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JOKES AND TRANSLATION

Diana-Elena Popa a
a
Dunrea de Jos University of Galai, Romania

Online Publication Date: 09 September 2005

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 48

JOKES AND TRANSLATION

Diana-Elena Popa, Dunărea de Jos University of Galaţi, Romania.
helen_anaid@hotmail.com

Abstract
This study applies the Skopos Theory and Christiane Nord’s functionalist approach,
as well as the Hallidayan methodology to humour translation. The analysis highlights
the cultural component in joke translation. The theories appear to be excellent for
an analysis of the linguistic and cultural coordinates that need to be rendered in a
target text in order to make for a successful translation of jokes. The study examines
concrete jokes in the English-Romanian language pair and looks at the strategies open
to translators for successfully transferring both the linguistic and cultural information
embedded in the source texts to the target language.
Key-words: Romanian and British English; humour; translation of jokes; cul-
tural components; functionalist approach; Skopos; linguistic incompatibility;
functional constancy

Introduction
Existence, identity, consciousness, and humour are all axiomatic concepts
of the human condition. Yet humour seems to be one of the least understood,
though thoroughly studied, phenomena because its hermetic structure refuses
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to open up to the researcher.

Lacking a pre-theoretical definition, humour is here defined according to the
purpose for which it is used. Therefore, I use an operative definition of humour:
“Humour is the ability to appreciate the situations when wordplay is funny or amus-
ing.” (Popa 2003: 54)
This definition may be vague and over-simplified, but it has the advantage
of not reducing humour to a purely linguistic definition. It merely presupposes
that all speakers are competent enough to generate humorous text by virtue
of its linguistic elements and also to recognise a text as humorous by means of
these very components.
This definition also comprises the ability to recognise humorous text. But
the definition primarily focuses on the speaker’s ability to do so by means of
situational, social, and cultural parameters, not merely linguistic mechanisms.
Moreover, ability takes pride of place over competence, since humour apprecia-
tion ceases to be uni-dimensional. Viewed as a multi-dimensional process, it
relies on mutually independent elements such as the text, the speaker and
listener(s), and the context, and which all fall under the systemic common de-
nomination of system-incorporating network. The definition does not purport
to explain why some texts are funny while some others are not. The definition
also abstains from any exclusivist quest of the linguistic conditions necessary
for a text to be funny.
The keywords in the definition are ability, situations, and wordplay. By fore-
grounding ability, I wish to emphasise cultural differences that determine
whether one is able or not to perceive a situation to be funny. The word situa-
tions refers to the fact that humour is socially dependent and depends on inter-
action in a process between people. Wordplay refers to the language content in

0907-676X/05/01/0048-11 $20.00 © 2005 D.-E. Popa

Perspectives: Studies in Translatology Vol. 13, No. 1, 2005
 Popa: Jokes and Translation 49

humour. (Popa 2003: 54)

Finally, I wish to stress that my approach is not meant to provide a formal def-
inition of humour for canonising notions of an idealised speaker or listener(s)’
competence for recognising or creating humour. My concern is with discussing
the linguistic mechanisms in texts and the external factors that contribute to the
recognition of a text as humorous.

Corpus
This study focuses on verbal humour, specifically jokes, because they are
self-contained linguistic units that usually follow normal grammatical pa�ern.
My corpus consists of 150 English and 150 Romanian jokes selected from
my collection of more than 1,000 wri�en jokes.1 The jokes come from printed
sources (collections, newspapers, magazines, e-mails, and web sites), as well as
dialogues or narration that I have heard and subsequently wri�en down. As far
as jokes are concerned, it is impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between
these two sources.

The jokes used in the present study were selected according to several criteria:
1. the jokes must have the discourse organisation of short narratives or ques-
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tions and answers;

2. the jokes must be syntactically correct; and
3. they should contain socio-cultural references to either a British or a Roma-
nian framework.

Purpose of study
In this contrastive study between English and Romanian, I analyse the con-
nection between linguistic choices and the immediate situational and cultural
contexts in jokes with specific reference to translation. Approaching the issue
from a functionalist perspective, I regard translation as a communicative act.
As products of social interaction, jokes therefore foreground the cultural and
social contexts in which they are negotiated. Unlike Anne Leibold (1989: 109),
who believes that joke translation primarily poses linguistic challenges, I posit
that jokes belong to the same type of texts that people negotiate in order to make
meaning.
Agreeing with, for example, Susan Bassne� (1980: 80), Salvatore A�ardo (2002:
173-194), and Anne–Marie Laurian (1989: 5), it is my basic assumption – or hypothesis
– that jokes can be translated. Yet, for a translation product to be adequate, a translator
must bear in mind that:

1) joke translation is a complex phenomenon that has to take into account the
transfer of the situational, cultural, and linguistic content of the source-
language joke to the target-culture and, at the same time, must not lose
sight of the Skopos of the translation;
2) a successful transfer of all the situational, cultural, and linguistic features
to the target joke does not necessarily mean that the translation is success-
ful.
 50 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 1

A systemic functionalist approach to joke translation

My analysis borrows points from Hans Vermeer’ Skopos Theory and Chris-
tiane Nord’s functionalist approach to translations. For my work at the dis-
course-semantical and lexico-grammatical levels, I incorporate Halliday and
Martin’s co-tangential circles model (1993: 25), as it relies on the lexical choices
- language – in a social context. In such a social context, I address the commu-
nicative levels of genre (cultural context) and register (situational context). The
la�er is analysed in terms of field, tenor, and mode.
Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopos Theory views translation as a process in which it is
of prime importance to determine the purpose of a translation. Consequently,
the main focus is the function a translation has for the target audience, which,
in turn, determines the methods and strategies for a�aining this purpose.
Skopos-oriented translation procedures are highly relevant for humorous texts,
in particular jokes: clients, senders, and translators have to be fully aware of the
function of jokes in the target-language socio-cultural framework.
For the sake of clarity, it is worth distinguishing between two levels of
translation. The first level is the pragmatic function of translations of humorous
texts. This involves the genre-related function of humour in general, namely,
to produce amusement and even cause laughter. The second level concerns the
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interpersonal functions involved at the moment joke translation goes further

than to amuse. This works in the target-language socio-cultural context. As
a function, it may illustrate how laughter builds consensus (the ingratiation
function), as in the following first example (1), or repairs by dissolving awkward
situations or teases by introducing criticism (as in the following second example
(2)), just to mention a few interpersonal representations. Usually, the two levels
co-exist in jokes.

(1) One day, an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman walked into a pub together.
They each bought a pint of Guinness. Just as they were about to enjoy their creamy
beverage, three flies landed in each of their pints, and were stuck in the thick head.
The Englishman pushed his beer away in disgust. The Scotsman fished the fly out
of his beer, and continued drinking it, as if nothing had happened. The Irishman,
too, picked the fly out of his drink, held it out over the beer, and started yelling,
“SPIT IT OUT, SPIT IT OUT YOU BAS**RD!!!!”

(2) A Scots boy came home from school and told his mother he had been given a part
in the school play. “Wonderful,” says the mother, “What part is it?” The boy says,
“I play the part of the Sco�ish husband!” The mother scowls and says: “Go back
and tell your teacher you want a speaking part.”

In order to establish the adequacy (which would involve procedures and

strategies in translation), we need to know exactly what purpose the translated
joke should serve. This is also the case with the following Romanian joke (3):

(3) “Care este diferenţa dintre Ceauşescu şi Iliescu? Unul era cizmar şi altul şiret.”
[What’s the difference between Ceausescu and Iliescu? One was a cobbler and the
other one is cunning.]

It is obvious that as far as these examples ((1), (2) and (3)) are concerned, we cannot
speak of any functional constancy. The function in the target language and culture is
different from that in the source language and culture.
We find functional constancy in the following joke (4). A Romanian transla-
 Popa: Jokes and Translation 51

tion would preserve the general function of amusing, as well as its teasing char-
acter. Its criticism works perfectly in both English and Romanian.

(4) If Presidents don’t do it to their wives, they do it to the country. (Mel Brooks)

Functional constancy is important for at least one reason: if translations (here

target jokes) fulfil the same function they had in the source culture, this is argu-
ably closer to a�aining the Skopos of the translation, since the Skopos of any
translation is a successful translation.
There is no such a thing as a perfect translation. Yet, methodologically speak-
ing, it is impossible to get anywhere near a good translation unless we take into
account Christiane Nord’s clear-cut distinction between translation problems
and translation difficulties (Nord 1991). According to Christiane Nord, transla-
tion problems are objective and pertain to differences between communicative,
pragmatic, cultural, linguistic, and textual systems, whereas translation diffi-
culties are subjective and relate more to individual translators’ pragmatic, cul-
tural, linguistic, and textual competence. Below, this distinction is used to study
methodological difficulties when there is no obvious ‘equivalence’ between the
source and target languages and cultures.
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Example (4) above, at first glance seems to be unproblematic for translation,

while the joke about the Romanian President (3) is not easily rendered into the
target language and target culture. Joke (3) challenges us with several transla-
tion problems due to differences between the source and target communica-
tive situations at the pragmatic levels. There are cultural differences or, be�er,
culture-specific elements in the Romanian socio-cultural background: who was
Ceauşescu, who is Iliescu, what are cizme (‘boots’)? There are linguistic and
text-specific issues that make a translation difficult – in this case the use of the
homophones şiret (meaning shoe lace) and şiret (meaning ‘cunning’).
Wolfram Wills posits that there are aspects of translation that “transcend cultural
boundaries and are, in some sense, universal” (1992: 38). In other words, translation
is “a specimen of socio-culturally determined linguistic behaviour containing both cul-
ture-specific and culture-universal components”. (1996: 90)

(5) Prince Charles was out early the other day walking the dog. When a passer-by said,
“Morning,” Charles said, “No, just walking the dog.”

A translation of this joke requires balancing between culture-bound elements

(Prince Charles), culture-universal components (walking the dog early in the
morning, greeting somebody) and a word-play: the greeting ‘Morning!’ and
‘mourning’ for somebody who has died.
Hans Vermeer perceives culture as “the total of conventions to be observed
in a society” (Vermeer 1992: 9), thus emphasising its social side. Consequently,
Vermeer argues that when they translate culture-specific text-types, translators
must also “introduce into a society and its literary tradition, new aspects either
of form or of content or of meaning and thereby new aspects of the world, thus
enriching the target culture” (1992: 13). A translator of the above joke (5) there-
fore implicitly must introduce into the target language, Romanian, the informa-
tion that Britain has a royal family, that Prince Charles is a member of the royal
family, that his former wife, Princess Diana, died in a controversial car accident,
 52 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 1

that it is public knowledge that Charles did not really love Prince Diana, etc.
Let us have a look at a Romanian joke (6):

(6) - Cum vorbeşte Iliescu engleza?

- Ca şi chineza.
- Dar de ce nu mai vorbeşte acum engleza?
- Pentru cã l-au rugat chinezii sã nu-i mai înjure.
[- How does Iliescu speak English?
- In the same way that he speaks Chinese.
- Why doesn’t he speak English anymore?
- Because the Chinese asked him to stop calling them names.]

In this case (6), the information that must be introduced into English culture
in a translation relates to the name ‘Iliescu’. Ion Iliescu was formerly the presi-
dent of Romania. His English was poor and he did not speak Chinese. ‘Chinese’
makes its appearance because of the Romanian idiom that when somebody
“speaks Chinese”, the listener does not understand it, roughly corresponding
to the English idiom “It is Greek to me.” The joke goes further in saying that
President Iliescu cannot even speak but only swear in Chinese.
What happens if people project their own cultural frame of reference on a for-
eign culture?2 Gudrun Wi�e terms this a culture shock. In her view, this obliges
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translators to “anticipate the possible effects different translation alternatives

may leave upon the target receptor.” (Wi�e 1994: 74)
In joke translation, such a culture shock generally annuls all laugh-
provoking aspects, hence preventing the joke from achieving its translation
Skopos (provided this is to cause amusement). At least, the translation does not
render the goal and function it had in the source culture. In order to illustrate
this, we may turn to one of the jokes that used to travel in Romania during the
Communist Golden Era:

(7) “În Otopeni se afla o pancartă: ULTIMUL CARE PLEACĂ, SĂ STINGĂ LUMI-
NA!”
[At the Otopeni International Airport, in Bucharest, there is this huge poster that
says: “THE LAST ONE TO LEAVE, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!”]

Example (8) belongs to the same category:

(8) -Ce-i mai rece ca apa rece?

- Apa caldă.
[- “What’s colder than cold water?”
- “Hot water.”]3

Translations of jokes like (7) and (8) may lead to Wi�e’s “culture shocks”
and run counter to the jokes’ function as humour, because they would then be
presented outside their situational and cultural contexts.4 I posit that normally
these contexts are within the texts, as they comprise the determinative factors
and circumstances that make it possible for the audience to recognise them as
jokes by means of a process of deduction. This process of deduction cannot be
applied to situational and cultural items.5 Translations of such jokes become
experientially ambiguous, as we cannot be sure to what dimensions of reality
the translations refer.
In order to determine the contextual coordinates, I use Halliday and Martin’s
 Popa: Jokes and Translation 53

co-tangential circles that describe language as included in the larger circle of

context of situation (register), which is integrated into an even wider circle,
namely that of the context of culture (genre) (1993: 25). Register is sub-divided
into the sections of field, tenor, and mode. So (7) and (8) can be described as:

Field: political joke

Mode: interactive face-to-face
Tenor: friend to friend

The two jokes are meant to make listeners aware of factors in the cultural
background that do not usually surface or are not discussed openly. The genre
in (7) and (8) is represented in the act of telling political jokes. Since genres are
different ways of using language, it follows that the speakers make different lex-
ico-grammatical choices according to the specific purpose they want to a�ain.
This implies that different genres will open up to different lexico-grammatical
choices – different words and grammatical structures.6
However, genres are not the only contextual elements that determine lexico-
grammatical choices. Register (mode, tenor, and field) also has a significant im-
pact on the type of language used. Because the translation Skopos is achieved
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by means of lexico-grammatical choices and because all lexico-grammatical

choices can be predicted from the situational and cultural context, the Hallidyan
functional contextual elements are highly pertinent to a translation analysis,
and particularly, to humour translation. The next example (9) is a case in point.
I shall discuss features about translating this joke into Romanian:

(9) - “Why are families like fudge?”

- “They are mostly sweet with a few nuts in it.”

An analysis of the situation provides us with relevant information about language

use in the source and target texts. A configuration that derives from the actual layout
of the joke could be:

Field: family joke

Mode: interactive face-to-face
Tenor: friend to friend

In determining the mode, we look at (a) the interpersonal or spatial distance,

and (b) the experiential distance. In order to translate the joke, we must deter-
mine whether, at the interpersonal distance, we have to deal with a face-to-face
encounter or are reading (writing) a collection of jokes.
The experiential distance level ranks situations according to the distance
between language and the social process it refers to. Thus, the experiential
distance determines whether language is an action (in which it ‘is outside’, or
‘accompanies’ the social process) or a reflection (in which language constitutes
the social process). It corresponds to the difference between playing games and
writing fiction. However, a joke hovers between being a means for achieving
on-going action (which is illustrated in the functions of humour) and being a
means for reflecting on experience (e.g., most political and family jokes).
Using this distinction between the two dimensions of mode, we can now
 54 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 1

characterise a basic difference between situational spoken and wri�en language

use, which is a prerequisite for an adequate target rendition of a joke.
In the following example (9), we must choose the spoken language for the
target text. The spoken language has a dynamic structure; it is typically organ-
ised according to turn-by-turn sequencing; it also includes spontaneity features
such as hesitation and repetition. At the tenor level, I presuppose that this is
friend-to-friend interaction. In such interactions, the interlocutors’ social roles
will influence their language use. A friend-to-friend interaction will normally
presuppose equal power, frequent contact, and a highly affective involvement.
These features point to the fact that the situational se�ing is ‘informal’. This
therefore implies that the vocabulary is informal as well. Knowing that we are
dealing with an informal target text, we may also, if necessary, use slang, ab-
breviated forms, and vocatives, although this would not apply to this particular
joke (9).
Field defines the focus of the activity we are engaged in and varies from being highly
technical to being down-to-earth. The joke at hand is down-to-earth and only requires a
superficial knowledge of families as a phenomenon.
Halliday argues that the three variables of tenor, field, and mode are the three
kinds of meanings that language is structured to produce. Each situational vari-
Downloaded At: 23:48 18 February 2009

able has a predictable and systemic relationship with lexico-grammatical pat-

terns.
In the family joke (9), an analysis reveals the following lexico-grammatical
choices.
The clause structure illustrates that it is an informal situation that uses the
interrogative. This interrogative (“Why?”) is an imperative in the sense of “Let
me tell you a joke!” or “Let me tell you why families are like fudge.”
There is no problem in translating this interrogative into Romanian. But there
is a difficulty at the lexical level. The English joke playfully compares families
and “fudge”. The English word “fudge”, meaning ‘a so� creamy light brown
sweet made of sugar, milk, bu�er’, is encoded in the English semiotic system
and belongs to British culture. This feature cannot be realised in Romanian. Two
other lexical items also limit the lexical elbow-room for a Romanian translation:
they are “sweet” and “nuts”, which define the semantic content of “fudge”.
A possible choice in Romanian would be cozonac (‘pound cake’), which is
quite sweet and has nuts in it. Yet this is not adequate: nuts is a key element in
the English joke, which plays on the ambiguity between nuts that belongs to a
cooking frame of reference and nuts that represents a mental state.
In order to transfer the joke’s function, it seems to me that there are two
possible solutions: (a) to transfer the semantic content of the word nuts in
Romanian, but use it in the singular and re-arrange the grammatical structure of
the sentence so that it follows from the word order that nut (nucă) is a metaphor
for lunatic like in:

(9a) In general dulce dar mai are si câte o nucă.

[Mostly sweet but it also has some nut(ty characters)]

This translation into Romanian uses the co-ordinating ‘but’, because the two
clauses, which are contrasting in meaning, do not exclude each other. In other
words, the use of nucă in the singular (at the lexical level) and the use of the
 Popa: Jokes and Translation 55

coordinating conjunction dar (but) (at the syntactical level) in Romanian are
meant to make up for the non-existence of a lexical and semantic equivalent of
the polysemous English word nut.
Another possibility is to render only the communicative meaning and
disregard the semantic and syntactical content of the source joke altogether.
In that case, we would have to find something that works naturally both at the
language level (embedded in the lexical system) and at the cultural level (being
cultural specific and playing on a well-known idiom). A possible solution might
then be:

(9b) Care e asemănarea dintre o familie şi o turmă de oi: majoritatea sunt albe dar mai
scapă şi câte una neagră.
[Why is a family like a flock of sheep? It’s mostly white sprinkled with a few black
ones].

It should be mentioned that, like in English, to be the black sheep of the family is
a set phrase in Romanian. However, this second solution is open to criticism: it
does not render the originality, spontaneity, and sparkle of the source-language
text.
So, although the Skopos of a translation may be a�ained in joke translation,
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many commonly known solutions cannot convey the source text’s ability to
cause laughter, as was just illustrated in the “flock of sheep” translation (9b), in
which the idea of “black sheep” in a family is not funny because the comparison
has been overused.
This leads on to another important point: good translators of humour must
also be aware of the genre potential of a particular culture. This comprises all
linguistically achieved activity types recognised as meaningful and appropriate
in a given culture.7 Genre potential could be described as the possible
configurations of register variables that are allowed in specific cultures at a
given time. Thus the register configuration:

Field: family joke

Mode: interactive face-to-face
Tenor: friend to friend

is culturally recognised in British culture. Before rendering it into other lan-

guages and target cultures (in this case Romanian), it is wise to see whether the
register configuration also works in the target culture. In the case at hand, it
does: it is culturally appropriate to joke about families in Romanian.

Conclusion
As hypothesised, the analysis of humour translation shows that jokes can
be translated, provided it is accepted that o�en translations cannot be as
effective as the source texts. The above analysis has provided some indications
of the factors that should be taken into account in the translation of jokes. The
following can be cautiously posited: it is important to determine the function of
the joke in the target socio-cultural framework. As shown, a translated joke will
have to work at two main levels. We must consider the pragmatic function of a
joke, namely to amuse and cause laughter. Next, there is a higher, interpersonal
 56 2005. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 13: 1

level that plays on the functions of humour (e.g., to build consensus, to dissolve
awkward situations, and discourse management). These la�er functions are
o�en situation and culture dependent and may differ from one joke to another
as well as from one joke category to another. As the two levels usually co-exist,
translators must strive to convey both of them in translation.
The concept of functional constancy is also relevant to joke translation.
Basically, it implies that the original function of a joke is transferred to target
cultures. Functional constancy will normally mean that the Skopos of the
translation is a�ained, unless there is linguistic incompatibility between the
source and the target language.
In practical translation, there are obstacles to the a�ainment of the Skopos of a
joke translation: these concern Nord’s distinction between translation problems
and translation difficulties, which I discussed above. I posit that when jokes
seem impossible to translate, it is not primarily because of the ‘objective’
translation problems but because of ‘subjective’ translation difficulties that
relate to the translator’s competence. As pointed out by Anne Marie Laurian
(1989: 6), it is the effort, imagination, and creativity required for the translation
of humour (including jokes) that make translators feel they are confronted with
an untranslatable text.
Downloaded At: 23:48 18 February 2009

My study has identified some factors that appear to be relevant for the
practice of translation. When they generate culture-specific text-types needed
for introducing new form, content, and elements of meaning, translators enrich
target cultures. Humour and jokes are based on ‘secret’ agreements or shared
information between the speaker and the audience in the source culture. If this
information is not introduced (or does not already exist) in the target-language
and socio-cultural world, there can be no ‘secret’ agreements between the
parties. This eventually annuls a joke’s ability to amuse and cause laughter.
If translators fail to introduce the new elements and simply project the source
text’s cultural frame of reference to the target environment, their translations
will have a negative impact on the target audience, and cause a “culture shock”
in Wi�e’s sense. This also annuls a joke as humorous in the target culture.
I hope that this analysis has succeeded in showing that joke translation is
neither exclusively humour-type dependent, as Debra S. Raphaelson-West
(1989: 130) argues, nor simply linguistically bound. By approaching the issue
from a functionalist perspective, I submit that all jokes are unique in the way
they encompass situational, cultural, and linguistic features.
It should also be noted that my aim was to draw a�ention to the fact that
joke translation is a complex phenomenon that requires transfer of the features
discussed to a target text in a way that is in keeping with the translation Skopos
and the overall purpose of achieving a successful translation. There are no
ready-made solutions and there is no guarantee that a successful transfer of all
the features of a joke in the target language also implies that this is a successful
translation. A�er all, there is always going to be a source-language joke and its
translation in the target language. Although the two jokes co-exist in terms of
time, they do so in different spatial frames of reference.

Notes
1. This collection includes more than 1,000 wri�en English and Romanian short narrative
jokes and question-and-answer jokes. It was used as data for my MA thesis (Popa 2003).
 Popa: Jokes and Translation 57
All translations in this article have been done by the author.
2. In my experience, ‘projection’ seems to be found in most cases of joke translation.
3. This category of jokes and the cultural gap in translation are discussed in Popa (2002:
13).
4. In the original textual contexts (as part of a complete linguistic event), the two jokes
clearly did have a Skopos. By ‘li�ing’ the translations out of these contexts, these Skopoi
are obscured, and most of the jokes’ humour becomes unavailable.
5. Deduction refers to our intuitive ability to deduce context from text. It is just as
important as our equally, highly developed ability to predict language from context.
Both abilities provide evidence of the language-context relationship.
6. Genre is here used in the meaning of ‘class of texts marked by a particular style, form,
or subject.’
7. Genre is here used as in a Hallidayan framework, namely that of all the linguistically-
achieved activity types recognised as meaningful and appropriate in a given culture.

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