Replaced humour

This type of technique covers those operations when the humorous utterance is rewritten, that is, replaced by a different Hungarian one.

ST ROY: Why doesn’t he fix the air conditioner? It’s ninety-eight de­

grees, and it sits there sweating like everyone else.

TT1 ROY: Mikor fogja ezt a légkondicionáló berendezést rendbe hozatni?

Amikor leesik a hó?

(lit: When is he going to fix this air conditioner equipment? If it will snow?)

TT2 ROY: Vajon mire vár Dávid, hogy megjavíttassa a légkondicionálót?

Karácsonyra?

(lit: I wonder what David is waiting for to mend the air conditioner?

For Christmas?)

Neither Hungarian translator preserved the ‘sweating like...’sentence presum­

ably because none of them thought that it will make Hungarians laugh unless it is changed entirely. So they have replaced it with a new punch line. InTTl, Örkény’s phrase ‘if it will snow’ is not only humorous by itself but it also reminds us of a Hungarian saying ‘ if it will freeze’ which is used in a context when we mean that something will never happen. In this wayTTl adds to the humorous utterance an extra humorous connotation. In TT2 Zilahy’s version ‘for Christmas’ also a re­

minder of something very far away in time, but without that extra added humor­

ous effect of Örkény’s replacement.

The next part presented below gives us examples of different treatment of hu­

mourous utterances in one text chunk. We can find an example of the type of added humour (5.4.4.) introduced by translators which deals with the police, and also a sample of omitted humour (5.4.5.)

ST MURRAY: What are you yelling about? We’re playing a friendly game.

SPEED: Who is playing? We’ve been sitting here talking since eight o’­

clock.

VINNIE: Since seven. That’s why I said I was going to quit at twelve.

SPEED: How would you like a stale banana right in the mouth?

TT1 MURRAY: (Közbelép szakmai minőségben) Elég legyen! Oszol­

junk emberek! Ne zavarjuk a forgalmat! (észbe kap) Mit akarok mondani... (a társaság megnyugszik) Folytassuk a játszmát.

(lit: It’s enough! Men, break up! Don’t disturb the traffic.(suddenly re­

alizes) What I wanna say...(the party calms down). Let’s continue the game.)

SPEED: Mondd inkább, hogy kezdjük, mert nyolc óra óta csak gatyá- zunk itt...

(lit: You better say, let’s begin, cause we’ve been here since eight o’­

clock).

VINNIE: Hét óra óta! és én amikor leültünk mindjárt megmond­

tam...

(lit: Since seven! And I told you right then when we sat down).

SPEED: (ráordít) Vinnie!

(lit: Vinnie!)

Zsuzsa Valló

There is a new line of humour introduced by TT1 translator, the reminders of Hungarian police jokes since the police has never stopped being the target of jokes.

The policemen in these jokes are never very bright, and some of them are even il­

literate.

Obviously, Örkény cannot resist the temptation and has made jokes on Murray who is the representative of the police. Murray often uses the police jargon and gets new lines in the dialogues that hint at his narrow-mindedness. The policeman in ST is quite different, he is just a plain guy, but not the pigheaded type of his Hungarian counterpart. It can be said that in TT1 the translator has changed the features of the original character by building in a new line of humour and by using a special type of police jargon.

The example for omitted humour is in the fourth turn. The type of humour

‘how would you like a stale banana in your mouth’ would not work with Hunga­

rians; consequently it has been completely omitted and replaced only with a one- word exclamation.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper has been twofold; firstly, to investigate how Hungarian translators encountered problems specific to theatre text translations, secondly, to examine how translators transferred humour from one culture to another.

As the examples given above have shown the two translations differ in that:

TT1 meets the requirements of stage performance better than TT2. In other words, TT1 is more ‘performance-friendly’, since the translator has been continuously aware of the complex task of rendering not only the verbal elements of the text, but also ‘transferring’ the non-verbal features as well. Not only is the language usage closer to everyday, real-life Hungarian speech in TT1, but the rhythm of the dialogues is more dynamic. It is achieved by the translator with the help of sequencing techniques, and via the application of rich punctuation which accentu­

ates the required intonation, pitch and pauses. On the other hand, the translator of TT2 has not succeeded in creating theatre talk which is similar to the spoken language,and the pulsating rhythm of the dialogues is broken because of the long sentences.

The question addressed in the introduction was how translators approached to the problems of humour translation. After looking at the examples it can be said that in rendering humour the translators have been guided by the principle that they have to rely on the existing background knowledge of their audiences. Although there are considerable differences in their approaches to the theatre specificity of the text, but, in translating humour, they have applied the same strategies and have left out, rewritten or replaced punch lines in order to achieve the required effect - laughter.

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as a Key to Three Hungarian Chekhov

In document TRANSLATION STUDIES (Pldal 147-152)