Multiple matching
You are going to read an article in which six people discuss translating humour. For questions 1-10, choose from the sections (A-F). The sections may be chosen more than once.
Can a Joke Survive Translation?
Six translators and writers discuss whether humour can be carried across languages
Valentina Ocampo, translator of comic fiction from Spanish
The novels I translate are dense with wordplay, and the first thing one learns is that the pun in front of you is almost never going to survive. Spanish homophones do not obligingly line up with English ones. What one can do is compensate. If I lose a joke on page forty, I keep an eye out for a place a few pages later where English offers a pun that Spanish did not, and I plant one there, so that the reader’s overall experience of the book, its density of mischief, remains roughly the same. Purists find this outrageous, and I understand why. It is only possible, in my view, with the author’s blessing, and I have been fortunate. The novelist whose work I have translated for fifteen years told me at our first meeting that she would rather I wrote a funny English book than a faithful unfunny one, and she has never once complained about the liberties I have taken. I am not sure I would dare to be so free with a writer who was no longer alive to grant permission.
Which translator argues that explaining a joke to the reader inevitably destroys it?
Which translator describes moving humour to a different point in the text from where it originally appeared?
Which translator believes that the difficulty of translating humour has been exaggerated?
Which translator suggests that a particular group of readers pays little attention to cultural differences?
Which translator explains how differences in sentence structure affect the timing of a joke?
Which translator emphasises the practical constraints imposed by the medium they work in?
Which translator says that the writer whose work they translate has encouraged them to take liberties?
Which translator explains that some humour depends on social conventions that have no equivalent in the target language?
Which translator suggests that members of the profession may benefit from a popular belief about their work?
Which translator identifies a particular feature of the original texts as the most time-consuming part of their work?
যাচাই করতে সব 10টি প্রশ্নের উত্তর দিন (10টির মধ্যে 0টি সম্পন্ন)