in the source text is translated as a pun in the target text (here on the same basis, namely morphology). The second category called “from pun to non-pun” is divided into two subcategories. The first subcategory is called “from pun to non-pun, selective” and entails that only s1 or only s2 is translated in the source text. In Monty Pythons Flying Circus, for example the passage:
Arthur Tree: Hello, hello, people, and welcome to it's A Tree. is translated in the fansubs as:
Hallo, mensen en welkom bij 'Het is een boom'.
Here the translator only translated s1 (a tree) and not s2 (Arthur Tree). Therefore it is categorised as a non-pun. In the second subcategory, called “from pun to non-pun, non-selective”, both meanings that are confronted (s1 and s2) are translated, but in a non-punning way. In Shrek the Halls this passage:
D: 'Twas the night before Christmas and I spent all the day Finishin' up on my Christmas display is translated in the fansubs as:
Het was de nacht voor Kerstmis, en ik had heel m'n dag besteed, aan het afwerken van m'n Kerstversieringen.
Both meanings are transferred, but the sound similarities have disappeared in the translation. The third subcategory in the category “from pun to non-pun” is needed to be able to classify all translations. This subcategory, called “from pun to pun, diffuse paraphrase”, will contain all remaining non-punning translations. There are two kinds
22 of non-pun translations that could not be classified with neither selective nor non- selective. The translation of this passage from Fawlty towers, for example, was difficult to classify:
[Manuel does not speak English well] B: There is too much butter on those trays. [...] M: Not "on those trays." No Sir, "Uno dos tres"
Fansubs: Er staat teveel boter op deze schotels. [...] - Niet "op deze schotels." Nee, meneer, "uno dos tres."
Here s1 is translated, but s2 is a form of direct copy and the result is a non-pun translation. Therefore such cases will be classified as “from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase”. Also the following cases will be classified here:
[Fawlty Towers] C: Who's in charge here? M: No, charge later. After sleep. Official subtitles: Roep iemand die wakkerder is. - Nee, eerst slapen.
[Shrek the Halls] D: Or figgified your puddin'?
Fansubs: Of de kalkoen bereid?
In the first example the official subtitles did not translate s1 (to be in charge) and s2 (to charge), but they also cannot be classified as “from pun to zero” because the general meaning and effect of the passage is translated. The translator seemed to have noticed that there is a pun, but could not find an equivalent translation. Therefore s/he tried to translate it in a funny way, but not using wordplay. So such cases will also be classified as “from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase”. In the second example from Shrek the Halls the translator seemed to have translated the original utterance in a way that the audience would understand, but in doing so lost the wordplay. Figgy pudding is something typically British eaten on Christmas. In Belgium such a pudding does not exist, nor is there an immediate equivalent. Therefore the translator may have chosen to translate it to something the audience does know. The tradition of eating Turkey, especially in America, is generally known in Belgium. So even though the passage is translated (but in a non-punning way), s1 and s2 from the original utterance (figgy and figgified) are not. Therefore such cases will also be classified “from pun to non-pun, general”. The third translation category is called “from pun to related rhetorical device”. This means that the pun from the source text is translated in the target text by using a wordplay-related device (for example alliteration, repetition, etc.). In the following passage from MPFC assonance (the re-occurrence of vowel sounds) is used in the translation of the official subtitles.
23 [written on a banner] Mice is nice
official subtitles: MUIZEN ZIJN PLUIS
The forth category called “from pun to zero” means that the whole passage containing the wordplay is omitted. In the official subtitles of Fawlty Towers many utterances from Manuel are omitted. In Shrek the fansubbers often omitted puns when they are uttered in song and when they are written (not spoken). The latter is also the case in MPFC. The next category “pun in the source text = pun in the target text” is divided into two subcategories. In the first subcategory “direct copy” an utterance is copied from one language into another without adapting it to that language. In the second subcategory “transference” the utterance is copied and adapted to the target language. When Basil says to Manuel:
B: Stupidissimo! it is translated in the official subtitles as “direct copy”, B: Stupidissimo.
But in the fansubs it is translated as “transference”
B: Idiotissimo
The next three categories “from non-pun to pun”, “from zero to pun” and “editorial techniques” are not found in to the corpus. They are probably more common in translated texts than in subtitles. Especially the last method of translation “editorial techniques” is impossible to use in subtitles, because footnotes and editorial comments would divert the reader from the visual. It is important to note that the categorisation of Delabastita is based on formal, linguistic and semantic features and does not take into account the effect (dynamic equivalence) that a translation should have to truly be successful. Therefore, sometimes the translation of a pun was put in the category “from pun to pun”, while it did not have the same effect as the original pun. The translation of the following passage, for example, is somewhat bizarre and would not be as funny as the original utterance.
[a woman in the restaurant had put what she thought was salt on her French fries, but it turned out there was sugar in the saltcellar.] C: I've put it all over the plaice. B: All over the place? What were you doing with it?
Fansubs: Ik heb het over de hele schol gestrooid. Over de hele school ? Wat deed u daar nou?
In the translation itself the wordplay has remained, but it seems to be inconsistent with what is shown visually and loses its effect because of it. The viewer can see that the woman is eating French fries with bacon, but in the translation these fries
24 becomes a ‘schol’ which is a fish. A second problem is the word which is confronted with ‘schol’ namely ‘school’. ‘School’ can mean two things: it can mean a group of fish, or a school building. The second part of the translation (‘wat deed u daar nou?’) seems to be referring to the latter, namely ‘school’ as a building. But in this case it would mean that the woman would have stopped eating and went to a school and scattered some sugar around there, again making the situation unrealistic and less funny. So even though this translation is not really funny, it is categorised as “from pun to pun”, because formally it is translated into a pun (paronymy).
Conclusion
Veisbergs’s method of categorising the translations of idioms proved to be inadequate. Delabastita’s method was therefore additionally used to categorise the whole corpus. Three of Delabastita’s categories were omitted, however, because they could not be applied to the corpus. In subtitles a pun cannot be translated “from non-pun to pun”, “from zero to pun” or using “editorial techniques”, because of the many subtitling restrictions like time, space, etc. (mentioned in the introduction). It is also important to note that effect is not taken into account when categorising the translations, which means that a translation “from pun to pun” is not necessarily funny and a translation “from pun to non-pun” not necessarily not funny.
5.2 Categorisation of Fawlty Towers
5.2.1 Categorisation of wordplay in Fawlty Towers
The corpus is categorised according to Delabastita and Veisbergs’ model with the additions and reductions mentioned above. As already said Delabastita does not say that these levels cannot overlap. Therefore one pun can be categorised in more than one level. In the appendix this is shown in the following manner:
C: I'm afraid this is corked. B: I just uncorked it. Didn't you see me? [...] C: I don't mean that. I mean the wine is corked. The wine has reacted with the cork. B: I'm sorry? C: The wine has reacted with the cork and gone bad. morphology (cork > uncork) Homonymy, horizontal (corked: cork is still in the bottle > corked: wine has gone bad)
In the following table this pun will be categorised both as “homonymy” and “morphology”. The table also includes two different percentages. The first percentage shows how much a particular wordplay category takes up in general. The second percentage (between brackets) shows how much a wordplay category takes up in one of the three large wordplay categories (Formal, linguistic and other).
25 Table 1: Wordplay in Fawlty towers
Formal Linguistic Other Homophony Homonymy paronymy idiom phono morph syntac cont vert hor vert hor vert hor sem struc rev
6 8 15 13 4 8 8 10 1 19 20 1 3 5.17% 6.90% 12.93% 11.20% 3.45% 6.90% 6.90% 8.62% 0.86% 16.38% 17.24% 0.86% 2.59% (11.11%) (14.81%) (27.77%) (24.07%) (7.41%) (14.81%) (13.56%) (16.95%) (1.69%) (32.20%) (33.90%) (1.69%) 100%
Total: 14 Total: 28 Total: 12 12.07% 24.14% 10.35% (25.93%) (51.85%) (22.22%) Total: 19 Total: 40 16.38% 34.48% (32.20%) (67.80%) Total: Total: 54 Total: 59 3 46.55% 50.86% 2.59% (100%) (100%) (100%) Total: 116 100% Abbreviations: Vert: vertical Phono: phonological structure Hor: horizontal Morph: morphological development Sem: semantic transformation Syntac: syntactical development Struc: structural transformation cont: contamination Rev: reversed semantic transformation
26 Interpretation of Table 1
Table 1 indicates that most wordplay is based on linguistic features. It takes up more than 50% of all the wordplay. Of that 50% almost 34% are puns based on “morphological development” and 32% on idioms and “phonological structure”. That many puns are based on “phonological development” can be explained by the language barriers facing the different characters in Fawlty Towers. English, German, Spanish and French are often confronted with each other on the basis of sound- likeness. Spanish confrontations with English are often the result of a conversation between Manuel and Basil. A clear example of such a confrontation is when Basil says that Manuel has too much butter on those trays and Manuel replies not on those trays, uno dos tres. The German and French confrontations with English occur when German and French speaking guests are staying in the hotel. Puns based on “idioms” and “morphological development” are often used by Basil to talk himself out of difficult situations he created himself, for example when there are German guests in the hotel and he cannot seem to avoid the word ‘war’ nor names of people who were involved with or were Nazis. The category “syntactic structure” is not often the basis of wordplay. The reason for this might be that other wordplay is more obvious and therefore used more frequently. Wordplay based on formal features is also a large group. It takes up about 46% of all wordplay (leaving less than 3% for contamination). The category “homonymy” is the largest group, containing almost 52% of puns based on formal wordplay. In general “homonymy” takes up as much as 24%. This could be explained by the fact that there are a lot of homonymous and polysemous words in the English language (Hobbs, 1999). It is also one of the easier ways to use language in wordplay, as it is easy for the audience to spot it and can bring forth very funny situations. “Paronymy” and “homophony” have an almost equal share, being the basis for respectively 22% and more than 26% of the puns in the group of formal features. Wordplay based on “contamination” is the smallest group, having only less than 3% of the wordplay based on it.
Conclusion of Table 1
Most wordplay in Fawlty Towers, more than 50%, is based on the second level “An exploitation of linguistic features”. Of that 50% almost a third of the puns are based on “morphological development” (34%), “idioms” (32%) and “phonological structure” (32%). About 46% of all wordplay is based on the first level “a confrontation of similar forms”. Of that 46% more than 52% is based on “homonymy”, leaving about 22% for “paronymy” and about 26% for “homophony”. Only less than 3% of all wordplay is based on “contamination”.
5.2.2 Categorisation of translation in Fawlty Towers
The translations are categorised according to Delabastita's model with the additions and reductions mentioned above. Some translations, however, could be placed in more than one category. This happened most often in the official subtitles where the translator seemed to have chosen to make his translation complement what is being
27 said instead of substituting it. Therefore to understand some puns the audience needed to have heard what had been said and made the connection between the translation and the original utterance. For example:
M: Qué? C : K? M: Sí. C: C? "KC"? "KC"? What are you trying to say?
Official subtitles:
[not translated] C: Keesie? Wat probeer je te zeggen?
Here the translation itself does not make sense. Only when the viewer made the connection between the utterance and the translation this passage can be seen as “from pun to pun”. If not it should be categorised as “from pun to non-pun, selective”. In this particular passage it should not be too hard for the viewer to connect the two, but sometimes making the connection is harder. In the following example Fawlty is translated as valt ie in Dutch to make the sound connection, but because forty is translated as omvalt to set the basis for that sound connection, the translation seems to be a little too strenuous.
C: I ask him for my room, and he tells me the manager's a Mr. Watt, aged 40. M: No. No, no. Faw-lty. C: "Faulty"? What's wrong with him?
Official subtitles: C: Hij zegt dat de manager Watt heet en omvalt. Valt ie? Wat heeft ie dan?
Also here, the official subtitles can be classified both as “pun to non-pun” as “from pun to pun” depending if the viewer made the connection or not. In the following table such a translation will be classified twice. The first number stands for the number of times a pun is translated into a certain category (for example 50 puns are translated into puns in the official subtitles). The second number represents the percentage of times a pun is translated into a certain category (for example 42.74% of all puns are translated into a pun in the official subtitles)
28 Table 2: Translation of puns in Fawlty Towers
P > P P > NP, P > NP, P > NP, P > Z P > RD P = P, d P = P, t s n dp
50 31 12 5 6 5 6 2 Official 42.74% 26.50% 10.26% 4.27% 5.13% 4.27% 5.13% 1.71% subtitles
Total: 48 Total: 8 41.03% 68.38%
Total: 117 100%
49 25 18 6 0 4 7 2 Fansubs 44.14% 22.52% 16.22% 5.41% 0.00% 3.60% 6.31% 1.80%
Total: 49 Total: 9 44.14% 8.11%
Total: 111 100%
Abbreviations: P > P: from pun to pun P > Z: from pun to zero P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, selective direct copy P > NP, dp: from pun to non-pun, diffuse P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, paraphrase transference
Interpretation of table 2
What stands out when looking at table 2 is the fact that more than 40% of the wordplay is translated “from pun to pun” in both the fansubs (44%) and the official subtitles (43%). This can be explained by the fact that a lot of the English structures used in the wordplay are very similar to the Dutch structures. Therefore the translator does not need to be very creative in translating these structures. The other 60% might be more language specific and therefore slightly harder to translate. It is also striking that the fansubbers translated 44% “from pun to non-pun” while the official subtitlers ‘only’ translated 41% “from pun to non-pun”. As said in the introduction the expectations were that the fansubbers would translate less wordplay
29 “from pun to non-pun” than the official subtitlers. Why this is not the case can be explained by the fact that the fansubs seem to be based on the English subtitles and not on the utterances themselves. There are three main reasons why I make the assumption that the fansubs are based on the official English subtitles. First of all, sometimes English words remain in the translation by the fansubbers, for example No 't is 16 Elwood Avenue (No, it’s 16 Elwood Avenue in the English subtitles) or Hello, Fawlty Towers (same orthography and punctuation in the English subtitles). A second reason is that almost always the fansubs follow the English subtitles in punctuation as well as in the division of the sentences per line and per two lines for example this passage in the fansubs
Als Mr. Stubbs iets wil weten, bel dan, maar niet als het niet hoeft. coincides with the official English subtitles:
If Mr. Stubbs wants to know anything, just ring, but don't if you don't have to.
A third reason is that when the official English subtitlers transcribe utterances in other languages the fansubbers do so too, for example this passage from the fansubs
Oh, kijk eens... cuando nosotoros somos weg... is very similar to the one of the English subtitles:
Oh, look... Cuando nosotoros somos away...
Notice also the similarities in punctuation and the division of the sentences over the lines. At times, the English subtitles seem to be slightly censored and spotting wordplay from a written text seems harder, moreover because much of the wordplay (as said above) is based on paronymy and phonological development (sound- likeness). So this might be the reason for the fact that the fansubs translated more puns into non-puns. A great difference between the fansubs and the official subtitles can be found in the category “from pun to zero”. While the official subtitlers have omitted 6 puns in the translation, the fansubbers have omitted none. Maybe this is because the official subtitles seem to complement their translation with the original utterances rather than replacing them. As said above the viewer sometimes needs to connect the utterances with the subtitles to get the wordplay in the official subtitles. In the fansubs such collaboration is not needed, because everything is translated. In the other categories, “from pun to rhetorical device” and “pun = pun” there seems to be little differences.
30 Conclusion of table 2
More than 40% of the wordplay is translated “from pun to pun” in both the fansubs as the official subtitles, probably because English and Dutch are very similar languages. In the fansubs 44% of the wordplay is translated “from pun to non-pun”, while only 41% is translated as non-pun in the official subtitles. The reason for result supports the assumption that fansubbers used the English subtitles as a basis for translation, while the official subtitlers seemed to base their translation on the utterances themselves. The greatest difference between fansubs and official subtitles could be found in the category “from pun to zero”. In the official subtitles six puns are omitted, in the fansubs none.
5.2.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in Fawlty Towers
The following table combines the table of wordplay and the table of translation, but distinguishes the fansubs from the official subtitles. Note that vertical wordplay is not distinguished from horizontal wordplay and the different non-pun translation categories are also combined to work more effectively in finding the differences in translation in both the official subtitles and the fansubs. The percentages, included in that table, are per wordplay category and not in general.
31 Table 3: Wordplay and translation: fansubs versus original subtitles in Fawlty Towers
S P Np Z RD P,d P,t E
L hp 5 (33.33%) 5 (33.33%) 5 (33.33%) T I
T hn 16 (55.17%) 13 (44.83%) B par 4 (30.77%) 5 (38.46%) 1 (7.69%) 3 (23.08%) U S
id,sem 2 (25.00%) 6 (75.00%) L id,stru 6 (60.00%) 3 (30.00%) 1 (10.00%) A I
C id,rev 1 (100%) I
F phon 7 (36.84%) 7 (36.84%) 3 (15.79%) 1 (5.26%) 1 (5.26%) F
O morph 9 (45.00%) 8 (35.00%) 1 (5.00%) 2 (10.00%) 1 (5.00%) synt 1 (100%) cont 1 (33.33%) 1 (33.33%) 1 (33.33%)
S hp 5 (35.71%) 8 (57.14%) 1 (7.14%) B
U hn 18 (64.28%) 10 (35.71%) S
N par 2 (16.67%) 5 (41.67%) 1 (8.33%) 4 (33.33%)
A id,sem 4 (50.00%) 4 (50.00%) F id,stru 4 (40.00%) 6 (60.00%) id,rev 1 (100%) phon 6 (33.33%) 9 (50.00%) 2 (11.11%) 1 (5.55%) morph 9 (42.86%) 8 (38.10%) 1 (4.76%) 1 (4.76%) 2 (9.52%) synt 1 (100%) cont 1 (33.33%) 2 (66.67%)
Abbreviations: P: from pun to pun hp: homophony morph: morphological development Np: from pun to non-pun (all non-pun translations) hn: homonymy synt: syntactic structure Z: from pun to zero par: paronymy cont: contamination RD: from pun to related rhetorical device id,sem: idiom, semantic transformation P,d: pun source text = pun target text, direct copy id,stru: idiom, structural transformation P,t: pun source text = pun target text, transference phon: phonological structure
32 Interpretation of table 3
In table 2, the differences between the fansubs and the official subtitles were mainly that the fansubbers translated more wordplay “from pun to non-pun” than the official subtitlers, contradictory to the expectations. This table shows that in the categories “homonymy” and “idiom, semantic transformation” this statement does not apply. In the category “homonymy” (both vertical and horizontal) the fansubbers only translated 36% of the wordplay into non-puns, while the original subtitlers translated 45% into non-puns. In the category “idiom, semantic transformation” the fansubbers also translated less wordplay into non-puns than the original subtitles, 50% versus 75%. So here the expectations are borne out by the data. It is important however to note that ‘only’ eight puns are based on the category “idiom, semantic transformation” so that the data cannot be said to be very representative. In all the other categories the fansubbers translated less “from pun to pun” than the original subtitlers. The reason for this could be that puns based on “homonymy” are easier to spot than others and that the extra time the fansubbers had helped them to find better translations. That they had more “from pun to non-pun” in the other categories might be because they did not spot these puns. So the assumption that the fansubs were based on the English subtitles might have played a big role here. Wordplay based on formal structures are easier to spot in a text than those based on linguistic or semantic features, for the latter it might be better to hear the utterances themselves instead of having to read them. It also stands out that most of the translations “from pun to zero” (only in the original subtitles because the fansubs never omitted puns) are in the category of “homophony”. When looking at the examples, it is obvious that the original subtitles did not translate “homophony” when English was confronted with another language. Probably because these kind of confrontations are harder to translate and they might have chosen to make the viewer pay attention to the utterances themselves, because most people in Belgium and the Netherlands do understand at least a bit of English and would probably understand the original pun.
Conclusion of table 3
In general the differences between the fansubs and the official subtitles seem to be minor. Yet in some categories there are some notable differences. It appears that in the categories “homonymy” and “idiom, semantic transformation” the fansubbers translated more puns “from pun to pun” than the official subtitlers. In the other categories this is not the case. The fansubbers appeared to have tried to translate wordplay into wordplay whenever they can. However, they probably failed to notice some of the wordplay at times, perhaps because they seemed to have translated from the English subtitles and not from the utterances themselves. Also, the original subtitlers only seemed to have omitted puns when they thought that the original utterances would be better understood by the Dutch viewer than by a translation.
33 5.2.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in Fawlty Towers
The following table is a combination of the two previous tables (wordplay table and translation table) in percentage per wordplay category and a combination of the fansubs with the official subtitles. It will be used to see if some wordplay is ‘easier’ to translate than others. ‘Easier’ does not mean that the puns in that particular category take little effort to translate. When a wordplay category is called ‘easy to translate’ it only means that this particular category has many “from pun to pun” translations and therefore probably shows that the basis on which the pun relies in the English language shows similarity in structure with the Dutch language. Note that some passages needed to be put together to check the translations as a whole (for example passages 53-56). These passages are not included in the table. Also some wordplay and some translations are categorised in more than one category.
Table 4: Combined table of wordplay and translation in percentage in Fawlty Towers
P>P P>NP,s P>NP,n P>NP,d P>Z P>RD P=P,d P=P,t Hp,v 50.00 16.67 25.00 8.33 Hp,h 23.61 29.17 12.50 6.25 22.22 6.25 Hn,v 60.00 30.00 10.00 Hn,h 59.34 22.26 14.84 3.57 Par,v 37.50 25.00 37.50 Par,h 17.36 22.92 24.31 11.81 23.61 id,s 37.50 50 6.25 6.25 id,struc 50.00 40.00 5.00 5.00 id,rev 100 phon 35.09 18.86 10.82 13.74 13.45 5.41 2.63 morph 43.93 16.91 19.65 4.88 7.38 7.26 synt 100 cont 33.33 16.67 33.33 16.67
Abbreviations: v: vertical P > P: from pun to pun h: horizontal P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective Hp: homophony P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- Hn: homonymy selective Par: paronymy P > NP, d: from pun to non-pun, diffuse id, s : idiom, semantic transformation paraphrase id, struc: idiom, structural transformation P > Z: from pun to zero id, rev: idiom, reversed semantic P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device tranformation P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, phon : phonological structure direct copy morph: morphologic development P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, synt: syntactic structure transference cont: contamination
34 Interpretation of table 4
When looking at the percentage of times that each pun is translated “from pun to pun”, it is possible to deduce which puns are the ‘easiest’ to translate. Excluding “reversed semantic idioms” and “syntactic structure” because they only have one entry and combining both the fansubs and the official subtitles, the top five of ‘easiest-to-translate’ are “vertical homonymy” translated 60% “from pun to pun”, “horizontal homonymy” with 59%, “vertical homophony” and “structurally transformed idioms” with 50%, and “morphological development” with 44%. In general, “vertical homonymy” and “horizontal homonymy” is almost equally often translated “from pun to pun”, respectively 60 % and 59%. “Vertical homonymy” seems to be slightly easier to translate than “horizontal homonymy”, but the difference is barely noticeable. The fact that about 60% of “homonymy” could be translated “from pun to pun” could mean that English and Dutch structures are very similar. In other language combinations (like French-Dutch) the results might be very different. When taking a closer look at “horizontal homophony” and “paronymy” less than 25% and for “paronymy” less than 30% is translated “from pun to pun”. This seems quite strange, especially for “paronymy” because the translation would only need two words that have a likeness of sound and a likeness in writing. It should therefore be easier to translate than the category “homonymy” for example. What does stand out with paronymy, however, is the fact that is often translated to as “direct copy”. The reason for this might be that “paronymy” is often used with (proper) names and foods. Therefore it is often better to copy the pun than to try and translate it. The reason that “horizontal homophony” is not that often translated into a pun might be because Dutch has less homophonic words than English (Hobbs, 1999). English is an opaque language (meaning that one sound is written in many different ways for example: plain – plane) which therefore results in many homophonic words. Also, a lot of homophonic puns were most likely omitted in the original subtitles because translating it would be less effective than letting the viewers hear the original utterance. That the category “phonological structure” is translated ‘only’ 35% into a pun also seems quite peculiar. As said in the beginning, a distinction was made between “paronymy” and “phonological structure”, because “phonological structure” would probably be easier to translate than “paronymy”. In contrast to “paronymy” the category “phonological structure” contains words that are only confronted because of sound likeness (in “paronymy” also a likeness in graphemes is needed). The translation of “phonological structure” should therefore be easier to translate than “paronymy”, which is the case, but also other wordplay like “homonymy” and “homophony”. A reason for this might be that “phonological structure” is often used when English words are confronted with words from other languages, which is obviously more difficult to translate. It is also striking that vertical wordplay seems to be easier to translate than horizontal wordplay. The reason might be that in vertical wordplay only one form is confronted, which means that it can be translated in various ways (for example as an idiom or solidarity, etc.), even in horizontal wordplay. In horizontal wordplay, however, two forms are confronted, which means that in the translation two forms should be confronted too. Therefore horizontal wordplay cannot really be translated as vertical wordplay or it would probably not have the same effect.
35 Conclusion of table 4
The wordplay category of “homonymy” seems to be most often translated into a pun. Also “vertical homophony”, “semantically transformed idioms” and “morphological development” have a high number of “pun to pun” translations. On the level of “similar forms” vertical wordplay appeared to be easier to translate than horizontal wordplay. “Paronymy” and “horizontal homophony” did not have a high amount of “pun to pun” translations. “Paronymy” did however have a lot of translations belonging in the categories “pun ST = pun TT”, which was quite unusual in comparison to the other formal categories. “Phonological development” was often translated to a non-pun, which was against expectations, but can be explained by the fact that it was often used to confront two different languages. The category “homophony” was often omitted by the original subtitles to make the viewer pay attention to the original utterance.
5.3 Categorisation of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (MPFC)
5.3.1 Categorisation of wordplay in MPFC
As with Fawlty Towers the wordplay in MPFC can be categorised in multiple categories. For example:
[witness in court] He says he's a tree surgeon. But I don't like the sound of his liver. homonymy, vertical (organ > a person who lives in a specified manner) morphological development (living > liver)
Such wordplay will be categorised both as “homonymy” and “morphological development” in the following table. The table includes two different percentages, one that shows how much a particular wordplay category takes up in general and one (between brackets) that shows how much a wordplay category takes up in one of the three large wordplay categories (for example 3.70% of wordplay in the category formal features is based on “horizontal homophony”).
36 Table 5: Wordplay in MPFC
Formal Linguistic Other Homophony Homonymy paronymy idiom phono morph syntac cont vert hor vert hor vert hor sem struc rev
0 1 12 2 7 5 2 2 0 16 5 2 2 0.00% 1.79% 21.43% 3.57% 12.50% 8.93% 3.57% 3.57% 0.00% 28.57% 8.93% 3.57% 3.57% (0.00%) (3.70%) (44.44%) (7.41%) (25.93%) (18.52%) (7.41%) (7.41%) (0.00%) (59.26%) (18.52%) (7.41%) (7.41%)
Total: 1 Total: 14 Total: 12 1.79% 25.00% 21.43% (3.70%) (51.85%) (44.44%) Total: 4 Total: 23 7.14% 41.07% (14.81%) (85.19%) Total: 27 Total: 27 Total: 2 48.21% 48.21% 3.57% (100%) (100%) (100%) Total: 56 100%
Abbreviations: Vert: vertical Phono: phonological structure Hor: horizontal Morph: morphological development Sem: semantic transformation Syntac: syntactical development Struc: structural transformation cont: contamination Rev: reversed semantic transformation
37 Interpretation of table 5
This table, which contains all the wordplay found in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, shows that both wordplay based on formal features and wordplay based on linguistic features is equally represented. In the group of formal features “vertical homonymy” is the largest group taking up 44% of wordplay based on formal features. The reason for this might be that “homonymy” is the most straightforward of all the wordplay based on formal features. “Homonymy” will be spotted immediately by the viewer and will be understood by almost everybody, creating hilarious scenes. The category of “homonymy” does rely very much on the context of the joke. In Monty Python’s Flying Circus the actors often exaggerate the scene to make the joke very apparent. For example in the scene where two men are talking to each other in a café and one man is trying to get information about the sex life of the other man’s wife, he does not only ask dubious questions, but he also adds know what I mean, nudge, nudge. This is probably meant to make sure that the audience would understand the joke and maybe also to mock the use of obvious wordplay, since the Monty Python group wanted to create a different kind of humour. In the cases of “horizontal homonymy” the scenes are less explicit, because “horizontal homonymy” is very obvious. When discarding the difference between vertical and horizontal wordplay, “homonymy” and “paronymy” have an almost equal share in formal wordplay (52% and 44%). This means that “homophony” takes up less than 4% – maybe because “homophony” relies on graphology – which cannot be seen when words are merely uttered. As said before, linguistic wordplay has an almost equal share with formal wordplay. It is immediately apparent that “phonological structure” has a lot to do with that. It takes up 59% of linguistic wordplay. A reason for this might be that “phonological structure”, like “homonymy”, is very obvious. Maybe even more than “homonymy” in most cases, because it creates rhyme. The other groups based on linguistic features viz. “idioms”, “morphological development” and “syntactical structure” are smaller, taking resp. 15%, 19% and 7%. There is no wordplay based on “vertical homophony”, nor on “idiom: reversed semantic transformation”. “Horizontal homophony” is already quite difficult to spot for the viewer, so “vertical homophony” is probably even less obvious. This might be a reason for it not being used in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. “Idiom: reversed semantic transformation” was a category that was needed for Fawlty Towers, but in Monty Python’s Flying circus this category is not used. In general “phonological development” is the largest group with 29%, followed by “homonymy” (25%), and followed by “paronymy” 21%. The smallest groups (excluding the empty categories) are “homophony” (less than 2%), “contamination” (4%) and “syntactic structure” (4%).
Conclusion of table 5
Formal and linguistic wordplay in general have an equal share. Within formal features “homonymy” and “paronymy” are most often the basis for wordplay. In linguistic features “phonological development” is the basis for most of the wordplay (59%). In general “phonological development” is most used (29%), then “homonymy” (25%) and then “paronymy” (21%). There are two categories that are not used (“idiom: reversed semantic transformation” and “vertical homophony”); and three categories
38 that are not often used (“homophony” in general, “contamination” and “syntactic structure”).
5.3.2 Categorisation of translation in MPFC
The translations will be categorised in the same way as Fawlty Towers. Some translations, as in Fawlty Towers, can be categorised in more than one category. In the fansubs for example this wordplay-joke:
What’s brown and sounds like a bell? Dung! is translated as
Wat is bruin en klinkt als een klok? [not translated]
This translation should be categorised as “from pun to zero”, because the wordplay itself is not translated, but if the viewer makes the connection to what is said on tv (‘dung’) than they might understand (at least a part of) the joke. In that case it could be classified as “pun = pun, direct copy”. Some translations categorised “from pun to pun” do not really work in the situation, but they are translated in a punning way. For example:
Customer: "Chester drawers." [shows with his hands his chest and than the lower part of his body] Customer: I'd like some Chester drawers, please. Shopkeeper: Yes, sir. Customer: Does it go? Shopkeeper: It's over there, in the corner. is translated in the fansubs as:
Hoerenkast. Hoeren... kast. Ik wil de hoerenkast graag. Is dat wat? - De boerenkast staat daar, in de hoek.
The fansubbers decided to transform the original (vertical) wordplay into horizontal wordplay. That would not have been a problem if it was not for the fact that the visual does not match the fansubs anymore. The audience can see the man point to his chest when he says chester and point to his lower body when he says drawers. In the translation that would mean that he thinks the upper part of his body can be referred to by the word ‘hoeren’ and the lower part by the word ‘kast’, which is not the case. However, this translation is classified as “from pun to pun” because it is translated as a pun (“horizontal paronymy”). Note that the table contains two numbers. The first stands for the number of times a pun is translated in a certain category (for example 21 puns are translated into a pun). The second number represents the percentage of times a pun is translated into a certain category (for example 38.88% of all puns are translated into a pun in the official subtitles)
39 Table 6: Translation of puns in MPFC
P > P P > NP, P > NP, P > NP, P > Z P > RD P = P, d P = P, t s n dp
21 8 10 0 3 3 7 2 Official 38.88% 14.82% 18.52% 0.00% 5.56% 5.56% 12.96% 3.70% subtitles
Total: 18 Total: 9 33.33% 16.66%
Total: 54 100%
18 11 8 0 6 4 7 2 Fansubs 32.14% 19.64% 14.29% 0.00% 10.71% 7.14% 12.50 3.57% %
Total: 20 Total: 9 35.71% 16.07%
Total: 56 100%
Abbreviations: P > P: from pun to pun P > Z: from pun to zero P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, selective direct copy P > NP, dp: from pun to non-pun, diffuse P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, paraphrase transference
Interpretation of table 6
In the official subtitles almost 39% of the subtitles are translated “from pun to pun”, while the fansubbers translated 32% in that way. As said in the beginning: it was expected that the fansubbers would translate more “from pun to pun” than the original subtitlers because they do not have the time constraints that the people who translate the original subtitles have. This might be because, as with Fawlty Towers, the fansubbers seem to have translated from the original (English) subtitles, rather than from the utterances themselves. The reasons for this assumption lies in the fact that when the original subtitlers omitted utterances the fansubbers did so too and in some cases parts of the English subtitles were not erased, for example:
40 En Flopsy is ook blij. And flopsy's glad, too.
This shows that English subtitles were used. To spot wordplay the situation is very important and it is therefore important that subtitlers translate from the utterances themselves. Like in the example above (about the scene with “Chester drawers”) the visual is crucial. Even though the original subtitlers translated more puns “from pun to pun” than the fansubbers, the puns translated “from pun to non-pun” are almost equal in both categories (around 34%). The reason for this might be seen in the category “from pun to zero” because while the original subtitlers translated most of the puns (usually into puns) the fansubbers omitted a lot of puns (11% “from pun to zero” while in the original subtitles 6%). Usually the fansubbers do not translate what is written which can again be linked to the fact that fansubs are probably translated from other subtitles. The other remaining categories (“from pun to rhetorical device” and “pun ST = pun TT, direct copy/transference”) hold very little differences.
Conclusion of table 6
While the original subtitles translated 39% of the wordplay “from pun to pun”, only 32% of the puns are translated that way in the fansubs. Also in the category “from pun to zero” there is a difference between the fansubs and the original subtitles: the fansubs omitted 11% of the wordplay, while the original subtitles only omitted 6%. The reason for the differences in these two categories can be found in the fact that the original subtitlers probably use the series themselves to translate everything, whereas the fansubbers seem to translate from an English subtitle.
5.3.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in MPFC
In the following table the differences between the translation of fansubs and the original subtitles will be linked to the categories of wordplay. In that way it is possible to see if the differences in translation that were found in the previous table can be explained by the fact that the fansubbers might translate some categories of wordplay better than the original subtitlers or vice versa. Note that the distinction between vertical and horizontal wordplay is not made and that all non-pun categories (“non-pun, selective” “non-pun, non-selective” and “non-pun, diffuse paraphrase”) are combined under the name “non pun” (Np). Also, the percentages included are per wordplay category.
41 Table 7: Wordplay and translation: fansubs versus original subtitles in MPFC
S P Np Z RD P,d P,t E
L hp 1 (100%) T I
T hn 7 (50.00%) 5 (35.71%) 1 (7.14%) 1 (7.14%) B par 3 (25.00%) 2 (16.67%) 1 (8.33%) 4 (33.33%) 2 (16.67%) U S
id,sem 2 (100%) L
A id,stru 2 (100%) I
C id,rev I
F phon 5 (31.25%) 8 (50.00%) 1 (6.25%) 2 (12.50%) F
O morph 1 (20.00%) 3 (60.00%) 1 (20.00%) synt 2 (100%) cont 1 (50.00%) 1 (50.00%)
S hp 1 (100%) B
U hn 9 (64.29%) 4 (28.57%) 1 (7.14%) S
N par 2 (16.66%) 3 (25.00%) 1 (8.33%) 5 (41.67%) 1 (8.33%)
A id,sem 2 (66.66%) 1 (33.33%) F id,stru 1 (50.00%) 1 (50.00%) id,rev phon 2 (11.77%) 8 (47.06%) 3 (17.65%) 3 (17.65%) 1 (5.88%) morph 1 (20.00%) 3 (60.00%) 1 (20.00%) synt 1 (50.00%) 1 (50.00%) cont 1 (50.00%) 1 (50.00%)
Abbreviations: P: from pun to pun hp: homophony morph: morphological development Np: from pun to non-pun (all non-pun translations) hn: homonymy synt: syntactic structure Z: from pun to zero par: paronymy cont: contamination RD: from pun to related rhetorical device id,sem: idiom, semantic transformation P,d: pun source text = pun target text, direct copy id,stru: idiom, structural transformation P,t: pun source text = pun target text, transference phon: phonological structure
42 Interpretation of table 7
This table shows that in some categories the fansubbers translated more wordplay “from pun to pun” than the original subtitlers, even though the original subtitlers in general translated more wordplay “from pun to pun” than the fansubbers. The category where the fansubbers translated more “from pun to pun” than the official subtitlers is “homonymy”, viz. 64% versus 50%. It is however important to note that even though this is the case, the translations they made often did not work in the situation, for example the Chester drawers mentioned above where the translation does not compliment the visual, but actually works against it. The biggest difference between the fansubs and the original subtitles can be found in the category “phonological structure” where 31% of the puns are translated “from pun to pun“ in the original subtitles and ‘only’ 12% in the fansubs. The reason for this is probably because some of the “phonological structure” based puns are written (not spoken) and as mentioned before the fansubbers seemed to have translated from other subtitles, not from the video itself. Therefore the fansubbers likely omitted three of the puns based on “phonological structure”. The original subtitlers have omitted one pun based on “phonological structure”, but probably because of a time constraint:
Tonight's Spectrum examines the whole question of frothing and falling, coughing and calling, screaming and bawling, walling and stalling, galling and mauling, palling and hauling, trawling and squalling and zalling. Zalling? Is there a word "zalling?" is translated in the original subtitles as:
Spectrum bespreekt schuimbekken en vallen…hoesten en roepen, schreeuwen en tieren… kwetsen en ruziën, treiteren, kibbelen en ‘zalling’ Bestaat dat: zalling?
The words in the original utterance are spoken very fast, so to translate everything would probably mean having to break one of the time constraints.
Conclusion of table 7
Even though the original subtitlers translated more “from pun to pun” in general, the fansubbers translated more puns than the original subtitlers based on “homonymy” into a pun. It was, however, important to mention that even though translated into a pun, the translation of the fansubbers did not always work in the situation, probably because they seem to have translated from a text and not from the scene itself. This might also be the reason why the fansubbers have omitted some written “phonological structure”-based puns, while the original subtitlers always translated these. The only time the original subtitlers omitted a pun it was probably due to a time constraint. 5.3.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in MPFC
The following table combines both fansubs and original subtitles (expressed in percentage per wordplay category). This table will be used to see if some categories of wordplay are have more pun to pun translations than others. Note that, as with the other tables, some wordplay and translations are categorised in more than one category.
Table 8: Combined table of wordplay and translation in percentage in MPFC
P>P P>NP,s P>NP,n P>NP,d P>Z P>RD P=P,d P=P,t Hp,v Hp,h 50.00 50.00 Hn,v 54.17 37.50 4.17 4.17 Hn,h 75.00 25.00 Par,v 7.15 7.15 14.29 57.14 14.29 Par,h 40.00 10.00 30.00 10.00 10.00 id,s 83.33 16.67 id,struc 75.00 25.00 id,rev phon 21.51 18.02 30.52 11.95 15.08 2.94 morph 20.00 30.00 30.00 20.00 synt 25.00 75.00 cont 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00
Abbreviations: v: vertical P > P: from pun to pun h: horizontal P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective Hp: homophony P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- Hn: homonymy selective Par: paronymy P > NP, d: from pun to non-pun, diffuse id, s : idiom, semantic transformation paraphrase id, struc: idiom, structural transformation P > Z: from pun to zero id, rev: idiom, reversed semantic P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device tranformation P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, phon : phonological structure direct copy morph: morphologic development P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, synt: syntactic structure transference cont: contamination
Interpretation of table 8
This table shows that “semantically transformed idioms” are most often translated into puns (83%) in second place are both “horizontal homonymy” and “structurally transformed idioms” with 75% translated “from pun to pun” and in third place “vertical homonymy” (54%). The reason for “homonymy” having many pun to pun translations might be that English and Dutch are not that different from each other. The instances of “horizontal homonymy” showed similarity in structure between English and Dutch. It is important to take into account that there are only two puns based on both the “idioms” (both structural as semantic) as on “horizontal homonymy”, so these
44 numbers cannot be said to be representative. The group “vertical homonymy”, however, contains twelve puns. So the fact that 54% was translated “from pun to pun” means that it is probably one of the categories which show a lot of similarity with Dutch structures. “Vertical paronymy” has the least number of translations “from pun to pun” (7%). What does stand out though is that it is very often translated as “pun = pun, direct copy”. The reason for this is probably that “vertical paronymy” is often based on proper names, which cannot really be translated into another language and will often have the same effect in the original language as in the target language. The category “phonological structure” seems to be translated in a large variety of ways. Only 22% is translated “from pun to pun” and 49% is translated “from pun to non-pun”. This result is against all expectations because puns based on “phonological structure” only need to sound alike and compliment the visual of course, but is should not be to hard to find a solution for these kinds of wordplay. Even spotting them should not be a problem because when listening to the utterances rhyme immediately stands out. It is therefore hard to find a reason for this result. It might be because the fansubbers did not listen to the utterances themselves (as mentioned before), but even when looking at the previous table both the fansubers and the original subtitlers translated eight puns based on phonological structure into non-puns. It seems that in some occasions the translator chose the content of the words over the effect it created (for example in puns 37 to 43).
Conclusion of table 8
The categories that have the most pun to pun translations are “idioms” and “homonymy”, probably because English and Dutch have a very similar structure (Germanic languages). The numbers here, though, cannot be said to be representative because there were too few puns based on these categories. “Vertical paronymy” was the least often translated “from pun to pun” probably because this category contains a lot of proper names which cannot or need not be translated into the source language. The reason why “phonological structure” is not often translated “from pun to pun” might be that the translator sometimes chose meaning over effect.
5.4 Categorisation of Shrek
5.4.1 Categorisation of wordplay in Shrek
In Shrek there are no puns categorised in more than one category so in the following table all puns are only categorised in one group. The three sets of numbers in the table stand for: the number of times a pun is translated into a certain category (for example 1 pun is translated as vertical homophony), the percentage of times a pun is translated into a wordplay category in general (1.45% of all puns are translated into vertical homophony) and the percentage of times a pun is translated into a wordplay category in one of the three major categories (for example 4.55% of the puns from the category formal features are translated into “vertical homophony”).
45 Table 9: Wordplay in Shrek
Formal Linguistic Other Homophony Homonymy paronymy idiom phono morph syntac cont vert hor vert hor vert hor sem struc rev
1 0 11 4 4 2 1 7 0 33 4 0 2 1.45% 0.00% 15.94% 5.80% 5.80% 2.90% 1.45% 10.15% 0.00% 47.83% 5.80% 0.00% 2.90% (4.55%) (0.00%) (50.00%) (18.18%) (18.18%) (9.09%) (2.22%) (15.56%) (0.00%) (73.33%) (8.89%) (0.00%) (100%)
Total: 1 Total: 15 Total: 6 1.45% 21.74% 8.7% (4.55%) (68.18%) (27.27%) Total: 8 Total: 37 11.59% 53.62% (17.78%) (82.22%) Total: Total: 22 Total: 45 2 31.88% 65.22% 2.90% (100%) (100%) (100%) Total: 69 100%
Abbreviations: Vert: vertical Phono: phonological structure Hor: horizontal Morph: morphological development Sem: semantic transformation Syntac: syntactical development Struc: structural transformation cont: contamination Rev: reversed semantic transformation
46 Interpretation of table 9
Most of the wordplay found in Shrek is based on linguistic features, about 65%. Of that 65% more than 73% is based on “phonological structure” and in general “phonological structure” even takes up as much as 48%. This can be explained by the fact that Shrek is a film for the entire family and rhyme is one of the most obvious types of wordplay (easy to spot). Another large category is “homonymy” taking up 68% of the wordplay based on formal features and 22% in general. As said before, “homonymy” is probably used in puns so often because it is easy to spot and creates humorous scenes. Also, English contains many homonymous words (Hobbs, 1999). The “idioms” are in third place, taking up 12% of all the wordplay. “Paronymy” comes in forth place, being the base for 9% of the puns. There are three categories that do not contain any puns. These categories are: “horizontal homophony”, “reversed semantically transformed idioms” and “syntactic structure”. “Semantically transformed idioms” was a category that was added because it was needed for Fawlty Towers, but here it is redundant. The category “syntactic structure” is not used a lot in the entire corpus (in Fawlty Towers only once, in MPFC twice). The reason for this might be that the category “syntactic structure” relies on the grammar of the sentence which is a more indirect way to create wordplay and is therefore harder to spot and less effective. “Vertical homophony” only contains one pun. The reason for this might be that these kind of puns are, like the categories which have no puns (described above), harder for children to understand as they focus on writing. “Morphological development” is also not often used in wordplay, only in 6% of the cases, the same with “contamination” which is only used in 3% of the puns. This might again be explained by the fact that Shrek is a film for the family, including children.
Conclusion of table 9
Most wordplay in Shrek, more than 47%, is based on “phonological structure”. Also “homonymy” takes up a big part of the wordplay, 22%. “Idioms” and “paronymy” come in third and forth place taking up respectively 12 and 9% of all the puns. Then the categories “morphological development” and “contamination” follow, with respectively 6% and 3%. The categories “horizontal homophony”, “reversed semantically transformed idioms” and “syntactic structure” can be omitted for this part of the corpus.
5.4.2 Categorisation of translation in Shrek
The translations of this part of the corpus will be categorised with the same method as the other parts, viz. according to Delabastita’s method. Also here some translations are categorised in more then one category. Here it is not because the translator wanted to make the viewer pay attention to the original utterance it seems, but just because more than one category could be used. Also, like in the other parts of the corpus, some translations categorised “from pun to pun” do not have the same effect as the original.
47 In Shrek there is a lot of wordplay based on “phonological structure” and as said in the beginning the meaning of the words are less important than the effect they have. So in the translation the original meaning might not be translated or it could be that the two words that rhyme in the translation are not the same two words that rhyme in the original utterance. For example in Shrek the Halls:
And right when you think that you've just seen it all Comes a huge waffle Santa that's 50 feet tall
This passage is translated in the original Flemish subtitles as:
En dan als je denkt: “Dat was het voor vannacht”… zie je een mega-Wafelkerstman van een meter of acht.
Here not the words all and tall were confronted, but two words with a different meaning. Still this will be classified as being translated “from pun to pun” since the general meaning is translated in a punning way. Also the category “from pun to non-pun” poses some difficulty with the category “phonological structure”, because the words that are supposed to rhyme (in Shrek usually at the end of a sentence) might not be the words that are at the end of the sentence in the translation. The division of “non-pun, non-selective” and “non- pun, selective” cannot really be applied because these have to do with meaning and it is hard to decide in a non-punning translation which words should have been translated in a punning way: the words at the end of the sentences or the words that have the meaning of the words that are confronted in the original utterance. The following passage:
PC: Tis I, Tis I. Upon my regal steed. Princess, my love. At last you shall be freed is translated in the fansubs as:
Het is mij, het is mij. Op mijn koninklijk paard. Prinses, mijn liefste... Uiteindelijk zal je bevrijd worden.
In the original utterance the words “steed” and “freed” are confronted. The meanings of these two words are translated in the fansubs, but they are not at the end of the sentence (where they should be if they were translated “from pun to pun”). Technically this translation could therefore be classified as being “from pun to pun, non-selective” because both meanings are translated in a non-punning way. The problem with such a categorisation is the fact that while “steed” and “freed” might not have been confronted in the translation, other words, especially the ones at the end of the sentence, “paard” and “worden”, might be (for example by rhetorical device). In the following example the original words “prance” and “dance” are not confronted, but the words at the end of the sentence are:
D: A stage where acrobats. Jump, leap and prance And honour the day through interpretive dance
Fansubs: En een podium met acrobaten die springen en dansen. En de hele dag door feestelijke dingen doen.
48 Technically this translation could be classified as “from pun to non-pun, non- selective” because the word dansen contains the meaning of both prance (dance in a lively manner) and dance, but this will be categorised as “from pun to rhetorical device” because the words at the end of the sentence or line are confronted. Therefore in a non-pun translation only the words at the end of the line or sentence will be looked at and not the words that are confronted in the original utterance. If the words at the end of the sentence are the same as those in the original utterance they will be classified as being “from pun to pun, non-selective”. For example:
D: But just when you think the display is complete The Christmas parade comes right down the street
Fansubs: En net wanneer je dacht dat het compleet is, komt de Kerstparade door de straat.
If the words at the end of the sentence or line are totally different from the original utterance they will be classified as being “from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase” even if the words confronted in the original utterance are translated, but are not placed at the end of the sentence.
D: And right when you think that you've just seen it all Comes a huge waffle Santa that's 50 feet tall
Fansubs: En net wanneer je denkt dat je het allemaal hebt gezien... Komt er een enorme wafel-Kerstman. Die wel 5 meter hoog is.
Here the words “all” and “tall” are translated (“allemaal” and “hoog”) but not at the end of the sentence. Therefore this is classified as “from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase”. If only one word from the original confrontation is translated at the end of a line in the translation it will be classified as “from pun to non-pun, selective”. For example:
D: With holiday floats all in silver and blue With sugarplum fairies and a reindeer or two
Fansubs: Met feestdingen in zilver en blauw.. Met snoepgoed-feeën en een rendier erbij.
In this translation the word “blue” is translated at the end of the line, but the word “two” is not. Therefore this translation is categorised as “from pun to non-pun, selective”. Note that in the following table the Flemish subtitles, which are only present in Shrek the Halls, are not included in this table. The two numbers in the table represent the number of times a pun is translated into a certain category and the percentage of times a pun is translated into a certain category.
49 Table 10: Translation of puns in Shrek
P > P P > NP, P > NP, P > NP, P > Z P > RD P = P, d P = P, t s n dp
Official 36 14 6 4 3 1 4 1 subtitles 52.17% 20.29% 8.70% 5.80% 4.35% 1.45% 5.80% 1.45%
Total: 24 Total: 5 34.78% 7.25%
Total: 69 100%
Fansubs 9 26 16 9 4 3 2 0 13.04% 37.68% 23.19% 13.04% 5.80% 4.35% 2.90% 0.00%
Total: 51 Total: 2 73.91% 2.90%
Total: 69 100%
Abbreviations: P > P: from pun to pun P > Z: from pun to zero P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, selective direct copy P > NP, dp: from pun to non-pun, diffuse P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, paraphrase transference
Interpretation of table 10
This table clearly shows the difference between the fansubs and the original subtitles. It shows that, against expectations, the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns and less puns into non-puns than the fansubbers. The official subtitlers even translated more than 52% of the puns into puns, while the fansubbers only translated 13% of the puns in that way. A reason for this might be found in one of the next tables. Also the fact that the fansubbers translated about 74% of the puns into non-puns, while the official subtitlers translated ‘only’ 35% of the puns into non- puns might be explained by the next table.
50 The fansubbers did, however, translate more puns into “rhetorical device” (4% versus 2%). Even though the difference is not that remarkable, the fansubbers might use rhetorical device more often than the official subtitles to make up for the fact that they translated less puns into puns. In the category “from pun to zero” the fansubbers seem to have omitted more puns than the official subtitles, respectively 6% versus 4%. They often omitted puns when they are uttered in song, which might be the reason for the difference. In the categories where the pun in the source text is similar to the pun in the target text the fansubs have fewer entries than the official subtitles. While the official subtitlers translated four puns into direct copy and one pun into transference, the fansubbers translated two puns as direct copy and none as transference. The fansubbers seem to have opted to translate some proper names rather than just copying them. For example this passage from Shrek 2
P: Elfa Seltzer? Hex Lax? was translated in the fansubs as:
Elfenmineraalwater? Heksen Zalm? while the official subtitles just copied the proper names. The medicines “Alka-Seltzer” and “Ex-Lax” are generally not known here, so very few people would understand this wordplay. Therefore the fansubbers might have chosen to translate these words rather than just copying them.
Conclusion of table 10
The official subtitlers translated a lot more puns into puns than the fansubbers, resp. 52% versus 13%. This result is against expectations, but might be explained by table 11. Also the fact that the fansubbers translated 74% of the puns into non-puns while the official subtitlers translated 35% of the puns in that way was against expectation and will be further investigated by means of table 11. The fansubbers did translate more puns into rhetorical device, probably instead of translating some puns into puns. They also omitted more puns than the official subtitles and translated less puns into direct copy or transference.
5.4.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in Shrek
Table 11, which is a combination of wordplay and translation, will be used to see if there is a reason for the differences in translation between the fansubs and the official subtitles. Note that the Flemish subtitles are not included. Note that vertical wordplay is not distinguished from horizontal wordplay and the different non-pun translation categories are also combined to work more effectively. The percentage shows how often a pun is translated in a certain wordplay category (and thus not in general).
51 Table 11: Wordplay and translation: fansubs versus original subtitles in Shrek
S P Np Z RD P,d P,t E
L hp 1 (100%) T I
T hn 7 (46.67%) 6 (40.00%) 2 (13.33%) B par 2 (33.33%) 1 (16.67%) 1 (16.67%) 2 (33.33%) U S
id,sem 1 (100%) L
A id,stru 3 (42.86%) 4 (57.14%) I
C id,rev I
F phon 23 (69.69%) 10 (30.30%) F
O morph 1 (25.00%) 3 (75.00%) synt cont 2 (100%)
S hp 1 (100%) B
U hn 4 (26.67%) 9 (60.00%) 2 (13.33%) S
N par 1 (16.67%) 2 (33.33%) 2 (33.33%) 1 (16.67%)
A id,sem 1 (100%) F id,stru 1 (14.29%) 6 (85.71%) id,rev phon 1 (3.03%) 30 (90.91%) 2 (6.06%) morph 1 (25.00%) 2 (75.00%) synt cont 2 (100%)
Abbreviations: P: from pun to pun hp: homophony morph: morphological development Np: from pun to non-pun (all non-pun translations) hn: homonymy synt: syntactic structure Z: from pun to zero par: paronymy cont: contamination RD: from pun to related rhetorical device id,sem: idiom, semantic transformation P,d: pun source text = pun target text, direct copy id,stru: idiom, structural transformation P,t: pun source text = pun target text, transference phon: phonological structure
52 Interpretation of table 11
In table 10 it was clear that the fansubbers translated less puns into non-puns than the official subtitlers. This table shows that especially in the category “phonological development” this is the case. While the official subtitlers translated 30% of the puns based on “phonological development” into non-puns, the fansubbers translated 91% of these puns into non-puns. As said in the beginning the expectation was that the category “phonological development” would be easier to translate than most other wordplay categories, in the fansubs this is obviously not the case. Only one pun based on “phonological development” was translated as a pun in the fansubs and it seems more coincidence that the forms of the words matched than an actual effort. The fansubbers seem to have chosen to transfer the meaning rather than the effect. Since the lines of the subtitles that rhyme are not always presented simultaneously on the screen it might be argued that rhyme in subtitles loses a lot of its effect, maybe it might not even be noticed by the viewer. This could be why the fansubbers did not translate the puns based on “phonological structure” into puns, but it might as well be that they just did not want to put the effort into it. There is not one category where the fansubbers translated more puns into puns than the original subtitles, so it might be more the latter. In the other categories no significant differences can be found.
Conclusion of table 11
In all categories the fansubbers translated less puns into non-puns than the original subtitles, but in the category “phonological structure” the number on non-pun translations is remarkable. More than 90% of the puns based on this category were translated in the fansubs as a non-pun.
5.4.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in Shrek
The following table will be used to see which category of wordplay has the most “from pun to pun” translations. It combines the table of wordplay and the table of translation, as well as the fansubs with the official subtitles. The numbers are expressed in percentages (per wordplay category) and the Flemish subtitles are not included.
53 Table 12: Combined table of wordplay and translation in percentage in Shek
P>P P>NP,s P>NP,n P>NP,d P>Z P>RD P=P,d P=P,t Hp,v 50.00 50.00 Hp,h Hn,v 31.82 41.41 4.50 4.50 18.18 Hn,h 50.00 37.50 12.50 Par,v 12.50 37.50 25.00 25.00 Par,h 50.00 50.00 id,s 50.00 50.00 id,struc 28.58 28.57 21.43 21.43 id,rev phon 36.36 27.27 24.24 9.09 3.02 morph 25.00 25.00 12.50 37.50 synt cont 100
Abbreviations: v: vertical P > P: from pun to pun h: horizontal P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective Hp: homophony P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- Hn: homonymy selective Par: paronymy P > NP, d: from pun to non-pun, diffuse id, s : idiom, semantic transformation paraphrase id, struc: idiom, structural transformation P > Z: from pun to zero id, rev: idiom, reversed semantic P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device tranformation P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, phon : phonological structure direct copy morph: morphologic development P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, synt: syntactic structure transference cont: contamination
Interpretation of table 12
This table shows that the top three of puns that have the highest “from pun to pun” translations are: “horizontal homonymy”, “horizontal paronymy” and “semantically transformed idioms”. Since the categories “horizontal paronymy” and “semantically transformed idioms” only contain resp. two and one pun(s) these numbers cannot said to be representative. The next categories with many pun to pun translations are “vertical homonymy” and “phonological structure” with resp. 32% and 36% of puns translated into puns. That both vertical as horizontal homonymy is in the top five is no surprise anymore. In the previous parts of the corpus it was always one of the ‘easiest’ categories to translate, as already argued probably because it is easy to spot and both English as Dutch contain a lot of homonymous words and have a similar structure. The fact that “phonological structure” is not more often translated into a pun is against expectations, but as already mentioned the fansubbers did not translate a lot of wordplay based on “phonological structure” into a pun. The two categories “vertical homography” and “contamination” contain no puns translated into puns, but also these categories contain little puns. The category
54 “contamination” only has two entries and these puns are both translated “from pun to zero”. This can be explained by the fact that the puns in this category were both written and not spoken, so therefore not translated. The three remaining categories “structurally transformed idioms”, “morphological development” and “vertical paronymy” and have an average amount of puns translated into puns, resp. 29%, 25% and 13%.
Conclusion of table 12
The top three of ‘easiest-to-translate’ excluding the groups with little entries are “horizontal homonymy”, “vertical homonymy” and “phonological structure”. The categories “vertical homography” and “contamination” do not contain any puns translated into puns and “structurally transformed idioms”, ”morphological development” and “vertical paronymy” have an average number of puns translated into puns.
5.4.5 Comparing the Flemish subtitles with the Dutch subtitles in Shrek the Halls
Only Shrek the Halls had besides the official Dutch subtitles also official Flemish subtitles. In this part these two will be compared with each other. The following table shows only the wordplay categories that are used in Shrek the Halls.
55 Table 13: Wordplay and translation: official Flemish subtitles versus official Dutch subtitles in Shrek the Halls
S Hp, v Par, v Id, struc Phon Morph E
L P 1 3 23 1 T I
T NP, s 1 1
B NP, n 1 U S
NP, dp
H Z C
T RD U P, d D
L P, t 1 A I C I F F O S E
L P 2 3 24 1 T I
T NP, s
B NP, n U S
NP, dp 1
H Z S I RD M
E P, d L F
P, t 1 L A I C I F F O
Abbreviations: P: from pun to pun Hp,v: homophony, vertical NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective Par, v: paronymy, vertical NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- id, struc: idiom, structural transformation selective phon: phonological structure NP, dp: from pun to non-pun, diffuse morph: morphological development paraphrase Z: from pun to zero RD: from pun to rhetorical device P, d: pun = pun, direct copy P, t : pun = pun, tranference
Interpretation of table 13
There are very few differences between the Flemish and the Dutch subtitles. The only parts where they differ is in the groups “vertical paronymy” and “phonological development”, but even here the differences are small. While the Flemish subtitlers translated all puns based on “phonological structure” into puns, the Dutch subtitles failed to translate one into a pun. The following example:
S: A festering bottle of stinky swamp Juice
56 And for mommy a kiss and a good Christmas goose was translated in the Dutch subtitles as:
Hun rottende flesjes met stinkjus d’orange En aan mama een zoen en een wilde kerstgans
It is odd that the Dutch subtitles did not translate this pun into a pun, because it is part of a whole story told by Shrek based on “phonological structure” and all the other puns were translated as a pun. Maybe the Dutch subtitlers could not find a good alternative and decided that here the meaning was more important than the wordplay. Also in the category “vertical paronymy” one pun is not translated into a pun, namely:
D: Smashing through the snow. And laughin' all the way is translated in the Dutch subtitles as:
Komend uit de sneeuw Lach ik met je mee.
Here it is possible that the Dutch subtitles did not notice the wordplay, because the song “Jingle bells” is known in Belgium and the Netherlands but not very well. The Flemish subtitler did notice the wordplay and translated “paronymy” into “phonological structure”:
In z’n arreslee. Lacht hij heel tevree
5.5 Categorisation of the entire corpus
In this section the entire corpus will be categorised and researched in the same way that the three parts were. Doing this will give a more accurate view of the differences between fansubs and original subtitles.
5.5.1 Categorisation of wordplay of the entire corpus
The following table will be used to see which category of wordplay is most used. Therefore it shows the number of times puns are based on a particular category. The two different percentages show how often a pun is translated in general and how often it is translated within a major wordplay category (formal, linguistic or other).
57 Table 14: Wordplay in the entire corpus
Formal Linguistic Other Homophony Homonymy paronymy idiom phono morph syntac cont vert hor vert hor vert hor sem struc rev
7 9 38 19 15 15 11 19 1 68 29 3 7 2.91% 3.73% 15.77% 7.88% 6.22% 6.22% 4.56% 7.88% 0.42% 28.22% 12.03% 1.25% 2.91% (6.80%) (8.74%) (36.89%) (18.45%) (14.56%) (14.56%) (8.40%) (14.50%) (0.76%) (51.91%) (22.14%) (2.29%) (100%)
Total: 16 Total: 57 Total: 30 6.64% 23.65% 12.45% (15.53%) (55.34%) (29.13%) Total: 31 Total: 100 12.86% 41.49% (23.66%) (76.34%) Total: Total: 103 Total: 131 7 42.74% 54.36% 2.91% (100%) (100%) (100%) Total: 241 100%
Abbreviations: Vert: vertical Phono: phonological structure Hor: horizontal Morph: morphological development Sem: semantic transformation Syntac: syntactical development Struc: structural transformation cont: contamination Rev: reversed semantic transformation
58 Interpretation of table 14
According to table 14 most wordplay is based on linguistic features (54%). The largest category in this group is “phonological structure” which contains sixty-eight puns and takes up about 52% of the group linguistic features. As already said before, “phonological structure” is often used in Shrek, probably because this type of wordplay has a great effect, especially on children which make up a large part of the audience. Also Fawlty Towers and MPFC contain many puns based on “phonological structure”. Even though the intended audience for these programmes is not children, puns based on “phonological structure” have an immediate effect and do not rely on the knowledge of the audience to work (which for example “homonymy” does). The second largest category in this group is the “idioms”, taking up 24% of the group linguistic features. In this category “structurally transformed idioms” are most frequently found (nineteen times), followed by “semantically transformed idioms” (eleven times) and finally “reversed semantically transformed idioms” (only once). The category “reversed semantically transformed idioms” was needed to categorise one idiom in Fawlty Towers uttered by Manuel. In the other parts of the corpus this category was not needed. The other two types of idioms are used in all parts of the corpus for various reasons. In Fawlty Towers it is often Basil who uses idioms to talk himself out of perilous situations, but also Sybil uses idioms often to make a point to Basil. In Shrek idioms are often modified (structurally) to reflect the fantasy world in which Shrek takes place or to reflect what is happening at that moment. In MPFC idioms are not often used to create wordplay. “Morphological development” is the third largest category in linguistic features containing twenty-nine puns (22%). Especially Fawlty Towers is responsible for the high number of puns based on this category. In Fawlty Towers this type of wordplay is often used to cover up the truth, for example when Poly wants someone to pick up a guest who died, but some other guests come by:
P: When could you collect the body? [Guests walk in] Somebody, anybody, really.
The last category in the group linguistic features is “syntactic structure” which ‘only’ holds three puns. This group is probably so small because wordplay based on this category is not very straightforward. The group formal features is second largest containing 43% of all puns. The largest category in this group is “homonymy”, taking up 55% of all puns based on formal features. As already said before “homonymy” is a category that is very straightforward. It is easy to spot and often very effective. “Vertical homonymy” has the most input, thirty-eight puns, while “horizontal homonymy” has nineteen puns. A reason for this might be that vertical puns based on “homonymy” probably work better than horizontal wordplay because only one form is confronted there, which means that the pun is immediate and not stretched over a sentence or phrase. The second largest category in this group is “paronymy” containing thirty puns, which is 29% of puns based on formal features. In the category “paronymy” vertical wordplay is equally often used as horizontal wordplay. The last and third category of this group “homophony” contains 16 puns, which is equal to 16% of puns based on formal wordplay. This category, like “homonymy”, has more puns based on vertical than on horizontal wordplay. Here it might be more
59 effective if the words were confronted horizontally, because in “homonymy” one word with different meanings is confronted while in “homophony” two different words, which happen to be pronounced in the same way, are confronted. The last category “contamination” contains seven puns, taking up 3% of all puns. In general the largest categories are “phonological structure” (28%), “homonymy” (24%), “idioms” (13%), “paronymy” (12%) and “morphology” (12%).
Conclusion of table 14
Most puns are based on linguistic features (54%). In this group the largest categories are “phonological structure” and “idioms”, containing respectively 52% and 24% of the puns. Also many puns are based on formal features (43%). In that group “homonymy” (55%) and “paronymy” (29%) are the largest groups. In general the categories “phonological structure”, “homonymy” and “idioms” are the three largest groups, containing respectively 28%, 24% and 13% of all puns.
5.5.2 Categorisation of translation of the entire corpus
The following table shows how often a translation is based on a certain category. It will be used to research the general differences between fansubs and official subtitles. The first number shows how many puns are translated into a certain category. The second shows this number in percentage.
60 Table 15: Translation of puns in the entire corpus
P > P P > NP, P > NP, P > NP, P > Z P > RD P = P, d P = P, t s n dp
107 53 28 9 12 9 17 5 Official 44.58% 22.08% 11.67% 3.75% 5.00% 3.75% 7.08% 2.08 subtitles
Total: 90 Total: 22 37.50% 9.17%
Total: 240 100%
76 62 42 15 10 11 16 4 Fansubs 32.20% 26.27% 16.95% 6.36% 4.24% 2.66% 6.78% 0.42%
Total: 119 Total: 20 50.42% 8.48%
Total: 236 100%
Abbreviations: P > P: from pun to pun P > Z: from pun to zero P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, selective direct copy P > NP, dp: from pun to non-pun, diffuse P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, paraphrase transference
Interpretation of table 15
This table clearly shows that the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns than the fansubbers (45% versus 32%). This finding goes against original expectations that the fansubbers would translate more puns into puns than the original subtitlers. Why this is not the case could have many reasons. First of all the fansubs in Fawlty Towers and MPFC seemed to have been based on the English subtitles and not on the original utterances. As said in the status quaestionis there are a lot of restrictions to subtitles. In short, subtitles have spatial and temporal constraints which limit the translator to translate the source text into an adequate target text that renders the original meaning as closely as possible. In subtitles it is also impossible to represent all features of language (like intonation, etc). Therefore
61 translating from subtitles will probably result in loss of information and therefore also loss of wordplay as seems to be the case here. Secondly, fansubbers generally do not receive any formal training. This might be a reason for the fact that they both spot less puns as translate less puns into puns. Even though they have more time to translate these subtitles, their lack of formal training seems to stand in the way. Sometimes the fansubbers seemed to choose not to translate a pun into a pun even though it would not take much effort. In Shrek the Halls for example a lot of puns are based on “phonological development”, but they are not translated in the fansubs. It seems quite unlikely that they would not have noticed the wordplay. In Shrek there is no evidence that the fansubbers would have translated from other English subtitles, so they probably did listen to the utterances. Even if they translated from the English subtitles the wordplay should have been apparent, because it is not just one instance of wordplay but a whole text based on “phonological structure”. So even though the category “phonological structure” is based on sound likeness and not orthography, it is improbable that the people who wrote the fansubs did not notice the wordplay. Why the fansubbers then decided not to translate this type of wordplay can only be guessed. The fansubbers also translated more puns into non-puns (50%) than the official subtitlers (38%). This is probably a direct result from the fact that the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns, because thirty-one more puns are translated in the official subtitles into puns than in the fansubs and twenty-nine less puns are translated from pun to non-pun in the official subtitles than in the fansubs. This does not mean though that every time a pun is translated into a pun in the official subtitles that the fansubbers automatically translated this pun into a non-pun. What is remarkable about the fansubbers is the fact that they omitted fewer puns than the original subtitles; this was especially the case with Fawlty Towers. In Fawlty Towers different languages were often confronted which likely made it hard for the translator to find an accurate translation. Therefore the official subtitles seem to have decided to make their subtitles compliment what was being said instead of just substituting it, probably in the hope that the viewers would understand the pun better that way. The fansubbers on the other hand translated most puns in Fawlty Towers even when different languages were confronted, which often resulted in a non-pun construction. That the differences between the fansubs and the official subtitles are quite small (4% of the puns are omitted by the fansubbers, 5% by the official subtitlers) in this category is probably because in MPFC the opposite happened. There the fansubbers omitted more puns than the official subtitlers, probably because they seemed to have based their translation on the English subtitles and in MPFC some puns were written (and therefore not translated in the English subtitles). The fansubbers also translated fewer puns into “rhetorical device” than the official subtitlers, resp. 3% versus 4%. Here, like in the category “from pun to zero” the differences are not great, making it hard to properly differentiate the fansubs from the official subtitles. Also in the remaining categories (“pun ST = pun TT, direct copy” and “pun ST = pun TT, transference”) little differences can be spotted.
Conclusion of table 15
The most remarkable difference between the fansubs and the official subtitles is the fact that the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns and less puns into non-
62 puns than the fansubbers. So even though the fansubbers probably had more time to come up with solutions than the official subtitlers, they still did not translate more puns into puns. This might be because of a lack of formal training, or a result of their method which probably consists of translating from English subtitles rather than the original utterances. In the other categories there are little differences, mainly because not all fansubs are alike.
5.5.3 Combination of wordplay and translation in the entire corpus
The following table is a combination of the two previous tables, but distinguishes the fansubs from the official subtitles. It will be used to see if the differences between the fansubs and official subtitles can be linked to the wordplay categories. In this table vertical wordplay is not distinguished from horizontal wordplay. Also, the three different non-pun translation categories (non-selective, selective and diffuse paraphrase) are combined and the percentages are per wordplay category.
63 Table 16: Wordplay and translation: fansubs versus original subtitles in the entire corpus
S P Np Z RD P,d P,t E
L hp 6 (35.29%) 5 (29.41%) 5 (29.41%) 1 (5.88%) T I
T hn 30 (51.72%) 24 (41.38%) 1 (1.72%) 3 (5.17%) B par 9 (30.00%) 8 (26.67%) 1 (3.33%) 2 (6.67%) 8 (26.67%) 2 (6.67%) U S
id,sem 4 (36.36%) 6 (54.55%) 1 (9.09%) L
A id,stru 11 (57.90%) 7 (36.84%) 1 (5.26%) I C
I id,rev 1 (100%) F
F phon 35 (51.47%) 25 (36.77%) 1 (1.47%) 5 (7.35%) 1 (1.47%) 1 (1.47%)
O morph 11 (37.93%) 13 (44.83%) 1 (3.45%) 3 (10.35%) 1 (3.45%) synt 1 (33.33%) 2 (66.67%) cont 1 (14.29%) 1 (14.29%) 3 (42.86%) 1 (14.29%) 1 (14.29%)
S hp 5 (31.25%) 10 (62.50%) 1 (6.25%) B
U hn 31 (54.39%) 23 (40.35%) 1 (1.75%) 2 (3.51%) S
N par 5 (16.67%) 10 (33.33%) 3 (10.00%) 2 (6.67%) 9 (30.00%) 1 (3.33%) A id,sem 7 (58.33%) 4 (33.33%) 1 (8.33%) F id,stru 6 (31.58%) 12 (63.16%) 1 (5.26%) id,rev 1 (100%) phon 9 (13.43%) 47 (70.15%) 3 (4.48%) 7 (10.45%) 1 (1.49%) morph 11 (36.67%) 14 (46.67%) 1 (3.33%) 2 (6.67%) 2 (6.67%) synt 2 (66.67%) 1 (33.33%) cont 1 (14.29%) 3 (42.86%) 2 (28.57%) 1 (14.29%)
Abbreviations: P: from pun to pun hp: homophony morph: morphological development Np: from pun to non-pun (all non-pun translations) hn: homonymy synt: syntactic structure Z: from pun to zero par: paronymy cont: contamination RD: from pun to related rhetorical device id,sem: idiom, semantic transformation P,d: pun source text = pun target text, direct copy id,stru: idiom, structural transformation P,t: pun source text = pun target text, transference phon: phonological structure
64 Interpretation of table 16
This table shows that even though in general the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns than the fansubbers, in some categories the fansubbers translated more puns into puns than the official subtitlers. These categories are: “homonymy”, “semantically transformed idioms” and “syntactic structure”. In the category “homonymy” the fansubbers translated 54% of the puns into puns, the official subtitlers ‘only’ 52%. And while the fansubbers translated 67% of the puns based on “syntactic structure” the official subtitlers translated 33% into puns. It is important to note, however, that this category has very little entries and the numbers can therefore not be said to be representative. The biggest difference between fansubs and the official subtitles though can be found in the category “semantically transformed idiom”. In this category the fansubbers translated more than 58% of the puns into puns, while the official subtitlers translated 36%. Why the categories “homonymy” and “semantically transformed idioms” are more often translated in the fansubs than in the official subtitles might be contributed to the fact that the people who translated the official subtitles have time constraints, while the fansubbers can take all the time they need. The fansubbers, however, translated all the remaining categories less often from pun to pun than the official subtitlers. There are some categories that are (quite) often translated into puns in the original subtitles, while they are not often translated into puns in the fansubs. These categories (that show great differences between the fansubs and the official subtitles) are “paronymy”, “structurally transformed idioms” and “phonological structure”. In these categories the fansubbers translated respectively 17%, 32% and 13% of the puns into puns, while the original subtitlers translated 30%, 58% and 51% into puns. Why these categories have a high number of puns translated in the official subtitles and a low number of puns translated in the fansubs cannot be attributed to the fact that these would be difficult to spot or translate, because the official subtitlers did not seem to have major problems translating these puns. The reason for these striking differences may lie in their method and/or training. As method the official subtitlers probably translated the original utterances into a subtitle, while the fansubbers seem to translate everything from the English subtitles. It should therefore be no surprise that two of the three categories mentioned are based on sound similarities, because these are hard to spot when they are being read instead of heard. For the category “structurally transformed idioms” the formal training might be what helps the official subtitlers translate and probably spot this type of wordplay better. In the category “from pun to non-pun” there seem to be no great differences. Usually when a category is often translated “from pun to pun” in the fansubs, but not often in the official subtitles for example then the official subtitles will usually have a great number of non-pun translations and vice versa. The category “from pun to zero” does show some interesting insights. First of all it the previous table showed that the fansubbers omitted less puns than the official subtitlers (ten versus twelve). Here it is possible to see in which categories each omitted most puns. The official subtitlers omitted a lot of puns based on “homophony” and “contamination”, the fansubbers on “paronymy” and “phonological structure”. The category “homophony” in general is never translated “from pun to zero” in the fansubs, but in the official subtitles five puns have been omitted. This finding would support the assumption that the fansubs were based on English subtitles, because “homophony” is based on orthography and therefore easier to spot when being read than being heard. Puns based on “contamination” are both almost equally often omitted in the fansubs as the official subtitles. The circumstances probably have something to do with that as two of the puns omitted come from Shrek where they are part of the scenery and therefore written and not spoken. That the fansubbers often omitted puns based on “contamination” and “paronymy” should again not be a surprise. This also proves the theory that the fansubbers translated from the English subtitles and not the utterances themselves. In the category “from pun to rhetorical device” it is clear that many puns based on “phonological structure” are sometimes translated into a rhetorical device. While it seems not too hard to find words that rhyme and fit into the context (and thus translate “phonological structure” into “phonological structure”), translating it into “rhetorical device” does provide some variety and yet keeps the effect of the original pun, however, in a different way. In the last category “pun ST = pun TT” it stands out that “paronymy” is often translated in that way. The reason for this is probably that paronymous puns are often based on proper names and those are hard to translate and keep the wordplay at the same time.
Conclusion of table 16
Overall the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns, but in some categories (“homonymy”, “semantically transformed idioms” and “syntactic structure”) the fansubbers do. There are also categories that are often translated into a pun in the official subtitles, but rarely in the fansubs namely “paronymy”, “structurally transformed idioms” and “phonological structure”. It was proposed that this difference might be the result of the different method and/or training. In general the fansubbers do translate less puns “from pun to zero” than the original subtitlers. When the fansubbers omitted a pun it is often in the category “paronymy” and “phonological structure”, the official subtitlers often omitted puns based on “horizontal homophony” and “contamination”. The reason for both these results are probably because of the different methods they use to translate the subtitles. “From pun to rhetorical device” is most often used for translating “phonological structure” in both the fansubs and the official subtitles and the category “pun ST = pun TT” is most often used with the category “paronymy”.
5.5.4 Combination of all the tables and all the translations in the entire corpus
The following table uses the previous table, but combines the fansubs with the official subtitles and is expressed in percentage per wordplay category. It can therefore be used to see if there are some puns that seem to be easier to translate than others.
66 Table 17: Combined table of wordplay and translation in percentage in the entire corpus
P>P P>NP,s P>NP,n P>NP,d P>Z P>RD P=P,d P=P,t Hp,v 42.86 21.43 21.43 7.15 7.15 Hp,h 26.11 26.11 16.67 5.56 20.00 5.56 Hn,v 50.00 35.53 5.27 1.32 1.32 6.58 Hn,h 58.95 23.16 12.90 2.50 2.50 Par,v 17.62 17.15 3.34 13.57 41.43 6.91 Par,h 28.96 16.04 22.71 12.92 16.25 3.13 id,s 47.35 34.85 4.55 4.55 4.55 4.17 id,struc 44.74 31.58 10.53 7.9 5.26 id,rev 100 phon 32.45 23.02 22.26 8.19 2.98 8.9 1.48 0.74 morph 37.30 20.29 20.41 5.06 3.39 8.51 5.06 synt 50.00 50.00 cont 14.29 14.29 14.29 35.72 7.15 14.29
Abbreviations: v: vertical P > P: from pun to pun h: horizontal P > NP, s: from pun to non-pun, selective Hp: homophony P > NP, n: from pun to non-pun, non- Hn: homonymy selective Par: paronymy P > NP, d: from pun to non-pun, diffuse id, s : idiom, semantic transformation paraphrase id, struc: idiom, structural transformation P > Z: from pun to zero id, rev: idiom, reversed semantic P > RD: from pun to rhetorical device tranformation P = P, d: pun source text = pun target text, phon : phonological structure direct copy morph: morphologic development P = P, t: pun source text = pun target text, synt: syntactic structure transference cont: contamination
Interpretation of table 17
This table represents the entire corpus and shows which of the puns have the most pun to pun translations. The top three of puns that are the ‘easiest’ to translate are “reversed semantically transformed idioms” (100%), “horizontal homonymy” (59%) and “syntactic structure” and “vertical homonymy” which share the third place with 50% of the puns being translated into puns. Both the categories “syntactic structure” and “reversed semantically transformed idioms” contain very few puns and will therefore not be investigated further. The categories “horizontal homonymy” and “vertical homonymy” on the other hand contain a large number of puns and can therefore be used to make certain statements. More than half the puns in the general category “homonymy” are translated into puns. The mean reason, already previously suggested, was that Dutch and English have a similar structure because they are both Germanic languages. Homonymous words (one word containing two meanings) are therefore easy to translate from one language into the other.
67 Also the “idioms” (both semantically transformed as structurally transformed) seem to be quite easy to translate from English into Dutch, “semantically transformed idioms” slightly easier than structurally transformed ones. The reason for this is probably the same as the reason for “homonymy” being so often translated “from pun to pun”; both languages have a similar structure and therefore similar idioms. The category “vertical homophony” also has a large number of puns translated “from pun to pun” (43%), but “horizontal homophony” was translated only 26% into a pun. First of all, English has more homophonous words because it is more opaque than Dutch (one sound has multiple writings) (Hobbs, 1999) which would definitely explain why “horizontal homophony” has so little puns translated into puns. In this category however it does stand out that a lot of puns have been omitted (20%). The reason for this can be found in Fawlty Towers. This tv-series has the most puns based on “homophony” and here the original subtitlers made their translation complement what was being said and therefore did not translate these puns, probably because the translators decided that the original pun and utterance would be understood by the viewers. “Vertical homophony”, however, is quite often translated into a pun (43%). So even though there are probably less homophonous words in Dutch, there are some homophonous words that are similar in both languages. Also “vertical homophony” seems often translated into a pun that is not based on homophony, but on another wordplay category which is harder to do with “horizontal homophony”. The category “morphological development” is translated 37% of the time into a pun and almost 46% is translated as a non-pun. A reason for this might be that this category is quite hard to spot as it is based on processes like compounding or derivation, which creates a double effect often not noticed by the translator. “Phonological development”, a category which was thought to be easy to translate, turns out to have only 32% of the puns translated into a pun. This category, however, has one of the highest numbers of puns translated as “rhetorical device” (9%), but still more than 53% of the puns were not translated into a pun. A reason for this might be found in Shrek where a lot of puns are based on “phonological development”, but not translated into a pun especially in the fansubs. Why the fansubbers did not translate most of the puns belonging to this category into a pun is hard to tell. As previously proposed they might have chosen to translate meaning over effect, because the effect in subtitles might be less strong (especially when the rhyme is spread over two different subtitles) or they might have chosen not to put any effort into translating these kind of puns. The category “paronymy” also has less pun to pun translations than expected. “Horizontal paronymy” has 29% of the puns translated into puns, while “vertical paronymy” only has 18% of the puns translated “from pun to pun”. It does stand out that “horizontal paronymy” is quite often translated into a “rhetorical device” (13%), probably because alliteration, assonance or, other rhetorical devices have a great effect in writing. Both “vertical paronymy” and “horizontal paronymy” also have a lot of translations in the category “pun = pun”, respectively 48% and 19%. Puns based on “paronymy” are often a confrontation between a proper noun (usually with a capital like a person’s name) and a common noun. Therefore copying the original pun might be more effective than trying to translate it. The last category “contamination” is not often translated into a pun (14%), but is often omitted (36%). The reason why it is often omitted is probably because there are little entries in this category which are written puns being part of a scenery and therefore not translated.
68 Conclusion of table 17
The category “homonymy” seems the easiest to translate, having more than half the puns translated into puns. Also “idioms” seemed to be relatively easy to translate from Dutch into English, having more than 64% of the puns translated “from pun to pun”. Both these categories probably have such a high number of pun to pun translations because English and Dutch have very similar language structures. “Vertical homophony” is quite often translated into a pun, while “horizontal homophony” is not. A reason for this might be that “vertical homophony” can easily be translated into another wordplay category, while “horizontal homophony” is less easily translated that way because two words need to be confronted here. The category “morphological development” is probably harder to spot as ‘only’ 37% of the puns are translated into a pun. “Phonological development” and “paronymy” were thought to be easy to translate. This expectation turned out to be wrong. “Phonological development” was not often translated into a pun by the fansubbers in Shrek and “paronymy” seemed to be easier or better translated into other translation categories. Puns based on the category “contamination” are often omitted because they were not spoken, but written.
6 Conclusion
It was hypothesised that the fansubbers would translate more puns into puns than the original subtitlers, based on the assumptions that (i) fansubbers have less time constraints, (ii) have a better understanding of the tv-programme or film they translate which would result in a better understanding of the puns, (iii) that they are not restricted to the rules and regulations of official subtitling and (iv) can use more elaborate language as their audience mostly consists of adults. However, this hypothesis was not borne out by the data. The result of the corpus study shows that 55% of the puns are translated into puns in the original subtitles, whereas only 32% in the fansubs. There are however striking differences between the three parts of the corpus. In Fawlty Towers, for example, the fansubbers translated more puns into puns than the original subtitlers (44% versus 43%), but also translated more puns into non-puns than the original subtitlers (44% versus 41%). In MPFC the official subtitlers translated more puns into puns (39% vs 32% in the fansubs) and also less into non- puns (33% vs 36% in the fansubs). In Shrek the differences between the fansubs and the official subtitles are the greatest. Here, the official subtitlers translated 52.17% of the puns into puns and 34.78% into non-puns, while the fansubbers translated 13.04% into puns and 73.91% into non-puns. Also in the other categories there are many differences. In Fawlty Towers the fansubbers omitted no puns, while the original subtitlers omitted six, but in MPFC the fansubbers omitted 11% of all the puns and the original subtitlers only 6%. The same goes for Shrek where the fansubbers also omitted more puns than the official subtiters. Also in the category “homonymy” there seem to be quite some differences between the three parts of the corpus. In both Fawlty Towers and MPFC “homonymy” is more often translated into a pun in the fansubs than in the original subtitles, but in Shrek this is not the case. In Shrek more than 46% of the puns based on “homonymy” are translated in the original
69 subtitles as a pun (in the fansubs 27%). This shows that there are striking differences between the fansubs and also inequalities in translation skills among fansubbers, which makes it difficult to make general statements about fansubs itself. This large variety notwithstanding, some general conclusions can be drawn by combining the three parts of the corpus. In the table “translation of the entire corpus” (table 15) there are little differences, apart from the categories “from pun to pun” and “from pun to non-pun”, where the official subtitles have respectively more puns translated into a pun (45% vs 32%) and less into a non-pun (38% vs 50%) than the fansubs. The reason why there are only small differences between the fansubs and the original subtitles in this table is probably because there is such great difference amongst the fansubs themselves. While in Fawlty Towers no puns were omitted many were in Shrek and MPFC. In that way the fansubs seem to balance each other out, which results in the small differences we observe in the general overview. When looking at the three parts separately, we can see that most of them show great differences with the official subtitles. The more detailed table (table 16: wordplay and translation: fansubs versus original subtitles in the entire corpus) shows more dissimilarity between the fansubs and the original subtitles. For one, even though in general the fansubs had less pun to pun translations, the fansubbers did translate more puns into puns than the original subtitlers in three categories, viz. “homonymy”, “semantically transformed idioms” and “syntactic structure”. On the other hand, the original subtitlers translated many puns into puns in the categories “paronymy”, “structurally transformed idioms” and “phonological structure”, whereas the fansubbers translated very little of puns based on these categories into puns. Also, the fansubbers often omitted puns based on “paronymy” and none based on “homophony” while the official subtitlers often omitted puns from the categories “homophony” and only few from the category “paronymy”. In general the category “contamination” was most often omitted. The two categories based on sound likeness “paronymy” and “phonological structure” were expected to have many pun to pun translations because the meaning and structure of s1 and s2 is less set. This assumption proved to be not entirely correct. In the fansubs both categories are not often translated as a pun (paronymy 17% and phonological structure 13%), but in the official subtitles these numbers are markedly higher (paronymy 30% and phonological structure even 51%). Also, the category “phonological structure” has the most “from pun to rhetorical device” translations across all other categories and “paronymy” the most “pun = pun” translations. The table “combined table of wordplay and translation in percentage in the entire corpus” (table 17) was used to see which wordplay category had the most “from pun to pun” translations. “Idioms” had the highest number of pun to pun translations and “homonymy” came in second (excluding the categories with little entries). This suggests that in these categories the English language and the Dutch language show similarities which facilitate translation. I additionally proposed a number of possible explanations for these results. Why fansubs had less pun to pun translations than official subtitles can perhaps be explained by the fact that the official subtitlers listened to the original utterances whereas fansubbers used the written English transcription. Another explanation can be the degree of training that the two groups received. Since fansubbers probably translate in their spare time, it seems unlikely that they received a formal training, while official subtitlers in all likelihood did. These hypotheses could not be verified in
70 this paper, however, because the fansubbers were all anonymous. I leave these hypotheses as topics of future research.
71 7 References
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72 Cunningham, W. 2001. “Wikipedia”,
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74 Appendix:
Transcriptions of wordplay in Fawlty Towers
Abbreviations
P > P from pun to pun P > NP, dp from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase P > NP, s from pun to non-pun, selective non-pun P > NP, n pun to non-pun, non-selective non-pun P > RD from pun to related rhetorical device P > Z pun to zero P = P, d pun source text = pun target text, direct copy P = P, t pun source text = pun target text, transference
Structure
The translation on the left is from the original subtitles, the translation on the right from the fansubs. [ ] are used to link those passages that belong together (the number within the brackets refers to the passage the current passage is linked to)
Characters:
B: Basil S: Sybil M: Manuel Ma: Major K: Kurt C: customer T: Miss Abitha Tibbs (grey hair) G: Miss Ursula Gatsby (brown hair) O: O’Reilly O1: one of O’Reilly’s men O2: one of O’Reilly’s men LM: Lord Melbury MH: Miss Hall H: mister Hall F: friend
Season 1, episode 1: A Touch of Class
1
[Manuel does not speak English well] B: There is too much butter on those trays. M: No, no, no, Senor! B: What? M: Not "on those trays." No Sir, "Uno dos tres" Phonological structure (the confrontation is purely based on sound similarity)
P > NP, s P > NP, dp
Er staat te veel boter op die dienbladen Er staat teveel boter op deze schotels. - No, no, no, Señor ! [not translated] Wat ? - Niet "op deze schotels." Nee, meneer, "uno dos tres."
2
B: I mean, the sky's the limit! S: Basil, 22 rooms is the limit! Idiom: structural transformation
75 P > P P > NP, n
Met dit soort klanten zijn onze mogelijkheden Als wij zo'n klasse klant kunnen aantrekken, ik bedoel, onbegrensd met onbeperkte inzet ! - 22 kamers is onze grens - Basil, 22 kamers, meer kan het niet !
3
B to M: Throw it away! [Basil means: throw it in the trash, but manuel literally throws the grapefruit away] Idiom: semantic transformation
P > P P > P
B: weggooien. B: Werp het weg.
4
B: Have you booked? C: No. Oh dear. Are you full? B: Oh no, we’re not full, fool. Of course we’re not full! Paronymy, horizontal
P > RD (repetition of ‘o’ and ‘l’) P > RD (repetition) (In English subtitles we’re not full is repeated three times, but when you listen Basil says Heeft u gereserveerd? ‘fool’, censorship?) - Nee. Hoezo? Zit u dan vol? Natuurlijk zitten we niet vol, zool. Natuurlijk niet. Waarom, bent u volzet ? - Oh, wij zijn niet volzet, Wij zijn niet volzet. Natuurlijk zijn we niet volzet !
5
B: Go and wait! M: Wait? B: Wait. In there! Go and wait In there! Go and be a waiter in there! Homonymy, horizontal (to wait: stand still > to wait: serve people their food and drinks)
P > P P > NP, n
Ga bedienen. Ga en bedien ! - Verdienen? - Wacht ? Ook. Maar eerst binnen bedienen Bedien. Daar ! Ga en bedien daar ! Ga en bedien zoals een kelner daar !
6
S: He's a con man! [about Mr Brown] B: Oh, yes, of course, it stands out a mile, doesn't it? He's so common. Paronymy, horizontal
P > NP, n P > NP, n
Hij is een oplichter. Hij is een kwartjesvinder ! - Ja, dat is overduidelijk. Hij is ordinair. - Oh, ja, natuurlijk, dat valt zo in 't oog, nietwaar ? Hij is zo gewoon.
Season 1, episode 2: The builders
7
[Basil and Sybil are going on vacation] T: You need to get away from things. B: Well, we're going together. Idiom: semantic transformation (to get away: to go on holiday > to escape something)
76 P > NP, s P > NP, s
U moet alles ’s even helemaal vergeten U moet uw zaak van tijd tot tijd verlaten. - Maar we gaan samen - Wel, we gaan tezamen.
8
P: When O'Reilly's men come, you must wake me. M: When orally men come... Sí. Paronymy, horizontal (“O’Reilly” is pronounced as “orally” by Manuel meaning “involving the mouth”)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Als de mannen van O’Reilly komen, wek je me. Wanneer de mannen van O'Reilly aankomen, moet je [Not translated] me wakker maken. - Wanneer O'Reilly mannen komen... sí.
9
C: Who's in charge here? M: No, charge later. After sleep. Homonymy, horizontal (to be in charge > to charge money)
P > NP, dp (to be in charge or to charge is not P > NP, n translated, but the translator has spotted the pun and he/she was unable to translate it into a pun) Wie is van dienst hier ? - Nee, kost later. Na slapen. Roep iemand die wakkerder is. - Nee, eerst slapen.
10
C: Where's the boss? M: Boss is... Oh... I boss. C: No, no. Where's the real boss? M: Qué? C: The generalissimo. M: In Madrid. Morphological development (general (manager): boss > generalissimo: supreme commander of the armed forces in Spain)
P = P, d P = P, d
Waar is de baas? Waar is de baas ? - Baas is... Ik ben baas. - Baas is... Oh... Ik baas. Nee, waar is de echte baas? De generalissimo Nee, nee. Waar is de echte baas ? - In Madrid. - Qué ? De generalissimo. - In Madrid.
11
M: You are men with orally. O: What? M: You orally men. O: What does that mean? M: You orally. O: You watch it! M: Where orally? O: What's he going on about? O2: He means O'Reilly. O: Oh... That's right, yeah. We are "orally" men. Paronymy, horizontal (orally: involving mouth > O’Reilly)
77 P = P, d P = P, d (In English subtitles they wrote ‘Orelly’, sensorship? ) Jullie Orally mannen. Orally mannen. Jullie Orally. - Pas op. Jullie bent mannen van Orelly. Waar Orally? - Wat ? - Wat wil ie nou? Jullie Orelly mannen. Hij bedoelt O’Reilly. - Wat bedoelt dat ? - Ja, dat klopt. Wij zijn Orally mannen. Jullie Orelly. - Pas op ! Waar Orelly ? - Waarover heeft hij het ? Hij bedoelt O'Reilly. - Oh... Dat is juist, ja. Wij zijn "Orelly" mannen.
12
S: Because he's cheap. B: I wouldn't call him cheap. S: What would you call him, then? B: Well, cheapish. Morphological development
P > NP, n P > P
Je neemt ‘m omdat ie goedkoop is. Omdat hij goedkoop was. - Goedkoop is ie niet. - Ik zou hem niet goedkoop noemen. Wat dan wel? Wat zou je hem dan noemen ? - Vrij goedkoop. - Wel, goedkoperig.
13
[Sybil is getting all worked up because of mr. Brown.] O: Come, come, Mrs. Fawlty... F: I'm coming. Homonymy, horizontal (sort of interjection to calm someone down > literally coming: to walk toward someone – here: in anger)
P > P (coming in Dutch can have the same connotation P > P of to come in English) Kom, kom, Mevrouw Fawlty... Kom, kom... - Ik kom. - Ik kom al.
Season one, episode 3:
14
P: Mr. Fawlty, may I introduce Richard Turner? B: I'm sorry? P: He's a friend of mine. B: Oh! You know each other, do you? Just passing through, are you? P: There you go. See you tonight. B: Oh, we've opened a library, have we? How nice. Please don't leave on my account, Mr. Turnip. Paronymy, horizontal
P = P, d P = P, d
Mr Fawlty, dit is Richard Turner. Een vriend van me. Meneer Fawlty, mag ik u Richard Turner voorstellen ? - Dus jullie kennen elkaar? Even op bezoek? - Sorry ? Hier. Tot vanavond. Hij is een vriend van mij. - Hebben we nu ’n bibliotheek? - Oh ! jullie kennen elkaar ? Bent u U gaat toch niet weg vanwege mij, Mr Turnip? op doorreis ? Alsjeblieft. Tot vanavond.
78 - Oh, we hebben een bibliotheek geopend ? Wat leuk. Ga alstublieft niet weg vanwege mij, meneer Turnip.
15
C: Well, is it [the room] airy? B: Well, there's air in it. Morphological development (airy: breezy, fresh > air: oxygen)
P > P P > P
Is ie luchtig? Nou, is het... is het luchtig ? - Ja, hoor. Lucht zat. - Nou, er zit lucht in.
16
B: Café what? C : Au lait. B : Ah, "olé". Quite. Phonological structure
P = P, d P = P, d
Café wat? Café wat ? - Au lait. - Au lait. Olé. Juist, ja. Ah, olé. Juist.
Season one, episode four: the hotel inspectors
17
[A client wants Basil to call a cab using very difficult words. Basil asks if he understood it correctly that the man wants a cab. The client answers:] C: In a nutshell. B: Case, more like. Morphological development (nutshell > nutcase: crazy person)
P > NP, s (the translator did not appear to get the P > NP, s (the translator did not appear to get the wordplay) wordplay)
Heb ik begrepen dat u ’n taxi wilt? In een notendop - In ’n notedop. - Meer een koffer. Eerder ‘n hutkoffer
18
[Basil made a little map to help a client to find his way around Torquay] B: There. Does it say "Boff," or does it say "Poff"? It's a "P", isn't it? C1: I suppose so. B: "P. Off." C2: I beg your pardon? B: "P. Off.", not "B. Off." Who ever heard of a "Bost Office"? Homonymy, vertical (P. Off can also mean ‘piss off’)
P > NP, s (the translator did not appear to get the P > NP, s (the translator did not appear to get the wordplay or at least did not translate it) wordplay or at least did not translate it)
Is dit ’n P of ’n B? Pokant of Bokant. Dit is toch ’n P? De Daar... staat daar "B-kant," of staat daar "Pkant" ? Het P van Po. is een "P", wel ? - Sorry? - Ik denk het. Po. Bostkantoren bestaan niet. "P. kant." - Pardon ? "P. kant." Niet "B. kant." Wie heeft er nou ooit gehoord van een "Bostkantoor" ?
79 19
C: I'm afraid this is corked. B: I just uncorked it. Didn't you see me? [...] C: I don't mean that. I mean the wine is corked. The wine has reacted with the cork. B: I'm sorry? C: The wine has reacted with the cork and gone bad. Morphological development (cork > uncork) Homonymy, horizontal (corked: cork is still in the bottle > wine has gone bad)
P > P (wordplay morphology has remained, but P > NP, s (the wordplay is gone) homonymy did not: ‘kurk’ in Dutch does not mean the same as ‘ to be corked’) Ik ben bang dat de kurk er nog in zit. - Wat ? Kurk. Kijk. - Maar ik heb ‘m net ontkurkt. Kijk. [...] [...] - Dat bedoel ik niet. De wijn smaakt naar kurk. De wijn heeft gereageerd Ik bedoel dat de wijn naar kurk smaakt. De wijn heeft met de kurk. een reactie met de kurk gehad. - En? - Pardon ? Door die reactie is de wijn bedorven. De wijn heeft een reactie met de kurk gehad en is slecht.
20
C: Well, lots of body. [Basil takes bottle and weighs it] B: Yes, quite right. Homonymy, vertical (a separate physical mass or quantity > a consistency or density, richness, substance)
P > P (‘vol’ in Dutch can also mean that the body is still P > P (but ‘rijk’ is not needed in the translation, just the full or that it has a ‘full’ flavour) word ‘vol’ would be more effective)
Heerlijk vol. Nou, vol en rijk. -Nou. Eindelijk weer ’s iemand die ’t boudoir van de - Ja, dat klopt. druif waardeert.
21
C: Well, here's the punch line. [Basil gets punched by a customer] Idiom: semantic transformation
P > NP, s (‘knaller’ can only mean punch, not clue) P > NP, s (only s1 is translated)
Nou, dan komt hier echt ‘n knaller. Nou, hier is de clou.
Season one, episode five: Gourmet night
22
B: Where's Sy-bil? M: Uh... "Where's... the bill?" B: No, no, no. Not the bill, I own the place, I don't pay bills. Phonological structure
P > P P > P
Waar is Sybil? Waar is Sy-bil ? - Waar is de bil? - Hé... "Waar is... zijn bil" ? Nee, daar zit ik op. Waar is m’n vrouw? Nee, nee, nee. Niet zijn bil, Een auto heeft geen bil. Dat heet gewoon de achterkant.
80 23
[Some people have cancelled their reservation, because one of them fell ill. Basil answers:] B: Well, let's hope it's nothing trivial. Idiom: structural transformation (hope it is nothing trivial > hope it is nothing bad)
P > P P > NP, s (the translator does not appear to get the wordplay) Hopelijk is het ernstig. Nou, laten we hopen dat het niets ergs is.
24
[Mrs. Hall is quite small] B: What would you like to drink, Mrs. Small... hall! Paronymy, horizontal
P > NP, s P > P P > P (could be considered p > p if the viewer hears that her name is Hall, then it would be vertical Wat zou u willen drinken, Mevrouw Smal... Hall ! paronymy: Hall > Half) Wat wilt u drinken, Mrs Half?
25
[Mrs. Hall is quite small] [24] H: Two, small and dry. B: Oh, I wouldn't say that. Homophony, vertical (two small and dry > too small and dry)
P > Z P > NP, s (the translator appears to not have noticed the wordplay) Klein en droog. - Dat zou ik niet willen zeggen. Twee, klein en droog. - Oh, dat zou ik toch niet zeggen.
26
P: It's Kurt. B: Yes? P: He's potted... the shrimps. B: What? P: He's potted the shrimps. B: "Shrimps"? We're not having shrimps tonight, Polly. Now... Homonymy, vertical (to pott: to cook something in a pot > to be potted: drunk)
P > P (‘verdronken’-‘dronken’ morphology) P > P (‘geflambeerd’ means that alcohol is set on fire to give food a special taste; from vertical to horizontal) Het gaat om Kurt. Hij heeft de garnalen verdronken. -Wat? Het gaat om Kurt. Hij heeft de garnalen verdronken. - Ja ? -We eten geen garnalen. Hij is geflambeerd... heeft de garnalen geflambeerd. - Wat ? Hij heeft de garnalen geflambeerd. - "Garnalen" ? We serveren helemaal geen garnalen vanavond, Polly.
27
[26] P: He's sauced! ...the herrings. B: What are you talking about? Homonymy, vertical (to sauce > to be sauced)
81 P > P (synonym for drunk or past tence of P > P (less common synonym for drunk; from vertical ’beschenken’) wordplay to horizontal)
Hij heeft de haring beschonken. Welnu... Hij is kachel...heeft de kachel aangezet ! - Wat nu? - Waar heb je het over ?
28
[27] P: He's pickled the onions, […] Homonymy, vertical (to pickle > to be pickled: drunk) P > P (‘beneveld’ synonym for drunk) P > P (from vertical to horizontal)
Hij heeft de uien beneveld... Hij is ladderzat, zat op de ladder.
29
[28] P: and he’s smashed the eggs in his cups...under the table. Homonymy, vertical (to smash > to be smashed: drunk)
P > P P > NP, n en hij heeft eieren zat. Allemaal onder de tafel Hij is in de olie ! Hij heeft... ze onder tafel gedronken
30
B: Listen, he's out there! He's flat out! S: So, Andre's... Who is? B: What?! S: Who is "out"? B: Kurt! Who did you think, Henry Kissinger? Homonymy, horizontal (out: outside > unconscious)
P > NP, s P > P (‘weg’ could be considered both away and to be unconscious) Waarom? - Luister, hij is uitgeschakeld. Luister, hij is weg ! Hij is volledig weg ! Dus André... - Dus André zal... - Wie is uitgeschakeld? Wie is ? Kurt. Wie dacht je? Kissinger? - Wat ? ! Wie is "weg" ? -Kurt ! Wie dacht je dan, Henry Kissinger ?
31
[Basil has changed the menu and guests can now only eat duck] B: If you don't like duck... Uh, you're rather stuck. Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, n
Als je eend niet waardeert zit je hier verkeerd. Als je niet van eend houdt... Hé, dan heb je een probleem.
32
B: The plates! Change the plates. M: Oh, is dirty. I change. B: Come here! Change the plates. M: "Change the plates." Homonymy, horizontal (change: switch > replace)
82 P > P (‘verwissel’ can have the meaning to switch and P > NP, s (‘zet andere borden neer’ can only mean to replace, but here it is vertical) replace the plates)
De borden. Verwissel de borden. De borden ! Zet andere borden neer. - O, zijn vies. - Oh, is vies. Ik zet andere neer. Nee, kom hier. Andersom, die borden. Kom hier ! Zet andere borden neer. "Zet andere - Sorry, is verkeerd. borden neer." - Sorry.
Season one, episode six: The Germans
33
S: Is it blue? B: Bluish, I suppose Morphological development
P > NP, n P > P
Is ie blauw? Is die blauw ? -Zoiets. - Blauwig, volgens mij.
34
B: It has a touch of style about it. S: It's got a touch of mange about it. Idiom: structural transformation
P > P P > P
Het ding heeft stijl. Hij heeft iets van stijl. - Hij heeft schurft. - Hij heeft iets van schurft.
35
B: The nail. They're taking it out tomorrow. Ma: How did she get a nail in her? Homonymy, horizontal (toenail > nail)
P > P (‘nagel’ in Dutch can also mean both nail and P > P (‘nagel’ in Dutch can also mean both nail and toenail) toenail)
De nagel. Morgen gaat ie eruit. De nagel. Die halen ze er morgen uit. - Hoe komt er nou ’n nagel in? - Hoe kwam ze nou aan een nagel...
36
B: Can we help you? Hello. You see? Three years at college. She [Polly] doesn't know the time of day. Ma: About two minutes to 6:00. Idiom: semantic transformation (to not know the time of day: to be stupid > what time it is)
P > P P > P
Drie jaar studie, maar niet echt bij de tijd. Drie jaar gestudeerd, en ze weet niet eens hoe laat - Het is twee voor zes. het is. - Ongeveer twee minuten voor zes.
37
[Major just gave Basil “the time of day”. Then the Major says that he:] [36] Ma: Good card players, but I wouldn’t give them [German women] the time of day. Idiom: semantic transformation (to pay attention to someone > to say what time it is)
83 P > NP, dp P > NP, s
Die kunnen goed kaarten. Maar verder... Goede kaartspelers, maar ik zie ze niet staan. 38
[Basil asks Manuel to get his hammer] M: "Hammer"...Oh, hammer sandwich! Morphological development (ham: food > hammer: instrument)
P > P P > P
Een hamer. Een broodje hamer. 'Hamer'... oh, boterham met hamer !
39
Ma: How's the nail? B: I wish it was this one. [knocks on nail] Homonymy, vertical (toenail > nail)
P > P P > P
Hoe is ‘t met de nagel? Hoe gaat het met uw nagel ? - Was het deze maar. - Ik wou dat dit hem was.
40
[A firedrill is sceduled, but the burgelar alarm goes off. The guests mistake this alarm for the fire alarm and rush downstairs. Basil says that the drill has not started yet.] C: What drill? We didn't hear a drill. Homonymy, horizontal (drill: bore > (fire)drill: a training)
P > NP, n P > P (a ‘dril’ can be a military drill or a abbreviation for ‘drilboor) Klopt, maar niet voor de oefening. - Ik heb geen geklop gehoord. Welke dril ? - We hoorden helemaal geen dril.
41
[Basil says to the Germans that he understands German] C: Wir... B: Wir... Yes, we'll come back to that. C: Wollen... B: "Wollen..." "Voluntary"? Phonological structure (wollen > voluntary)
P > P P > P
Wir. Wir... -Daar komen we op terug. Wollen? Woelen? - Wir... ja, daar komen we nog op terug. Wollen... - 'Wollen... ' 'hollen' ?
42
[41] C: Ein auto mieten. B: "Out to..." "Out to..." Homophony, horizontal
P > Z P > NP, dp
[Not translated] Ein Auto mieten. 'Automieten... ' 'automieten... '
84 43
[42] C: Ein auto mieten. B: "Out to..." "Out to..." Oh, I see, you're volunteering to go out to get some meat. Not necessary. We have meat here. Phonological structure (mieten > meat)
P > NP, s (‘mieten’ in German can never be interpreted P > NP, dp (‘mieten’ in German can never be as ‘vlees’ in Dutch) interpreted as ‘vlees’ in Dutch)
[Not translated] Ein Auto mieten. 'Automieten... ' 'automieten... ' Ik snap ’t al. U ligt te woelen vanwege het vlees. Dat Oh, u biedt ons aan om wat vlees voor ons te halen. hoeft niet. We hebben vlees genoeg in huis. Niet nodig, we hebben hier genoeg eten.
44
[Basil is welcoming the Germans] B: [...] and may I welcome your war... you war... you all, you all, and hope that your stay will be a happy one. Phonological structure
P > RD P > RD
Ik verwelkom u in deze oorlog... in deze oorden. Ik en mag ik u allen welkom heten in de oorlogen... wens u ’n prettig verblijf toe. oorlo... hé... voorlopig, voorlopig, en ik hoop dat uw verblijf aangenaam zal zijn.
45
[There are some Germans in the hotel and Basil tries not to mention the word ‘war’, but fails and tries to correct it] B: or would you like a drink before the war? ...ning... that trespassers will be tied up with piano wire. Morphological development (war > warning)
P > P P > NP, s
Wilt u meteen eten of eerst nog wat drinken voor de Nou, wilt u eerst iets eten of wilt u een drankje voor de oor... Oren. Knoop ’t in uw oren, of u wordt oorlog ?... dat overtreders worden vastgebonden met vastgebonden met staaldraad. pianosnaren.
46
B: [...] it's veally good. Veally good, ha ha! The veal is good? Paronymy, vertical (veally > really) Contamination (really and veal)
P > P P > P (This could be considered paronymy ‘heil goed’ > ‘heel goed’). Het is vleselijk lekker. Vleselijk lekker. Is ’t vlees lekker? Het is in feite heil goet. Heil goet ! Het is heilzaam goed?
47
C: A prawn cocktail! B: Oh, yes, Eva Prawn, yes, and Goebbels too, another one I can hardly remember. Phonological structure (prawn > Eva Braun)
P > RD (alliteration) P > NP, n
Een borrel. Een garnalencocktail! - Eva Braun, die had je ook nog. En Goebbels was ik - O ja, een Eva Braun, natuurlijk, en Göbbels ook, nog ook vergeten. een die ik me nauwelijks kan herinneren.
85 48
[47] C: And a pickled herring. B: Hermann Goering, yes, yes. And Von Ribbentrop, that was another one. Phonological structure
P > NP, n (‘haring’ and ‘göring’ cannot really be seen as P > P phonological structure) En een nasi goreng. En een zure haring. - Nazi Göring, ja, ja. - Ja, Hermann Göring ook.
49
[48] B: Certainly, I'll just get your hors d'oeuvres, hors d'oeuvres which must be obeyed at all times without question. Phonological structure (hors d’oeuvres > orders)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Ik zal uw orders doorgeven. Orders moeten ten alle Ja, ik neem uw orders wel even op, orders die te allen tijde worden opgevolgd. tijde moeten worden opgevolgd zonder vragen.
50
P: Mr. Fawlty, would you please call your wife immediately? B: Sybil! Sybil... Homonymy, vertical (to call someone by phone > call out for someone)
P > NP, n P > NP, s
Uw vrouw wil u spreken. Meneer Fawlty, kunt u direct uw vrouw bellen? - Die ligt in ’t ziekenhuis. - Sybil ! Sybil... Die ligt in het ziekenhuis, gekkie. U moet haar bellen. Ja, belt u haar daar. -Te druk.
51
B: So, two eggs mayonnaise, a prawn goebbels, a herman goering [...] Phonological development (Herman goering > pickled herring)
P > NP, n P > P
Dus ‘n Russisch ei, een Goebbelssalade, een Dus, twee eieren met mayonaise, een garnalengöbbels, göringharing [...] een Nazi Göring [...]
52
[51] B: [...] and four colditz salads. Phonological structure (German person involved in the war > cold)
P = P, t P > NP, dp
[...] en Colditz-salades. [...] en vier koude vleessoldaten.
Season two, episode one: communication problems
53
M: Qué? C : K? Homophony, horizontal
86 (Passages 53-56 are connected. Separately they are often translated as non-pun, but I will also take a closer look at the whole passage to see if the translation works as a whole. See under 56)
P > Z P > NP, s
[not translated] Qué ? - Kee ?
54
[53] M: Sí. C: C? "KC"? "KC"? What are you trying to say? Homophony, horizontal
P > NP, s P > P P > P (if the viewer connects what is being said with the translation) Sí. - Zie ? Keessie ? Keessie ? Wat probeert u daarmee te Keesie? Wat probeer je te zeggen? zeggen ?
55
[54] M: No, no, no, no. Qué: What. C: K-watt? Homophony, horizontal
P > Z P > NP, s
[not translated] Nee, nee, nee, nee. Qué: wat. - Kee-Wat ?
56 [55] M: Sí. Qué... what. C: C.K. Watt? Homophony, horizontal
P > Z P > NP, n (it is not p > p because here the name would have to be Siekee to be paronymy) [not translated] Sí. Qué, wat. - Keessie Watt ? Ja !
passages 53-56 M: Qué? C : K? M: Sí. C: C? "KC"? "KC"? What are you trying to say? M: No, no, no, no. Qué: What. C: K-watt? M: Sí. Qué... what. C: C.K. Watt?
P > NP, s P > P P > P (If the viewer connects this translation to what is being said) Qué ? [not translated] - Kee ? Sí. Keesie? Wat probeer je te zeggen? - Zie ? Keessie ? Keessie ? Wat probeert u daarmee te zeggen ? [not translated] Nee, nee, nee, nee. Qué: wat. - Kee-Wat ?
87 Sí. Qué, wat. - Keessie Watt ? Ja !
57
[53-56] C: I ask him for my room, and he tells me the manager's a Mr. Watt, aged 40. Homophony, vertical (watt > what)
P > P (watt > wat) P > P (watt > wat)
Hij zegt dat de manager Watt heet en omvalt. Ik vraag hem om mijn kamer, en hij vertelt me dat de manager een zekere Meneer Watt is, een 40 jarige man.
58
[57] C: I ask him for my room, and he tells me the manager's a Mr. Watt, aged 40 Phonological structure (forty > Fawlty)
(Passages 58 and 59 are connected. Separately do not work that well, but I will also take a closer look at the whole passage to see if the translation works as a whole. See under 59.)
P > NP, dp P > NP, s
Hij zegt dat de manager Watt heet en omvalt. Ik vraag hem om mijn kamer, en hij vertelt me dat de manager een zekere Meneer Watt is, een 40 jarige man.
59
[58] M: No. No, no. Faw-lty. C: "Faulty"? What's wrong with him? Homophony, horizontal (faw-lty > faulty)
P > NP, s P > NP, n
Valt ie? Wat heeft ie dan? Nee. Nee, nee. Faw-lty. - 'Foutief' ? Wat is er mis met hem ?
passage 58-59 C: I ask him for my room, and he tells me the manager's a Mr. Watt, aged 40. M: No. No, no. Faw-lty. C: "Faulty"? What's wrong with him?
P > NP, dp P > NP, n (40 is not connected with Fawlty here) P > P (if the viewer connects this translation to what is being said) Ik vraag hem om mijn kamer, en hij vertelt me dat de manager een zekere Meneer Watt is, een 40 jarige Hij zegt dat de manager Watt heet en omvalt. man. Valt ie? Wat heeft ie dan? - Nee. Nee, nee. Faw-lty. 'Foutief' ? Wat is er mis met hem ?
60
C: Oh, you're Watt. B: I'm the manager! C: What? B: I'm the manager! C: Yes, I know. You've just told me. What's the matter with you? Homophony, vertical (Watt > what)
88 P > P P > P
U bent Watt. Oh, u bent Watt. -Ik ben de manager. - Ik ben de manager ! Ja, dat zegt u net. Wat ? - Ik ben de manager ! Ja, dat weet ik. Dat zei u net.
61
S: No, no, it's [the wig] lovely. It's just a bit buttery with my skin. I think I need something more... more... topazy, for my colouring, you know, more tonal. Morphological development (topazolite: yellow granate)
P > P (‘topaas’ is also a kind of rock which is yellowish) P = P, t
Nee, prachtig. Maar hij is wat te boterig bij m’n huid. Ik Hij is alleen een beetje boterig met mijn huid. moet iets meer topaas hebben, Ik denk dat ik iets meer... meer... topazerigs, voor mijn vanwege m’n teint. Begrijp je? Iets tonaler, als ’t kan. kleur, weet je wel, meer getint. 62
S: No, no, it (the wig) is lovely. It's just a bit buttery with my skin. I think I need something more... more... topazy, for my colouring, you know, more tonal. Morphological development (tone: tint, shade > tonal: music)
P > P (‘tonaal’ and ‘tone’ have the same meaning as in P > NP, s (only ‘tone’ is translated here) English)
Nee, prachtig. Maar hij is wat te boterig bij m’n huid. Ik Hij is alleen een beetje boterig met mijn huid. moet iets meer topaas hebben, Ik denk dat ik iets meer... meer... topazerigs, voor mijn vanwege m’n teint. Begrijp je? Iets tonaler, als ’t kan. kleur, weet je wel, meer getint.
63
[A customer asks Polly for toilet paper, but Polly interprets it as writing paper] C: Girl, there's no paper [toilet paper] in my room. Homonymy, vertical (toilet paper > sheet of paper)
P > P P > P
Ik heb geen papier. Meisje, ik heb geen papier in mijn kamer.
64
C: I'm talking to you, Watt! B: Watt? C: Are you deaf? B: I said I'm talking to you. Homophony, vertical (Watt > what)
P > P P > P
Ik praat tegen je, Watt. Ben je doof? Ik ben nog nooit zo Ik heb het tegen u, Watt ! behandeld. - Watt ? Bent u doof ? Ik zei dat ik het tegen u had.
65
B: I can explain. No, you see, she thought you wanted to write. C: Wanted a fight? I'll give her a fight, all right! Phonological structure
89 P > P P > P
Ze dacht...ik kan ‘t u uitleggen. Ik kan het uitleggen, Nee, ziet u, ze dacht dat u - Al die persoonlijke vragen. briefpapier was vergeten. Ze dacht dat u wou schrijven. - Wilde ze een vete ? Ik zal wel eens met haar ruziën, - Kijven? Dat kan. ja !
66
B: I can explain. No, you see, she thought you wanted to write. C: Wanted a fight? I'll give her a fight, all right! Paronymy, horizontal
P > NP, n P > NP, n
Ze dacht...ik kan ‘t u uitleggen. Ik kan het uitleggen, Nee, ziet u, ze dacht dat u - Al die persoonlijke vragen. briefpapier was vergeten. Ze dacht dat u wou schrijven. - Wilde ze een vete ? Ik zal wel eens met haar ruziën, ja - Kijven? Dat kan. !
67
B: My horse, nitwit! M: Your horse Nitwit? Syntactic structure (proper name > someone who is stupid)
P > P P > P
Mijn paard, sufferd. Mijn paard, uilskuiken ! - Uw paard Sufferd. - U paard Uilskuiken ?
68
C: I can get down the stairs perfectly well by myself. B: "Down" the stairs? C: Don't stop when you get to the basement. Keep straight on. Give my regards to the earth's core. Homonymy, vertical (direction > under)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Ik heb geen hulp nodig. Ik kom zelf de trap wel af. Ik kan prima zelf de trap af lopen. - Af. Ga vooral rechtdoor bij de kelder. En doe groeten - De trap af ? Nou, goed, niet stoppen wanneer u in de aan de aardkern. kelder bent. Gewoon door blijven lopen. En doe de groeten aan het binnenste der aarde.
69
Ma: Remembrance service? B: Yes. Ma: I don't remember that, old boy. Morphological development
P > NP, n P > NP, n
Ik heb u geld gegeven voor u naar de dienst ging. Weet u nog, ik gaf u wat geld net voor u naar die - De dienst? Daar weet ik niks van. begrafenis ging ? - Begrafenis ? Ja. - Daar herinner ik me niks van, kerel.
90 Season two, episode two: The psychiatrist
70
S: You know, easy and amusing and charming. B: Charming, eh? Well, he's certainly covered in charms. I've never seen so many medals 'round one neck in my life. Morphological development
P > NP, n P > RD (alliteration)
Ongedwongen, vermakelijk, charmant. Weet je wel, makkelijk en amusant en charmant. - Ik heb nog nooit zo veel eremetaal om één nek zien - Amusant, zeg je ? Nou, hij is inderdaad behangen met hangen. amuletten. Ik heb nog nooit van mijn leven zoveel medailles om een nek zien hangen.
71
S: You know, it's all right when they have the life force, but mother, well... she's got more of the death force, really. Idiom: structural transformation (collocation: a life force – someone who loves life)
P > P P > P
Zolang ze levenskracht hebben is ‘t geweldig, maar Weet je wel, het is prima als ze die levenskracht moeder...heeft eerder ’n soort doodskracht. hebben, maar mijn moeder, nou... die heeft meer een doodskracht, eerlijk gezegd.
72
[A guest wants to go to the sea. Basil dislikes him and makes that very clear] B: You'd better hurry. The tide leaves in six minutes. Idiom: semantic transformation (the tide leaves (sea) > your luck will change)
P > NP, s P > P (‘het tij keert’ can also in Dutch mean that someone’s luck will change) U moet snel zijn, het is zo eb. Je kunt maar beter opschieten. Het tij keert over zes minuten.
73
C: No, I'm a pediatrician. B: Feet! C: Children. S: Oh, Basil! B: Children have feet, don't they? That's how they move around. Phonological structure (pediatrician: children > Podiatrist: feet)
P > P (‘pediater’ > ‘podoloog’) P > P (‘pediater’ > ‘podoloog’)
Ik ben pediater. Nee, ik ben pediater. - Voeten? - Voeten ! Kinderen. Kinderen. - Kinderen hebben toch voeten? Zo lopen ze. Best - Oh, Basil. interessant. O ja, kinderen hebben ook voeten. Daar lopen ze op rond.
74
B: Just speaking for myself, I don't want some total stranger nosing around in my private parts... details! That's all I'm saying. Idiom: structural transformation (‘private parts’ > private details)
91 P > P P > P
Ik wil geen gesnuffel van vreemden in mijn intieme Ik voor mij persoonlijk wil niet dat een wildvreemde delen...zaken. rondneust in mijn schaamstreek... Beschamende details ! Dat is wat ik erover te zeggen heb.
75
B: Everything's connected with sex. Huh! What a load of cobblers. Idiom: structural transformation (load of cobblers > load of crap)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Om seks. Voor hen houdt alles verband met seks. Wat Alles heeft te maken met seks. Hah ! Wat een hoop ’n flauwekul. gelul.
76
C: How often do you manage it? Homonymy, vertical (accomplish something > to handle something, be a manager)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Hoe vaak lukt ’t u? Hoe vaak lukt het u ?
77
B: Stupidissimo! You continental cretin! Morphological development
P = P, d P = P, t
Stupidissimo. Continentale kluns. Idiotissimo ! Achterlijke Spanjool !
78
B: He is a guest, Major. Ma: Oh, well, your guess is as good as mine. Morphological development
P > RD (the meaning of this translation is very different P > NP, n from the original utterance) Hij is ook een gast, Majoor. Hij is ’n gast, majoor. - Oh, nou, jij weet er net zo weinig van als ik. - Zoals de waard is, vertrouwt ie z’n gasten.
79
M: Crazy. I say to her you try to see in girls room. And she go crazy. B: What? M: I tell her you go to see girl in room. You crazy about this girl, okay? Idiom: reversed semantic transformation (to be crazy about > to become crazy about)
P > P P > P
Ik zeg, u in kamer van meisje proberen te kijken en zij Ik zeggen tegen haar u proberen in kamer van meisje te gek worden. Ik zeg tegen haar, u moeten meisje zien. U kijken en zij gek worden. gek van meisje. - Wat ? Ik vertellen haar u gaan kijken naar meisje in kamer. U gek van deze meisje, toch ?
92 80
B: I’ll get you, you pilked-down ponce. Contamination
P > NP, dp (not translated as a neologism) P > NP, dp (not translated as a neologism)
Ik krijg je wel, opgedirkte patser. Ik zal je krijgen, jij opgetutte nicht.
81
[Basil thinks that a guest is hiding a girl and he tries to catch them red handed. He thinks he sees the girl sneaking out of the room, but he is mistaken.] B: Right, the game's up. Up there. Bit of game pie, got stuck up there. Homonymy, horizontal (game: something people play > a kind of pie)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Het spel is uit. Er hangt daar iets aan ‘t plafond. Oké, het spel is uit. Uit mijn keel. Ik had een stukje beschuit in mijn keel vastzitten.
82
[Basil thinks that a guest is hiding a girl and he tries to catch them red handed. He thinks he sees the girl sneaking out of the room, but he is mistaken.] B: Right, the game's up. Up there. Bit of game pie, got stuck up there. Homonymy, horizontal (the game is up: it is over, up: on the ceiling) Idiom: semantic transformation (the game is up > a piece of game pie is up on the ceiling)
P > NP, n P > P
Het spel is uit. Er hangt daar iets aan ‘t plafond. Oké, het spel is uit. Uit mijn keel. Ik had een stukje beschuit in mijn keel vastzitten.
Season two, episode three: waldorf salad
83
C: I've put it all over the plaice. B: All over the place? What were you doing with it? Homophony, horizontal
P > NP, s P > P (the translation is somewhat bizarre, but the wordplay remains) Ik heb het overal opgestrooid. -Overal? Wat heeft u gedaan? Ik heb het over de hele schol gestrooid. Over de hele school ? Wat deed u daar nou?
84
P: What a sweet plaice. B: What? P: I'll have it re-placed. Morphological development
P > NP, n P > P
Wat ‘n zoet bord. Ik haal ‘n andere. Wat een zoet scholletje. - Wat ? Ik zal hem laten bij-schollen.
93 85
B: Not pureeing your loved ones, that's the difficult part. Contamination Morphological development
P = P, t P > NP, s
Ja, da’s makkelijk. Je geliefden niet pureren, da’s pas Je dierbaren niet tot moes malen, dat is pas lastig. moeilijk.
86
[A customer says that the two plates that Fawlty has are meant for his table] C: Excuse me. There are two lambs here. B: I'll have them removed if they're bothering you. Homonymy, vertical (lambchops > lambs)
P > NP, n (‘lam’ can mean both lambchops and lambs. P > P The audience needs to know English, however to get the pun because Basil’s reaction is not translated)
Pardon. Twee lam hier. Pardon, we hebben hier twee lammetjes. [not translated] - Ik zal ze weg laten halen als ze u storen.
87
B: Your lambs will be getting cold, Mr. Johnston. C: Colder. Morphological development
P > P P > P
Uw lamsvlees wordt koud. Uw lamsboutjes worden koud, Meneer Johnston. - Kouder. - Kouder.
88
[Basil does not know the drink “screwdriver” and thinks they want a real screwdriver] B: So, it's one scotch, and you each need a screwdriver. C: No. Forget the scotch. Two screwdrivers. B: I understand, and you'll leave the drinks. Homonymy, horizontal (screwdriver: tool > screwdriver: drink)
P > P (‘schroevendraaier’ is not often used as the name P > P (‘schroevendraaier’ is not often used as the name for the drink. Mostly the English word ‘screwdriver’ is for the drink. Mostly the English word ‘screwdriver’ is used, but the audience will normally know that used, but the audience will normally know that ‘schroevendraaier’ is also a drink) ‘schroevendraaier’ is also a drink)
Een whisky en ieder ‘n schroevendraaier. Dus een whisky, en u wilt allebei een - Geen whisky. Twee schroevendraaiers. schroevendraaier. Prima, en geen drankjes. - Nee. Laat die whisky maar zitten. Twee schroevendraaiers. Ik begrijp het, en u laat die drankjes zitten.
89
[Basil says that he just opened the bottle of orange juice and that it therefore is fresh] B: You'd like freshly squeezed orange juice. C: As opposed to freshly unscrewed orange juice. [screwdrivers] Morphological development (unscrewed: twisted > screwdriver)
94 P > NP, s P > P
U bedoelt vers geperst. U wilt vers geperste sinaasappelsap. - En niet vers geopend. - In plaats van ongeschroefde sinaasappelsap.
Season two, episode four: the kipper and the corpse
90
C: I said a bowl. M: A ball? Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Een kommetje, zei ik. Ik zei een kom. [not translated] - Een kom ?
91
P: When he said "Mr. Leeman was dead", I thought he said, "He's still in bed". Paronymy, horizontal
P > NP, s P > NP, n
Ik dacht dat hij zei dat ie nog in bed lag. Toen hij zei "Meneer Leeman is dood," dacht ik dat hij zei, "Hij is nog in bed."
92
P: When could you collect the body? Somebody, anybody, really. [guest walked in Polly changed the subject] Morphological development
P > P P > P
Wanneer haalt u ‘t lijk op? Wanneer kunt u het lijk ophalen ? Iemand, wie dan ook, Lijkt u dat wat? eigenlijk.
93
[A man died and Basil is afraid to tell the other guests so he hides the dead man in a closet, but his arm is sticking out. Polly tries to make Basil aware of that] P: She doesn't mean any arm. Paronymy, vertical (arm > harm) Idiom: structural transformation
P > P (‘arm’: poor > ‘arm’: bodypart) P > NP, s
Ze is zo arm. Ze bedoelt geen kwaad.
94
Ma: he doesn't look quite the ticket. Idiom: structural transformation (to look the ticket > to look the part)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Zeg, die ziet er niet gezond uit. Hij ziet er niet al te goed uit.
95 95
C: We've come to collect him. B: Oh, you've come to collect him! [Basil thinks they’ve come to collect the dead man, they mean to collect for an outing] Homonymy, horizontal (take him to the morgue > to gather for an outing)
P > P (‘halen’: take away > ‘halen’: pick up) P > P (‘ophalen’: take away > ‘ophalen’: pick up)
We komen ‘m halen. We komen hem ophalen. - O, u komt ‘m halen. - Oh, u komt hem ophalen ?
Season two, episode five: The anniversary
96
B: She's ill, Sybil. What would you like to drink? F1: Syb, ill? B: Yes. F2: What's the matter? F1: Did you hear that? I said, "Syb-ill"? Homophony, horizontal (Sybil > Syb ill)
P > P P = P, d
Ze is ziek. Wat wil je drinken? Ze is ziek, Sybil. Wat wilt u drinken ? - Wat is er met haar? - Syb, ziek ? Hoor je? Ik zei syb-pil. Ja. - Wat is er ? Hoorde je dat ? Ik zei, "Syb-ill ?"
97
[sybil is ill] [96] F: Have you got it? B: No, I'm fine. Homonymy, vertical (understand something > to have something)
P > NP, s (‘vat je hem’ can only mean ‘do you get it’) P > P (‘heb je het’ can mean both to understand and to have something)
Vat je ‘m? Heb je het ? - Ik voel me prima. - Nee, ik ben prima.
98
B: Cheers. F: Up yours, Basil. Idiom: semantic transformation (vulgar expression > toast)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Veel geluk. Leuk jullie te zien. Proost. - Krijg de klere, Basil. - Santjes, Basil.
99
[Polly is trying to explain what is wrong with Sybil and asks Basil but she misunderstands the word eyes as thighs] B: The eyes. M: I tell you he want to make trouble. He push mop at my feet. P: Her thighs. Phonological structure
96 P > P P > NP, n
Haar toet. De ogen. - Hij duwt met de bezem. - Ik zeg u hij wil moeilijk doen. Hij duwt zwabber tegen Haar voet. mijn voeten. Haar dijen.
100
B: and her legs are a bit... P: expanded Homonymy, vertical (increased in area, bulk, volume > spread out)
P > NP, s P > P (‘uitgebreid’ can mean spread out, but it is not very common)
Haar gezicht en haar benen zijn... Haar gezicht en haar benen zijn een beetje... - Iets opgezet. Zielig, hé? - Uitgebreid. Zielig, nietwaar ?
101
B: It's perfectly Sybil. Simple's not well. Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, dp
Het is heel Sybil. Simpel is ziek. Het is heel Sybilachtig. Simple voelt zich niet goed.
102
B: She lost her throat and her voice hurt. Idiom: structural transformation (> she lost her voice and her throat hurts)
P > NP, s P > P
Ze is haar keel kwijt. [not translated] Ze is haar keel kwijt en haar stem doet pijn.
Season two, episode six: basil the rat
103
[Health inspector says that the kitchen is dirty. Basil confronts Kurt with it. Kurt answers] K: Filthy Towers, eh? Paronymy, vertical (> Fawlty Towers)
P > NP, s P = P, d
Vieze Towers. "Filthy Towers", hé ?
104
B: Listen, two dead pigeons. Water tank. What is funny? M: How they get up there? B: How'd they...? They flew up there. That's right. Will you stop... will you just... will you pull... [manuel makes pig noise] B: Not pigs! Pigeons! Phonological structure
P > RD (alliteration) P > RD (alliteration and assonance)
Twee dode vogeltjes. Watertank. Luister: twee dode duiven. Watertank. - Wat is er zo leuk? - Wat is er grappig ? Hoe komen ze daar? Hoe zijn ze daar geraakt ? - Ze zijn erheen gevlogen. Inderdaad. Hou toch op. - Hoe zijn ze... ? Ze zijn er naar toe gevlogen. Juist.
97 Geen varkentjes, vogeltjes. Oink, oink ! - Wil je stoppen... Wil je gewoon... Geen Duitse varkens ! Duiven !
105
M: Qué? B: Pigeon, pigeon. Like your English [pidgin English] Homophony, vertical (pigeon > pidgin)
P > NP, s P > NP, n
Vogeltjes, net zo maf als jij. Qué ? - Duif, duif. Zoals in jouw Engels.
106
B: Look, look... don't look at me with those awful cow eyes. Homonymy, horizontal (Look: to direct attention or consideration, to look at the facts > to turn one's eyes toward something or in some direction in order to see)
P > NP, s P > P
Kijk me niet zo aan met die koeienogen. Kijk, kijk... Kijk niet naar me met die verschrikkelijke koeienogen.
107
[Manuel wants to feed his rat, but he does not want him to eat anything with to much cholesterol] M: No, no... is chostelorol. Paronymy, vertical (> cholesterol)
P = P, d P = P, d
Wil je er saus bij? Met wat bearnaise erbij ? - Nee, te veel chostelerol. - Nee, nee, dat is chostelorol.
108
[Polly says to Manuel that the sound he heard was that of the majors gun, when he was trying to kill a ratt. Manuel asks if ‘Basil’ (his rat) is ok.] M: No, not Mr. Fawlty. I mean Basil, my little... P: Ratatouille! M: Basil. The little... P: Ratatouille. Morphological development (rat > ratatouille)
P > P P > P
Nee. Ik bedoel Basil, m’n... Nee, niet Mr. Fawlty. Ik bedoel Basil, mijn kleine... - Ratatouille. - Ratatouille ! Basil, de kleine... Basil. De kleine... - Ratatouille. - Ratatouille.
109
[108] P: The chef calls the Ratatouille Basil, because he puts quite a lot of basil in it. M: He put Basil [the rat] in the Ratatouille? Homonymy, vertical (rat ‘Basil’ > herb)
P > P P > P
De kok noemt de ratatouille Basil, omdat ie er De chef-kok noemt de ratatouille Basil, omdat hij er basilicum in doet. veel basilicum in doet. - Heeft ie Basil in de ratatouille gestopt? - Hij doet Basil in de ratatouille ?
98 110
B: Ah, bon. Good appetit. Idiom: structural transformation (>bon appétit)
P > Z P > NP, s
[not translated] Ah, bon. Smakelijk.
111
B: Sorry, but the veal is, in fact, off. It was never really on. That's a misprint. C: A misprint? B: Yes. It should say... Eel. Paronymy, horizontal
P > P P > NP, n
We hadden helemaal geen kalfsvlees. Dat is ’n Sorry, maar het kalfsvlees is, in feite, op. Het stond er drukfout. eigenlijk nooit op. Het is een fout. - Een drukfout? - Een fout ? Er moet eigenlijk kaas staan. Ja. Wat er eigenlijk moet staan is, umm... - Kaasvlees? Hou toch op. Paling. Palinglapjes...
Transcriptions of wordplay in Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Abbreviations
P > P from pun to pun P > NP, dp from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase P > NP, s from pun to non-pun, selective non-pun P > NP, n pun to non-pun, non-selective non-pun P > RD from pun to related rhetorical device P > Z pun to zero P = P, d pun source text = pun target text, direct copy P = P, t pun source text = pun target text, transference
Structure
The translation on the left is from the original subtitles, the translation on the right from the fansubs. [ ] are used to link those passages that belong together (the number within the brackets refers to the passage the current passage is linked to)
Characters:
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is made of a series of sketches so there are no steady characters. Therefore I will write the full name of every character (if there is one and if it is necessary).
Season one, episode two: Sex and violence
1
[An interviewer from the programme “The Epilogue: a question of belief” presents his guests: Monsignor Edward Gay and Dr. Tom Jack] Interviewer: And author of a number of books about belief, the most recent of which is the best-seller "My God". [with exclamatory pronunciation] Syntactic structure (my God > exclamation: oh my god!)
P > NP, s P > P
[…] en auteur van verschillende boeken over geloof… […] en auteur van een aantal boeken over het geloof... met als laatste de bestseller, Mijn God. de laatste was de bestseller: 'O, mijn God!'
99 2
[written: crowd protesting the use of mice in labs] Mice is nice Phonological structure
P > RD (assonance: ‘ui’) P > Z
MUIZEN ZIJN PLUIS [Not translated]
3
[written] [2] Ho ho ho traps must go phonological structure
P > P P > Z
ZEG ZEG VALLEN WEG [Not translated]
Season one, episode three: How to recognize different types of trees from quita a long way away
4
Witness in court: He says he's a tree surgeon. But I don't like the sound of his liver. Homonymy, vertical (organ > a person who lives in a specified manner) Morphological development (living > liver)
P > NP, s (only meaning of liver is translated) P > NP, s (only meaning of liver is translated)
Hij zit in de KGB. Boomchirurg, ja ja. Z’n lever klinkt En hij zit bij de KGB volgens mij, hij zegt dat hij een slecht. boomchirurg is... maar ik vertrouw zijn lever's geluid niet.
5
[Dim, a detective, ‘sings’ this song in court] Dim: If I were not in the C.I.D., something else I'd like to be. If I were not in the C.I.D., a window cleaner me. Phonological structure
P > P P > RD (repetition) als ik niet bij de recherche was, wat zou ik dan zijn Als ik geen agent zou zijn, zou ik wat anders zijn. geen agent maar glazenwasser dat lijkt mij wel fijn Als ik geen agent zou zijn, zou ik ramenlapper zijn. 6
[5] Dim: With a rub-a-dub-dub and a scrub-a-dub-dub- and a rub-a-dub all day long. With a rub-a-dub-dub and a scrub-a-dub-dub, I'd sing this merry song. Phonological structure
P > P P > P van je poetserdepoets, en wasserdewas, de hele dag Met een poets-poets en schrob-schrob, de hele dag poetserdepoets, wasserdewas, met een lied en met lang. Met een poets-poets en schrob-schrob, hoor dit een lach vrolijke gezang.
7
[The barrister sings his own version of Dim’s song] Barrister: If... I were not before the bar, Something else I'd like to be. If I were not a barrister, an engine driver me. Phonological structure
100 P > P P > RD (repetition) als ik geen advocaatje was wat zou ik dan zijn Als ik geen advocaat zou zijn, zou ik wat anders zijn. geen strafpleiten maar machinist dat lijkt me wel fijn Als ik geen advocaat zou zijn, zou ik treinmachinist zijn.
8
[A person’s bike broke and bicycle repairman fixed it.] Bicycle repairman, how can I ever repay you? paronymy, horizontal
P > NP, n P > NP, n
Fietsenmakerman, hoe kan ik u ooit terugbetalen? Fietsenmaker-Man, hoe kan ik je ooit bedanken?
9
[This is a sketch about a sort of kids’ show where a man reads the children a story] "One day, Ricky the Magic Pixie went to visit Daisy Bumble in her tumble-down cottage.” Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, s
Ricky de Toverkabouter ging naar Daisy Hommel, in Op een dag, ging Ricky de Elf, op visite bij Daisy de haar oude hutje Hommel, in haar huisje.
10
[9] Old Nick the sea captain was a rough, tough, jolly sort of fellow. Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, s
Oude Nick de zeekapitein was een vrolijke, ruwe Ouwe Nick, de kapitein, was een vrolijke vent. Hij bonk hield van de zee.
11
[This sketch is about two men sitting in a café. The first man is trying to pry information from another about his wife and her sex life. The first man asks questions with a sexual undertone, but the second man does not seem to understand what exactly the first man is asking] Man 1: Is your wife a goer? Know what I mean, know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, nudge, nudge. Homonymy, vertical (goer: a person who runs > sexual connotation: someone who has a lot of sex or ‘goes at it’) P > P (same connotation as in English) P > P
Uw vrouw, gaat die nogal? Voelt u ‘m? Por, por. Ik Is jouw vrouw een 'doener'? Weet je wat ik bedoel, weet genoeg. Voelt u ‘m? zeur-zeur.
12
[11] Man 1: Your wife... does she... Does she go...? Know what I mean, know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, say no more? Man 2: Well, she sometimes goes, yes. Homonymy, horizontal (to go: walk > sexual connotation of to go: to have sex)
P > P (go at it > go) P > P (doen: to do and have sex)
Uw vrouw, gaat die er tegenaan? Voelt u ‘m? Por, Je vrouw, 'doet' ze het? Weet je wat ik bedoel, zeur- Por. zeur, zwijg me ervan. - Soms gaat ze, ja. - Ze doet wel eens wat, ja.
101 13
[12] Man 1: Is she a sport? Man 2: Well, yes, she likes sport, yes. Homonymy, horizontal (someone who will go along with anything > an athletic activity)
P > RD (‘sport’ as a hyponym of ‘lichaamsbeweging’) P > P (but the sexual connotation is a bit lost)
Houdt uw vrouw van lichaamsbeweging? Jouw vrouw, is ze sportief? -Ze houdt van sport. - Ja, ze houdt van sport.
14
[13] Man 1: Likes games, likes games? Knew she would, knew she would, knew she would. Homonymy, vertical (games like sport or other > flirting)
P > P (same connotation in Dutch) P > P (same connotation in Dutch)
Houdt van spelletjes. Wist ik wel. Wie niet, weet je wat ik bedoel. Houdt van spelletjes, dacht ik al.
15
[14] Man 1: She's been around? Been around. Man 2: She's traveled. Idiom: semantic transformation (to go around: to have a lot of sex partners > to travel)
P > P (‘te koop’ can mean she knows all about man P > P (‘rondkomen’ is mainly used in the context of and she has been everywhere, but the link between having the money to support yourself, but can also be ‘kopen’ and ‘reizen’ is not as obvious as in the original used as a reference to ‘she has been with many men’) utterance) P > RD (repetition: ‘komt’)
Ze weet wat er te koop is? Ze komt aardig rond zeker? -Ze heeft gereisd. - Ja, ze komt uit Purley.
16
[15] Man 2: She's from Purley. Man 1: Oh, oh, say no more, say no more! Morphological development (Purley the city > to purr – purringly: to utter a sound of contentment)
P = P, d P = P, d
Ze heeft gereisd. Komt uit Purley. Ik weet genoeg. Ik Ja, ze komt uit Purley. weet genoeg. Purley. - Zwijg me ervan! Purley, zwijg me ervan! Weet je wat ik bedoel, zwijg me ervan!
17
[16] Man 1: Well, I mean you are a man of the world, aren't you? I mean, you've been there, haven't you? I mean, you've been around? Man 2: What do you mean? Man 1: Well, I mean, like you've done it. I mean, you know, you've slept with a lady. Idiom: semantic transformation (to travel > to have a lot of sexpartners)
P > P (to experience something > to travel the world) P > P (‘rondgaan’ can mean to move in circle or going into different directions -> traveling) Nou ja, u bent een man van de wereld, hè. U hebt het een en ander meegemaakt. Je bent een wereldwijze man. Je bent rond geweest. - Wat bedoelt u? - Wat bedoel je? Ik bedoel, u heeft het gedaan. U heeft gevrijd met een Nou... Je hebt het gedaan. Je hebt met een vrouw dame. geslapen.
102 Season one, episode four: Owl stretching time
18
[Assistant walks in and brings the art critic a glass of water] Watteau, dear? Paronymy, vertical (watteau > water)
P = P, d P = P, d
Watteau, schat? Watteau, lieve?
Season one, episode seven: You’re no fun anymore
19
[At the beginning of every episode there is a person who says “It’s” and then someone else who completes the sentence by saying “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, but in this case the first person has problems with the first word]
Person 1: It’s…[keeps repeating it, has trouble articulating the word] It's! [shows breasts with hands] Person 2: No, no! Paronymy, vertical (it’s > tits) P > Z P > Z
[Not translated] En nu:...! Nee, en nu:...
20
The accountant tells the board that the business only made one shilling profit] Shairman: Wilkins, I am the chairman of a multimillion-pound corporation and you are a very new chartered accountant. Isn't it possible there may have been some mistake? Wilkins (accountant): Well, that's very kind of you, sir, but I don't think I'm ready to be chairman yet. Homonymy, vertical (an error in calculation > misunderstanding) Syntactic structure
P > NP, s (only the s1 is translated, because ‘je’ is P > NP, s (only the s1 is translated, because ‘je’ is used in the sentence) used in the sentence)
Ik ben voorzitter van een miljoenenbedrijf… en jij bent Wilkins, ik ben de voorzitter van een miljoenen-bedrijf, onze nieuwe accountant. Heb je misschien een fout en jij bent een...accountant, die net begonnen is. Heb gemaakt? je misschien een fout gemaakt? - Dank u, maar ik wil nog geen voorzitter worden. - Heel aardig van u, maar ik ben nog niet klaar om voorzitter te zijn.
Season one, episode eight: Full frontal nudity
21
[written] Full frontal nudity an intimate revue! Homonymy, vertical (for a small group, private > having to do with sex: to be intimate)
P > P P > NP, dp (only the first part of the sentence is translated, not the wordplay itself) frontaal naakt een intieme revue volledig zichtbare naaktheid.
103 22
[The presenter of an art show struggles with his language because a girl is seducing him.] Presenter: Good evening. I'd like to talk to you tonight about the place of the nude in my bed... In the history of my bed... of art... art-- I'm sorry. The place of the nude in the history of tart... Paronymy, horizontal (not phonological structure because the main reason the word ‘tart’ is used because it is in line with the sexual context, not just because it rhymes)
P > NP, n P > P (though it loses the sexual connotation)
Goedenavond. Ik wil het hebben over de plaats Goedenavond. Ik zou vanavond even met je willen van het naakt in m’n bed… In de geschiedenis van praten. Over het naakt in mijn bed. In de geschiedenis m’n bed… Van de kunst. Mijn excuses. Het naakt in van mijn bed... van kunst... kunst... het spijt me. De de geschiedenis van de del… Prostituee. Excuseer plaats van het naakt in de geschiedenis van de kluns...
23
[A man comes in the animal shop and calls for the shop assistant] Man: Hello? Miss? Shop assistant (male): What do you mean "miss"? Man: Oh, I'm sorry, I have a cold. Phonological structure (miss: woman > miss: sneezing sound)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Dag, juffrouw. Hallo, juffrouw? - Hoe bedoelt u, juffrouw? - Wat bedoelt u met juffrouw? Sorry, ik ben verkouden. Het spijt me, ik ben verkouden.
24
[written] Make tea not love Idiom: structural transformation (make peace not war)
P > P (the idiom “maak vrede geen oorlog” is less P > Z common in Dutch though) [Not translated] MAAK THEE, GEEN KINDEREN
25
I've heard of unisex but I've never had it. Homonymy, vertical (unisex: for both male and female > something involving sex)
P > P (both uniseks and unisex are correct in Dutch P > P (both uniseks and unisex are correct in Dutch and can both refer to ‘seks’ and ‘sekse’ ) and can both refer to ‘seks’ and ‘sekse’)
Ik ken uniseks, maar heb het nog nooit gehad ik heb gehoord van unisex, maar ik heb het nog nooit gehad.
Season one, episode nine: The ant, an introduction
26
What's brown and sounds like a bell? - Excuse me? Dung! Phonological structure (sound of a bell > excrement of an animal)
104 P > NP, dp P > Z P = P, d (if the viewer connects the answer on TV to Wat is bruin en klimt omhoog? the translated question, s/he will probably understand -pardon? s2 (sound) but not s1) Een drolletje met heimwee. Wat is bruin en klinkt als een klok? [not translated]
Season one, episode ten: untitled
27
[A person comes on stage and then walks off] Person 1: That's what they call a walk-on. Person 2: Walk-on? That's a walk-off, that's what this is. Morphological development (walk-on: person with a small part in a play or other entertainment especially one without speaking lines > walk-off: does not exist)
P > P P > NP, n (the effect here is funny, but it is not based on wordplay. In wordplay the structure of a word is Dat noemen ze een gastoptreden. reflected in another) - Het is eerder een gastaftreden. P > P (if ‘afgang’ is seen as horizontal wordplay: ‘afgang’ can mean to go off stage or to be in an embarrassing situation)
Dat noemen ze een opkomst. - Opkomst? Dat is een afgang. Dat is 't.
28
[A tree called Arthur Tree is sitting on a chair introducing the programme “It’s A Tree”] Arthur Tree: Hello, hello, people, and welcome to it's A Tree. Homonymy, vertical (a tree > Arthur Tree)
P = P, d P > NP, s
Hallo, allemaal. Welkom bij It’s A Tree. Hallo, mensen en welkom bij 'Het is een boom'.
Season one, episode eleven: The royal philharmonic orchestra goes to the bathroom
29
[A person has written a letter to the show] "Dear sir, I object strongly to the obvious lavatorial turn this show has already taken.” Morphological development (lavatory > lavatorial does not exist)
P > NP, n (‘onderbroekenlol’ is a compound, but not P > NP, s wordplay)
Meneer, ik maak bezwaar tegen de 'Meneer, ik teken bezwaar aan... tegen de duidelijke onderbroekenlol…in dit programma. ommekeer die deze show gemaakt heeft.
Season one, episode twelve: The naked ant
30
[Presenter talks about English words and their spelling] Presenter: […] But not the same as we have with "bow" and "bough" Different spellings and meanings, but sound the same. Homophony, horizontal
P > P P > NP, n
[…] maar niet boeg en boog. Andere spelling, andere Maar niet hetzelfde als in 'stok' en 'strijkstok'...
105 betekenis, maar klinken bijna hetzelfde verschillend gespeld en met een andere betekenis, maar klinkt hetzelfde.
31
What do we eat? What do we drink? What do we think? What do we do? Phonological structure
P > P P > P
Wat eten we, drinken we? Wat eten we, wat drinken we? Wat denken we, doen we? Wat denken we, wat doen we?
32
[A family is introducing its guests to other (German) guests already living in their house] Wife: And over here is mr. Hilter. Paronymy, vertical (Hilter > Hitler)
P = P, d P = P, d
Dat is mr Hilter. En hier zit... meneer Hilter.
33
[32] Wife: This is Ron... Ron Ribbentrop. new guests: Oh, not von Ribbentrop? Ron Ribbentrop (old guest): Nein! nein! nein! Paronymy, horizontal
P = P, t P = P, d
Dit is Ron. Ron Vibbentrop Dit is Ron Ribbentrop. - O, toch niet Von Ribbenrop? - Niet von Ribbentrop?
34
[33] Wife: And this is the quiet one, mr. Bimmler. Bimmler (old guest): Heimlich Bimmler. Paronymy, vertical (mr. Bimmler > mr. Himler)
P = P, d P = P, d
Dit is m’n stille gast: Mr. Bimmler. En dit is de stille, meneer Bimmler. - Heinrich Bimmler. - Heimlich Bimmler.
35
[34] wife: It's that nice mr. McGoering, from the Bell and Compasses. Paronymy, vertical (mr. McGoering > mr. Goering)
P = P, t P = P, t
Die aardige Mr McGöring uit de Bell & Compasses. Het is die aardige meneer McGöring... van de firma Bell en Compassen.
106 36
[Mr. Hilter gave a speech and an interviewer asks the people who listened to it about their opinion] [35] Well, I don't like the sound of these here boncentration bamps. Paronymy, vertical (boncentration bamps > concentration camps)
P = P, d P = P, t
Nou, ik vind die ‘boncentration bamps’ niet leuk. Ik houd niet van het geluid... van deze boncentratie bamps.
37
[A presenter talks about what is going to happen in his show ‘Tonight’s Spectrum’] Presenter: Tonight's Spectrum examines the whole question of frothing and falling, coughing and calling Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, n
Spectrum bespreekt schuimbekken en vallen… 'Vanavond gaat Spectrum dieper in op deze vraag. ' hoesten en roepen, […] Schuimbekken en vallen hoesten en roepen.
38
[37] Presenter: […] screaming and bawling, walling and stalling, Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, s
[…] schreeuwen en tieren… kwetsen en ruziën, Schreeuwen en brullen, ommuren en blokkeren.
39
[38] Presenter: […] screaming and bawling, walling and stalling, Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, n schreeuwen en tieren…kwetsen en ruziën, Schreeuwen en brullen, ommuren en blokkeren.
40
[39] presenter: galling and mauling, palling and hauling, Phonological structure
P > Z P > NP, n
[Not translated] Kwetsen en afranselen, kleed erover en afvoeren
41
[40] presenter: galling and mauling, palling and hauling, Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > RD (alliteration)
[Not translated] Kwetsen en afranselen, kleed erover en afvoeren
42
[41] presenter: […] trawling and squalling and zalling. Phonological structure
107 P > NP, n P > NP, n treiteren, kibbelen en ‘zalling’ Vangen en bedreigen en zallen.
43
[42] presenter: […] Zalling? Is there a word "zalling?" Contamination
P = P, d P = P, t
Bestaat dat: zalling? Zallen, bestaat dat woord?
[37-43]
Presenter: Tonight's Spectrum examines the whole question of frothing and falling, coughing and calling, screaming and bawling, walling and stalling, galling and mauling, palling and hauling, trawling and squalling and zalling. Zalling? Is there a word "zalling?"
Spectrum bespreekt schuimbekken en vallen… 'Vanavond gaat Spectrum dieper in op deze vraag. ' hoesten en roepen, schreeuwen en tieren… kwetsen Schuimbekken en vallen hoesten en roepen. en ruziën, treiteren, kibbelen en ‘zalling’ Bestaat dat: Schreeuwen en brullen, ommuren en blokkeren. zalling? Kwetsen en afranselen, kleed erover en afvoeren Vangen en bedreigen en zallen. Zallen, bestaat dat woord?
Both the fansubs and the official subtitles did not manage to make this part work
Season one, episode thirteen: It’s the arts / intermission
44
[A man takes his wife to a restaurant, but she is mean to the waiter] Man: Uh, please excuse my wife. She may appear to be rather nasty, but underneath she has a heart of formica. Idiom: structural transformation (a heart of formica: transparent kind of plastic > heart of gold)
P > P (idiom ‘hart van goud’ is also used in Dutch) P > P
M’n vrouw lijkt misschien onbeschoft… maar ze heeft Excuseert u mijn vrouw. Ze doet gemeen, maar een hart van formica. eigenlijk heeft ze een hart van formica.
45
[A commercial for cars is shown, but on every car there is a real life model] We supply only the very best models. Homonymy, vertical (car models > human models)
P > P P > P
Wij leveren alleen de bestel modellen. Wij leveren alleen de beste modellen.
Season two, episode one: Face the press
46
The Ministerette of Aviation has made me head of the RAF Ola Pola. Contamination (ministry > cabinet)
P > Z P > NP, s
Ik heb de leiding gekregen over de RAF… Het ministerie van Defensie heeft me benoemd...tot hoofd van die R.A.F-jongens.
108 47
[A customer wants to find a prostitute. He goes into a store and checks a board of adverts for a ‘hidden message’] Customer: I came by your advert: "Small white pussy cat for sale. Excellent condition." Shopkeeper: Ah, you wish to buy it? Customer: That's right. Just for the hour. Only I aint gonna pay more'n a fiver cos' it aint worth it. Shopkeeper: Well it's come from a very good home, it's house trained. Homonymy, vertical (animal > body part)
P > P P > P
Ik kom voor uw advertentie. ‘Klein wit poesje te koop. Ik kom voor de advertentie: 'Klein wit poesje in goede In puike staat.’ conditie'. - Wilt u het kopen? - U wilt haar kopen? Klopt, voor nu even. Meer dan een vijfje is het me niet Ja, maar voor een uurtje. En ik betaal niet meer dan waard. vijf. - Het komt uit een keurig gezin en het is zindelijk. - Maar ze is zelfs al zindelijk.
48
[47] Customer: "Chester drawers." [shows with his hands his chest and than the lower part of his body] I'd like some Chester drawers, please. Shopkeeper: Yes, sir. Customer: Does it go? Shopkeeper: It's over there, in the corner. Paronymy, vertical (furniture > part of the body)
P > P (‘kast’ also has two meanings: furniture, upper P > NP, n (the man first points to his chest which part of the body) cannot be called ‘hoeren’)
“Ondergoedkast.” Kast. Ondergoed. Een kast Hoerenkast. Hoeren... kast. Ik wil de hoerenkast ondergoed, graag. graag. Is dat wat? - Jawel, meneer. Hij staat in de hoek - De boerenkast staat daar, in de hoek.
49
[48] Customer: "Chester drawers." [shows with his hands his chest and than the lower part of his body] Customer: I'd like some Chester drawers, please. Shopkeeper: Yes, sir. Customer: Does it go? Shopkeeper: It's over there, in the corner. Homonymy, vertical (a compartment in a piece of furniture > underwear)
P > NP, s P > P (but it does not really work in the situation)
“Ondergoedkast.” Kast. Ondergoed. Een kast Hoerenkast. Hoeren... kast. Ik wil de hoerenkast ondergoed, graag. graag. Is dat wat? - Jawel, meneer. Hij staat in de hoek - De boerenkast staat daar, in de hoek.
50
[49] Customer: "Pram for sale. Any offers." I'd like a bit of pram, please. Shopkeeper: Yes, sir. That's in good condition. Customer: Oh good I like them in good condition. Yes, here it is you see. Homonymy, vertical (perambulator > slang for breasts)
109 P > NP, s P > P (‘hulp voor gezinsuitbreiding’ could mean a nanny or a person who will literally help you make a “Kinderwagen te koop. Tegen elk aannemelijk bod.’ child) - Hij verkeert in goede staat. Mooi, daar hou ik van. Hulp voor gezinsuitbreiding, elk aannemelijk bod. - Hier is hij dan. Mag ik hulp voor gezinsuitbreiding? - Die is in goede conditie, meneer. Ik vind ze lekker in goede conditie. - Dit is hem.
51
They began to operate what they called "The Operation". Morphological development
P > NP, n P > P
[…] begonnen ze aan wij zij ‘De Operatie’ noemden. ...voor het leger. Nu ze hun land niet konden dienen, planden ze... wat ze zelf 'Het Plan' noemden.
Season two, episode two: The Spanish inquisition
52
[A man tries to explain to a woman what is happening at the mill, she does not understand him and keeps asking him what he means. He says he didn’t expect the Spanish inquisition at which three men jump in the room (dressed as the Spanish inquisition) and decide to torture him because they say he committed heresy.] Now, Cardinal, the rack! [cardinal gives a washing rack] Homonymy, vertical (rack: instrument of torture > washing rack)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Kardinaal, de marteling. Kardinaal, de marteltafel.
Season two, episode 3: Déjà vu
53
I think what McTeagle's pottery... poetry is doing, is rejecting all the traditional clichés of modern pottery. Paronymy, horizontal
P > P (phonological structure: ‘poëzie > fantasie’) P > P (dichtkunst > nichtkunst)
Wat McTeagle’s fantasie betreft… Z’n poëzie… Ik denk wat McTeagle zijn nichtkunst.... dichtkunst verwerpt alle traditionele clichés… van moderne doet... is het verwerpen van alle traditionele cliche's fantasie. van moderne pottenbakkerij.
54
I think what McTeagle's pottery... poetry is doing, is rejecting all the traditional clichés of modern pottery. Paronymy, horizontal
P > P (phonological structure: ‘poëzie > fantasie’) P > NP, s
Wat McTeagle’s fantasie betreft… Z’n poëzie… Ik denk wat McTeagle zijn nichtkunst.... dichtkunst verwerpt alle traditionele clichés… van moderne doet... is het verwerpen van alle traditionele cliche's fantasie. van moderne pottenbakkerij.
110 Transcriptions of wordplay in Shrek
Abbreviations
P > P from pun to pun P > NP, dp from pun to non-pun, diffuse paraphrase P > NP, s from pun to non-pun, selective non-pun P > NP, n pun to non-pun, non-selective non-pun P > RD from pun to related rhetorical device P > Z pun to zero P = P, d pun source text = pun target text, direct copy P = P, t pun source text = pun target text, transference
Structure
The translation on the left is from the original subtitles, the translation on the right from the fansubs. In Shrek the halls a third translation is added underneath the official subtitles and the fansubs, the Flemish translation [ ] are used to link those passages that belong together (the number within the brackets refers to the passage the current passage is linked to).
Characters:
D: donkey P: Puss in boots S: Shrek F: Fiona GM: gingerbread man PC: Prince Charming Q: queen A: Arthur M: Merlin
Shrek the halls
1
D: Only 159 days left till Christmas, so you better be good. S: I'd better be good? How 'bout this? You better be scarce. Now go on. Idiom: structural transformation
P > NP, n P > P
Over 159 dagen is ‘t Kerstmis, dus ik zou maar braaf Wees maar braaf? zijn. -Wat denk je hiervan, wees maar bang. -Ik zou maar braaf zijn? Ik zou ‘m maar smeren.
P > P
Over 159 dagen is het al Kerstmis, dus ik zou maar braaf wezen. -Braaf? Wat dacht je hiervan? Ik zou maar wegwezen. Vooruit.
2
D: Smashing through the snow. And laughin' all the way Paronymy, vertical (smashing > dashing)
P > NP, s P > Z
Komend uit de sneeuw. Lach ik met je mee. [not translated]
P > P (from vertical to horizontal)
In z’n arreslee. Lacht hij heel tevree
111 3
D: You haven't trimmed stockings or hung your chestnuts or roasted the tree? Idiom: structural transformation (hang stockings, roast chestnuts, trim tree)
P > P P > NP, n
Heb je de kerstsokken gebakken, de boom Bedoel je dat je jouw sok nog niet hebt gehangen, of opgehangen, de stol bespoten? een boom hebt ingericht?
P > P
Heb je de kerstsok al gebakken en de boom al opgehangen?
4
D: You haven't trimmed stockings or hung your chestnuts or roasted the tree? Idiom: structural transformation (hang stockings, roast chestnuts, trim tree)
P > P P > NP, dp
Heb je de kerstsokken gebakken, Bedoel je dat je jouw sok nog niet hebt gehangen, of de boom opgehangen, de stol bespoten? een boom hebt ingericht?
P > NP, dp
Heb je de kerstsok al gebakken en de boom al opgehangen?
5
D: You haven't trimmed stockings or hung your chestnuts or roasted the tree? Idiom: structural transformation (hang stockings, roast chestnuts, trim tree)
P > P (“stol” in Dutch means a kind of bread) P > NP, n
Heb je de kerstsokken gebakken, de boom Bedoel je dat je jouw sok nog niet hebt gehangen, of opgehangen, de stol bespoten? een boom hebt ingericht?
P > P
Heb je de kerstsok al gebakken en de boom al opgehangen?
6
[5] D: Or figgified your puddin'? Morphological development: figgy pudding (pudding that is typically eaten on Christmas, it contains figs > figgify does not exist)
P > P (‘plumpudding’ in Dutch) P > NP, dp
En de kerstpudding al geplumd? Of de kalkoen bereid?
P > P (morphological development because the verb ‘vijgen’ does not exist in Dutch)
Heb je de kerstpudding gevijgd?
7
D: Love and Joy come to you and to me some waffles too Paronymy, vertical (waffles > wassail)
112 P > P P > Z
Ja, de kerst maakt me blij. Al moet er wel een wafel [not translated] bij
P > P
Voorspoed voor iedereen. Wafels voor mij alleen
8
D: 'Twas the night before Christmas and I spent all the day. Finishin' up on my Christmas display Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, dp
‘t Was de avond voor Kerstmis En ik was heel de dag Het was de nacht voor Kerstmis, en ik had heel m'n Aan het versieren Omdat dat met kerst mag dag besteed, aan het afwerken van m'n Kerstversieringen.
P > P
Het was de avond voor Kerstmis en de hele dag al… had ik gewijd aan de decoratie van mijn stal.
9
D: Now, missin' all this would be nothin' but tragic. So just follow me and I'll show you the magic Phonological structure
P > P P > P (horizontal paronymy)
Dit niet kunnen delen is heel erg tragisch. Dus kom nu Dit alles missen, zou zeer jammer zijn. Dus volg me maar mee want dan zie je iets magisch maar, en ik laat je de magie zien.
P > P
Dit word ‘t hoogtepunt van de soirée dus kom dichterbij en ik tover u mee.
10
D: Now, out in the yard in a glorious clutter. Is a spectacle there that'll make your heart flutter Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, n
Kijk, hier in de tuin is het niet meer te stoppen. Dit Buiten in de tuin, in het glorieuze gebladerte... gebeurt grootse festijn doet je hart sneller kloppen. een spektakel dat je hart laat fladderen.
P > P
Daar in de hof in het licht van de maan… is een schouwspel dat elk hart wat sneller doet slaan.
11
D: With 20-foot cheese balls and a big eggnog fountain. And yodelin' elves on an ambrosia mountain Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, n
Met mega-kaasballen en ’n eierpunchfontein. Met een 10 meter grote kip van kaas, en een grote
113 Jodelende elfen op een berg van ambrozijn advocaatfontein. En jodelaars op de heerlijke bergen.
P > P
Met enorme kaasballen en een advocaat-fontein… en jodelende elven op een berg van ambrozijn.
12
D: A stage where acrobats. Jump, leap and prance. And honour the day through interpretive dance Phonological structure
P > P P > RD (alliteration)
Artiesten die zoeken hier naar hun balans ze eren de En een podium met acrobaten die springen en dag met een ritmische dans dansen. En de hele dag door feestelijke dingen doen.
P > P
De act van de acrobaten is werkelijk een pracht… als ook hun dans ter ere van Kerstnacht.
13
D: But just when you think the display is complete. The Christmas parade comes right down the street Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, n
Maar net als je denkt dat je ‘t wel hebt gezien. Komt En net wanneer je dacht dat het compleet is, komt de de kersoptocht langs. En die telt voor tien Kerstparade door de straat.
P > P
Maar net als je denkt “Het is hier gedaan”… komt de grote Kerstparade eraan.
14
D: With holiday floats all in silver and blue. With sugarplum fairies and a reindeer or two Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
Met praalwagens in prachtig zilver en blauw. Met Met feestdingen in zilver en blauw.. Met snoepgoed- suikerkoekfeetjes en rendieren, wauw. feeën en een rendier erbij.
P > P
Reusachtige praalwagens rijden er mee… Met suikerfee, elfjes en een rendier of twee.
15
D: There's a baton-twirlin' snowman all happy and perky. Magical peacocks and a dancin' roast turkey Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, n
Twee sneeuwmannen die met hun stokjes iets leuks Er zijn majorette sneeuwmanen, helemaal blij en doen. Magische pauwen. En ’n dansende kalkoen levendig. Magische pauwen, en een geroosterde dansende kalkoen.
114 P > P
Met kerstmanmajoretten die hun kunstjes doen… prachtige pauwen en een gebraden danskalkoen.
16
D: And right when you think that you've just seen it all Comes a huge waffle Santa that's 50 feet tall Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, dp
En net als je wéér denkt dat je ‘t wel hebt gezien En net wanneer je denkt dat je het allemaal hebt Komt ere en Wafelkerstman van een meter of tien. gezien... Komt er een enorme wafel-Kerstman. Die wel 5 meter hoog is.
P > P
En dan als je denkt: “Dat was het voor vannacht”… zie je een mega-Wafelkerstman van een meter of acht.
17
D: With syrup and butter the sight just amazes. As it's flanked by a choir all singin' his praises Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, dp
Met veel stroop en boter. O kijk hem eens swingen. Bedenkt met een enorme hoeveelheid siroop. Met 'n En poppetjes die hem vol passie bezingen. koor die al z'n liedjes zingen.
P > P
Met slagroom en boter, een zicht dat verblindt…. vooral als het koor dan een hymne begint.
18
P: This Santa was suave. He was nothing like that. The Santa I know was a hot Latin cat Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, n
Ezels Santa was mild, deze is verre van dat. Onze Deze Kerstman was vriendelijk. Het was helemaal niet Santa was ’n vurige hartstochtelijke kat zo. De Kerstman dat ik ken, was een zwoele Latijnse kat.
P > P
Die Kerstman was flauw, zo zoet als wat. Mijn Kerstman was een vurige Latino-kat.
19
P: He was dressed all in fur from his head to his paws And he stood there heroic. A real Santa... Claws Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, dp
Mooi gekleed in het bont. Met een rauwe miauw. Hij was van z'n hoofd tot aan z'n poten gekleed in Stond hij dapper te zijn. Een echte Santa… Klauw bont. En hij stond daar heldhaftig, een echte Kerstkat.
115 P > P (there was probably a typographical error with the word “een” which was written as “en”)
Gehuld in een pels van zijn kop tot zijn klauw. Niks dan soupless was deze Kerstmiauw. E[e]n echte Santa Klauws.
20
P: He was dressed all in fur from his head to his paws. And he stood there heroic. A real Santa... Claws Homophony, vertical (Santa claus – claws)
P = P, t (The person Santa Claus has a different name P > NP, s in Dutch, so it is not really translated) Hij was van z'n hoofd tot aan z'n poten gekleed in bont. Mooi gekleed in het bont. Met een rauwe miauw. En hij stond daar heldhaftig, een echte Kerstkat. Stond hij dapper te zijn. Een echte Santa… Klauw
P = P, t (The person Santa Claus has a different name in Dutch, so it is not really translated from pun to pun)
Gehuld in een pels van zijn kop tot zijn klauw. Niks dan soupless was deze Kerstmiauw. E[e?]n echte Santa Klauws.
21
P: Red are his boots. And so is his cape. Santa Claus Puss in boots: Ole! P: His sword is a cane that tastes like crab cake Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
Rood zijn zijn laarzen. En rood is zijn cape Rood zijn z'n laarzen. En z'n cape is dat ook. -Olé Z'n zwaard is ’n ding dat smaakt naar gebak. Zijn zwaard is een zuurstok die smaakt naar viscake
P > P
Rood zijn zijn botten… rood is zijn cape. -Olé. Zijn zwaard is een lekstok die smaakt naar viscake.
22
P: He wears a fine belt and a leather cravat. And there's a cute fuzzy thing which hangs down from his hat Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
Hij heft een riem om. En een strikje van leer. Aan zijn Hij draagt 'n mooie riem en een leren cravatte. En er is hoed hangt een pompon in plaats van een veer. een schattig pluizig ding dat aan z'n hoed bengelt.
P > P
Hij draagt ’n ceintuur en ‘n lederen plastron… En aan zijn hoed hangt ’n schattige ponpon. (ponpon in Dutch is actually written “pompon”)
23
GM: 'Twas the night before Christmas and the prettiest sights Were my sweetheart beside me in the bright Christmas lights Phonological structure
116 P > P P > NP, s
‘t Was de avond voor Kerstmis. En het mooiste Het was de nacht voor Kerstmis, en m'n mooiste gezicht. Was dat van mijn liefste in het held’re uitzicht, was mijn lieverd naast me... en de heldere kerstlicht Kerst horizon.
P > P
Het was de avond voor Kerstmis en het mooiste gezicht… was de aanblik van mijn liefste in het fel Kerstmis licht.
24
S: 'Twas the night before Christmas. Not a swamp rat did creep. As mother and babe played kazoo in their sleep Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
‘t Was de avond voor Kerstmis. Er was geen rat meer Het was de nacht voor Kerstmis, het moeras was nog op straat. Een blaaskwartet blies enthousiast in de muisstil... toen moeder en kinderen blaasinstrument maat begonnen te spelen in hun slaap.
P > P
Het was de avond voor Kerstmis. Geen moerasrat was alert. In de stilte klonk enkel een prottenconcert.
25
S: Now, the sight of the house would make any ogre droop. For 'twas sickeningly sweet as unicorn poop Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s (‘versiert’ should be ‘versierd’)
Maar voor ogers was ’t huis helaas één grote troep. Het uitzicht in het huis zou elke Oger onwel maken, Het was ziekmakend zoet. Rook naar eenhoornpoep het was versiert als eenhoorn poep.
P > P
Voor een Oger was ‘t versierde huis van vloer tot dak… misselijkmakend als éénhoornkak.
26
S: Yet who was arriving to help this lost cause? The foul, the vile and handsome Ogre Claus Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
En wie er kwam toen met een goed reddingsplan? De En wie arriveerde om deze verloren zaak op te vuile, vieze en knappe kerstogerman verhelpen, een mooie Oger Kerstman.
P > P
De zaak lijkt verloren, maar wie komt ter hulp gesneld? De valse, de sluwe, de knappe Kerstogerheld.
27
S: He looked all around and scratched at his beard. And said... And said... This place is worse than I thought... feared. Phonological structure
117 P > P P > NP, n
Hij keek om zich heen en krabde aan z’n baard Hij keek rond en wreef in zijn baard en zei... Deze En zei… Dit klusje heb ik zo behaard, eh, geklaard plaats ziet er erger uit dan ik vermoedde. Of vreesde.
P > P
Hij keek in het rond en krabte zich een goed… en zei… Het is hier erger dan ik had gedacht. Eh… vermoed.
28
S: So he grabbed up his belly and screwed up his face. And let loose a... That transformed the place Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
Hij ontspande zijn buikje en ook zijn gelaat en boerde Dus hief hij zijn broeksriem, maakte zijn gezicht toen het huis…Weer in de oude staat. smerig en liet een... Dat veranderde volledig die plaats.
P > P
Dus hij hefte zijn buik op en trok een grimas… en liet een… waardoor de boel weer smerig was. (the right conjugation of ‘heffen’ is ‘hief’)
29
S: With a gleam in his eye his work here was done. And then to the babies he gave one by one Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
Zijn werk zat er op, O wat een geluk. En aan de drie Met een glans in zijn ogen, want zijn werk hier was baby’s gaf hij stuk voor stuk klaar. En gaf de kleintjes elk een flesje zuiver moerassap.
P > P
Hij keek naar z’n werk, was content met wat hij zag… en gaf aan elk kindje dat in het wiegske lag…
30
S: A festering bottle of stinky swamp Juice. And for mommy a kiss and a good Christmas goose Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, n
Hun rottende flesjes met stinkjus d’orange. En aan En gaf de kleintjes elk een flesje zuiver moerassap. En mama een zoen en een wilde kerstgans de moeder gaf hij een zoen en een Kerstgans.
P > P
Een heerlijke fles vol moerasmodderdril. Aan mama een kus en een kneep in haar bil.
31
S: Then digging a finger inside of his nose. And giving a nod up the chimney he rose Phonological structure
118 P > P P > NP, s
Toen stak hij een vinger heel diep in zijn neus. En Toen stak hij een vinger in zijn neus. En vertrok naar vloog na een knik door de schoorsteen, ja heus de schoorsteen waaruit hij kwam.
P > P
Met een vinger in z’n neus, het is niet te geloven… Vloog hij toen weer door de schoorsteen naar boven.
32
S: And I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight. "Smelly Christmas to all, and to all a gross night!" Phonological structure
P > P P > NP, s
En wegzoevend riep hij nu uit alle macht. “Een heel En ik hoorde hem uitschreeuwen toen hij uit het zicht smerig kerstfeest en ’n nog viezere nacht” verdween. Een stinkende Kerst aan allen. En aan allen een walgelijke nacht.
P > P
En dan riep hij uit de verte uit alle macht: “Morsig Kerstfeest aan allen en aan allen een ranzige nacht.”
Shrek 2
33
PC: […] risking life and limb ¨ Paronymy, horizontal
P > RD (alliteration) P > RD (alliteration)
[…] en zette lijf en leden op het spel… Hij riskeerde zijn leven en lijf om zo bij de draak te komen.
34
S: The Kingdom of Far, Far Away, Donkey. That's where we're going. Far, far... away! ¨ Homonymy, horizontal (Proper name > distance)
P > P P > P
Het heet Ver, Heel Ver Van Hier. Daar gaan we heen. Het Koninkrijk van Heel Ver Weg, Ezel. Ja, daar Het is ver, heel ver… van hier. gaan we naartoe. Heel Ver... Weg. 35
[Written] versarchery ¨ Contamination (Versace > archery)
P > Z P > Z
[not translated] [not translated]
36
Q: Oh, stop being such a drama king. ¨ Idiom: structural transformation (drama queen: someone who is very dramatic; normally invariable! here: adapted to sex because it is said to the king) P > NP, s P > NP, s
Stel je toch niet zo aan. Man, stel je toch niet zo aan.
119 37
Waitress: Hi. Welcome to Friar's Fat Boy! May I take your order? ¨ Homonymy, vertical (member of a catholic church > people who fry stuff)
P = P, d P = P, d
Welkom bij Friar’s Fat Boy. Wat wilt u? Hé. Welkom bij Friar's Fat Boy. Mag ik uw bestelling opnemen?
38
[Shrek, Puss in boots and Donkey are on their way to Fairy Godmother] S: Then why don't we pop in there for a spell? Ha-ha! Spell! ¨ Homonymy, vertical (a while > magical words)
P > P (“vloekje” can mean swearword or a magical P > NP, s curse)
Zullen we even een vloekje wegwerken? Vloekje. Waarom vallen we dan niet binnen voor een spreuk?
39
S: Working hard or hardly working, eh, Mac? ¨ Morphological development
P > NP, dp P > NP, n
Kalm aan 'n beetje, makker. Hard werken of nauwelijks aan het werk, Mac?
40
[Pus in boots says that Shrek and he are starting to think alike. Donkey answers:] D: Whoa, whoa. If we need an expert on licking ourselves, we'll give you a call. ¨ Homonymy, vertical (to lick: for example what a cat does > sweet talk someone)
P > NP, s (“likdeskundige” does not contain the P > NP, s meaning ‘to sweet talk someone’) Als we een deskundige nodig hebben in... het likken Als we 'n likdeskundige nodig hebben, bellen we wel. van zichzelf, zullen we je roepen.
41
P: No problema, boss. In one of my nine lives, I was the great cat burglar of Santiago de Compostela. ¨ Homonymy, vertical (cat burglar: someone who steals secretively > a burglar who is a cat)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
In een van m'n negen levens was ik inbreker in Geen probleem, baas. In één van mijn negen levens, Santiago de Compostella. was ik de grote katteninbreker van Santiago de Compostela.
42
[Puss is stealing some potions for Shrek and asks him which ones he needs.] P: Elfa Seltzer? Hex Lax? ¨ Paronymy, vertical (the real medicin is ‘Alka-Seltzer’)
P = P, d P > NP, s
Elfa Seltzer? Hex Lax? Elfenmineraalwater? Heksen Zalm?
120 43
P: Elfa Seltzer? Hex Lax? ¨ Paronymy, vertical (the real medicin is ‘Ex-Lax’)
P = P, d P > NP, s
Elfa Seltzer? Hex Lax? Elfenmineraalwater? Heksen Zalm?
44
P: You still look like an ass to me. ¨ Homonymy, vertical (a foolish, stupid person > a domesticated donkey is also called an ass)
P > P (‘ezel’ can mean the animal or a demeaning P > P (‘ezel’ can mean the animal or a demeaning word) word)
(D: Ik voel me niet anders. Zie ik er anders uit?) P: Voor mij zie je er nog steeds als een ezel uit. P: Gewoon 'n ezel.
45
W1: Pick me! I'll be your true love! W2: I'll be your true love. W3: I'll be true… enough. ¨ Homonymy, horizontal (true love: real love > true: faithfull)
P > P (“waar” can mean true or merchandise -> in this P > NP, n context: I’ll be true and I’ll be woman enough for you)
Neem mij. Ik ben je ware liefde. Kies mij. Ik zal je ware liefde zijn. - Of ik. - Ik zal jouw ware liefde zijn. Ik ben waar genoeg. Ik zal trouw genoeg zijn.
46
D: The sun'll come out... Tomorrow Bet your bottom...? [Donkey falls asleep] S: Bet my bottom? ¨ Homonymy, horizontal (the song is “bet your bottom dollar”: your last dollar > bottom: behind)
P > P (“achterste” can mean last and bottom) P > NP, s
De zon komt weer tevoorschijn morgen zet je Het zal beter zijn morgenochtend. Je zult 't zien. achterste Wedden op m'n achterste? - M'n achterste?
47
News commentator: It's time to teach these madcap mammals their “devil may mare” attitudes just won't fly. ¨ Idiom: structural transformation (the idiom is “devil may care attitude” which means that a person does not worry about the consequences of his/her actions , but ‘care’ is changed into ‘mare’ probably because of the fact that Shrek is riding a horse while doing so)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Deze mannen van staal moeten die beesten 's Het is tijd om die roekeloze zoogdieren... te leren dat manieren bijbrengen. hun duivelse gedrag niet aanvaardbaar is.
121 48
News commentator: Did someone let the cat out of the bag? ¨ Idiom: semantic transformation (here Pus in Boots literally escaped from the bag)
P > Z P > P
[not translated] Liet iemand de kat uit de zak?
49
GM: Folks, it looks like we're up chocolate creek without a Popsicle stick. ¨ Idiom: structural transformation (the real idiom is ‘up a creek without a paddle’ meaning: being in trouble and having no solution for it)
P > NP, dp P > NP, dp
Jongens, we drijven rond zonder te kunnen roeien. Mensen, het lijkt erop... dat we in de problemen zitten.
50
[The three pigs are fighting Fairy Godmother by jumping on a blanket and shooting themselves towards her] S: Now! P: Pigs on blanket! ¨ Homonymy, vertical (pigs on a blanket: food > literally real pigs on a blanket)
P > NP, s P > NP, s
Nu... Nu. - Varken en deken. - Varkens en een deken.
51
[The king, who has transformed into a frogg, is dying] He croaked. ¨ Homonymy, vertical (to croak: sound of a frog > slang for to die)
P > P P > NP, s
Is ie... Hij kwaakte. - Ja. Gekraakt.
Shrek 3
52
[Shrek is dressed in a costume and he has an itch. So he asks one of the servant’s name so that he can help him.] Servant: Fiddlesworth, sir. S: Perfect. ¨ Homonymy, vertical (proper name > fiddle: to make trifling movements)
P = P, d P = P, d
Fiddlesworth. Fiddlesworth, meneer. - Perfect. - Perfect.
53
[written] Versarchery ¨ Contamination
122 P > Z P > Z
[not translated] [not translated]
54
PC: And you, Frumpypigskin! Rumpelstiltskin: Rumpelstiltskin. ¨ Paronymy, horizontal
P > P P > P
En jij, Stepelreeltje... En jij, Frumpelsteeltje! - Repelsteeltje. - Repelsteeltje.
55
[Shrek is on a ship with Donkey, Puss in boots and the ship’s captain. He is worried about the fact that he is going to be a father and says “he’s doomed”] captain: You're finished. Uh, with your journey. ¨ Homonymy, horizontal (to be dead, done with > to have reached the end of something)
P > NP, s (‘klaar’ cannot mean to be done with) P > NP, s (‘klaar’ cannot mean to be done with)
Jij bent klaar. Met je reis. Je bent klaar... met je reis.
56
S: Where are you going? A: Far Far Away... from you! ¨ Homonymy, vertical (to the land of Far Far Away > just far away)
P > NP, n (the official subtitles have translated the land P > NP, s (the fansubs have translated the land of far of far far away as “ver, heel ver van hier” so they far away as ‘koninkrijk van heel ver weg’) should have translated it as such for it to be wordplay, they did however write it with capital letters so it is non- selective)
Waar moet dat heen? Ver ver weg... van jou! - Ver, Ver van Hier. Van jou.
57
M: I could tell you, but since you're in the midst of a self-destructive rage spiral, it would be karmically irresponsible. ¨ Morphological development (karma > karmically does not exist)
P > NP, s P > NP, dp
Kan ik zeggen, maar je verkeert in zelfdestructieve Ik zou het kunnen vertellen, maar sinds jij een woede...dus 't zou foute karma zijn. zelfvernietigende spiraal zit. Zou ik het onverantwoord vinden.
58
A: They really need your help to get back. Why won't you help them?! M: Okay. I'll go get my things. A: Piece of cake. S: Well, well. You want eggs with that ham? ¨ Homonymy, vertical (actor who overacts > meat: ham)
123 P > NP, dp P > P (‘eitje’ can mean easy or an egg)
Tjonge. Pilletje tegen aanstelleritis? Dat was een eitje. Wie wil er ham bij dat eitje?
59
PC: "With this sword, I do smote thee!" ¨ Morphological development (smote > smite in past tense, should be present tense here)
P > NP, s (‘sneven’ is just another (less common) P > P (doorklieven) word for ‘sneuvelen’)
Met dit zwaard sla ik... Met dit zwaard doe ik u 'Met dit zwaard, zal ik je doorkloven!' sneven.
60
[Prince Charming has written a play and performs it with actors.] actress who plays the princess: Locked up here, please set me free My new life I almost see A castle, you and me ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > RD (repetition) ik wacht hier alleen, weer een dag gevangen Opgesloten hier, alsjeblieft bevrijd me. Mijn nieuwe opgesloten, bevrijd me alsjeblieft ik zie bijna m'n leven, ik zie het voor me. Een kasteel, jij en ik. nieuwe leven in een kasteel, jij en ik
61
[60] actress who plays the princess: Locked up here, please set me free. My new life I almost see. A castle, you and me ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, s ik wacht hier alleen, weer een dag gevangen Opgesloten hier, alsjeblieft bevrijd me. Mijn nieuwe opgesloten, bevrijd me alsjeblieft ik zie bijna m'n leven, ik zie het voor me. Een kasteel, jij en ik. nieuwe leven in een kasteel, jij en ik
62
PC: Tis I, Tis I. Upon my regal steed. Princess, my love. At last you shall be freed ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, s ik ben het, ik ben het, op mijn edel ros prinses, schat, Het is mij, het is mij. Op mijn koninklijk paard. Prinses, nu kom je eindelijk vrij mijn liefste... Uiteindelijk zal je bevrijd worden.
63
PC: And brave. And dashing my way there. With speed! With might! With soft and bouncy hair! ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, s ik ben sterk en dapper, en kom al aangestormd met En baan me onbevreesd een weg. Met snelheid! Met snelheid en kracht, en zacht, golvend haar kracht! Met zacht en verend haar!
64
PC: Across the stormiest sea Choir: Wet!
124 PC: Facing creatures so vile Choir: Foul! PC: So you can gaze upon me! ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, n over de stormachtigste zee Door de woeste zee. - nat - Nat. met gemene tegenstanders Wezens zo gemeen. - vals - Gemeen! nu kun je naar me kijken Dus je kan staren naar mij!
65
Rapunzel: And now we finally meet. I knew you'd wait. And from my plate of love you'd eat ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, dp en nu zien we elkaar eindelijk. Ik wist dat je wachtte en nu ontmoeten we elkaar eindelijk. Ik wist dat je en van mijn bord vol liefde zou eten wachtte voor mijn bord van liefde
66
Fairy tale villains: Will Charming fight or flee? Rapunzel: Please rescue me! Fairy tale villains: From this monstrosity! ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, dp P > NP, n
- vecht Droomprins, of vlucht ie? Zal Charming vechten of vliegen? red me, alsjeblieft -Alstublieft red mij. - van dit monster Van dit gedrocht.
67
Fairy tale villains: Will Charming fight or flee? Rapunzel: Please rescue me! Fairy tale villains: From this monstrosity! ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, s P > NP, n vecht Droomprins, of vlucht ie? Zal Charming vechten of vliegen? - red me, alsjeblieft - Alstublieft red mij. van dit monster Van dit gedrocht.
68
PC: Fear thee not, honey lamb! I will slice this thing up like a ham! ¨ Phonological structure
P > NP, n P > NP, n wees niet bang, schattebout, ik sla 'm aan mootjes Vrees niet, lieverd Ik hak hem in stukken net zoals ham
69
Sausage roll! ¨ Homonymy, vertical (kind of food > literal: roll done by pigs)
125 P > P P > P
Saucijzenrol... Vleesrol!
126