The Translation of Culture-Specific Humour in the Animated Sitcom Family Guy
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Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte Benjamin Bosch The Translation of Culture-Specific Humour in the Animated Sitcom Family Guy A Comparative Analysis of Dutch and Spanish Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Master in het vertalen Engels-Spaans 2015-2016 2 Acknowledgements First I would like to express sincere gratitude towards Dr Klaar Vanopstal who expertly guided and assisted me during the process of this thesis. Her comments and feedback were vital to this work. In addition, I thank my parents who displayed patience and understanding along the way. Finally, I would like to thank my girlfriend Isa Desmet for her love, care and motivational words. 3 Abstract This paper presents an analysis of the Dutch and Spanish translations of culture-specific references in the American animated sitcom Family Guy. The first part includes a theoretical framework that provides essential information on the subjects of audiovisual translation, strategies for the translation of culture-specific references and humour. The second part involves the analysis in which the Dutch and Spanish translations of the culture-specific references found in Family Guy are compared. The case study includes a global quantitative analysis and a comparative analysis, in which the similarities and differences in the used translation strategies are examined. 4 Table of contents List of abbreviations ................................................................................................................... 6 0 Preface ..................................................................................................................................... 7 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 9 1.1 Audiovisual translation ........................................................................................................ 9 1.1.1 AVT modes: subtitling and dubbing .................................................................... 10 1.1.1.1 Subtitling ........................................................................................................... 12 1.1.1.2 Dubbing ............................................................................................................ 15 1.1.1.3 Subtitling versus Dubbing: key differences ...................................................... 17 1.2 Strategies for the translation of culture-specific references ............................................... 19 1.2.1 The translation of culture-specific references ...................................................... 20 1.2.1.1 Culture .............................................................................................................. 20 1.2.1.2 Culture-specific references ............................................................................... 20 1.2.1.3 Strategies for the translation of ECRs .............................................................. 21 1.3 The translation of ECRs in AVT ........................................................................................ 25 1.4 Humour ............................................................................................................................... 27 1.4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 27 1.4.2 The translation of humour ................................................................................... 28 1.4.3 The translation of humour in television ............................................................... 30 2 Case Study: Family Guy ........................................................................................................ 31 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 31 2.1.1 Background .......................................................................................................... 31 2.1.1.1 The animated sitcom as a genre ........................................................................ 31 2.1.1.2 Brief history ...................................................................................................... 32 2.1.1.3 Success and criticism ........................................................................................ 33 2.1.1.4 Main characters ................................................................................................. 33 2.1.2 Humour in Family Guy ........................................................................................ 34 2.2 Hypotheses ......................................................................................................................... 36 2.3 Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 37 2.4 Results ................................................................................................................................ 37 2.4.1 Description of the corpus ..................................................................................... 37 5 2.4.2 Problems and difficulties ..................................................................................... 38 2.4.3 Quantitative analysis of the translation strategies ............................................... 40 2.4.4 Comparative analysis of the Dutch and Spanish translation strategies ............... 44 2.5 Discussion ........................................................................................................................... 46 2.6 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research............................................ 61 3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 62 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 64 Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 68 Appendix I: Corpus ....................................................................................................... 68 Appendix II: Different translation strategy pairs from the corpus ............................. 103 6 List of abbreviations Add Addition AVT Audiovisual Translation Cr Creation CS Culture specific DT Direct Translation ECR Extralinguistic cultural reference FG Family Guy Gen Generalisation OE Official Equivalent Om Omission Pres Preservation SA Source audience SC Source culture SL Source Language ST Source Text Sub Substitution TA Target Audience TC Target Culture TL Target Language TT Target Text 7 0 PREFACE Audiovisual translation is a recent but fast growing research area in translation studies. It makes it possible for an audience to watch films and series in another language than their own. However, AVT is a very special type of translation, mainly due to the presence of image and sound. The audiovisual translator encounters many problems or issues in his process, one of which is the rendering of culture-specific references. Regardless of the type of translation, references to a specific culture are difficult to translate into another language and culture. In general, when translating CS references, a translator can choose to either preserve and respect the source text to create a ‘foreign’ experience for the target audience, or adapt the ST and make it more familiar to the TA. These two goals are commonly known as foreignisation and domestication. On a more specific level, translators use translation strategies to accomplish the translation goal. These strategies are conscious decisions that a translator makes to render a certain CS reference in the TL. This thesis focuses on these translation strategies used in Dutch subtitling and Spanish dubbing to translate culture-specific humour in Family Guy, an American animated sitcom. In the first part, the necessary theoretical framework is provided. AVT is explained with particular attention to subtitling and dubbing. Furthermore, CS references are explained as well as the strategies to translate them, in which we draw up a working classification of translation strategies based on the literature, which will serve as the basis for the case study. We decided to focus on extralinguistic cultural references (cf. part 1.2.1.2), which excludes language-specific translation problems such as puns or dialects. We also briefly consider the notion of humour and the translation of it, since FG is a sitcom and the references to American culture are of a humorous nature. The second part involves a case study. Dutch and Spanish translations of CS references in fourteen episodes of FG are collected and analysed comparing it to the original. The translation strategies used in both languages are identified and compared to each other. Both a quantitative and a comparative analysis are conducted in which we focus on similarities and differences between Dutch and Spanish. On the basis of the literature discussed in part one, we put forward three hypotheses. We then examine if the results corroborate the hypotheses and in the last section of part two we discuss the examples found in the study where the Dutch and Spanish translators opted for different translation strategies. 8 This thesis intends to give an insight into the translation of culture-specific references in AVT, because