Transmedial Perspectives on Humour and Translation: From Page to Screen to Stage

Humour has been a widely covered research topic in the fields of media studies and translation studies. The research scope of studies therein has expanded from theoretical exploration and translation practice to the transmission and cross-media reception of humour after the transmedial turn brought about by the rise of multimedia. It was against this backdrop that Kostopoulou and Misiou edited the volume Transmedial Perspectives on Humour and Translation: From Page to Screen to Stage.

Overall, this volume revolves around three themes: the concept of humour and the mechanism of humour creation, the interlingual translation of humour, as well as the intersemiotic translation of humour across different cultures and media. In terms of the first theme, the concept of humour serves as a link connecting the eleven independent yet inter-connected chapters. Vandaele introduced humour in Chapter 3 as “what is funny, witty, meant for laughter” (p 52). While the forms may vary, the elements that generate humour tend to be universal. Chapters 2, 4, 6, and 10 discuss these “humorous elements” (p 69) and explore how they trigger laughter among the audience. In Chapter 4, Sierra delineated these elements: referential, preferential, linguistic, paralinguistic, visual, graphic, and acoustic. In Chapter 2, Dusi and Donati specifically analyzed how the pastiche and remix of certain snippets of movies and TV series, which are manipulations of one or more of these humourous elements, can even elevate the humour appeal of the original contents. In Chapter 6, Kohn and Weissbrod illustrated how comics artist Ilana Zeffren used sarcasm, irony, and parody to portray some societal issues critically. In Chapter 10, Chiaro focused on the linguistic element, exploring how humour is created in social media reels. She noted that “teasing language difference” (p 206) is one common approach to humour creation where bloggers play two characters speaking different languages and illustrate the stereotypical usage of certain words or expressions in different linguistic environments.

Concerning the second theme – interlingual translation of humour, this volume covers two prominent barriers: contexts and cultures. In terms of contexts, as Chovanec noted in Chapter 9, “one of the central issues related to the successful operation of humor is its contextualization.” (p 176) Zabalbeascoa and Attardo, in Chapter 1, pointed out that contextual factors that hinder proper humor translation include shared knowledge or features, language specificity, and private occasions for jokes. Regarding different cultures, Zabalbeascoa and Attardo noted that people of various cultural identities might have different humour appreciation mechanisms; hence, they might respond to the same joke differently. Besides specifying these two humour translation barriers, this volume also proposes tentative solutions. Vandaele proposed in Chapter 3 that translators need to be fully aware of the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the source texts, and the subjectivity of humour appreciation, which can help them identify and appreciate the humour. On top of such broad-stroke guiding principles for humour translation, this volume also incorporates specific strategies. In Chapter 5, Maher recommended one practical strategy for humour translation: using notes to explain the cultural connotations or contexts of the words and phrases intended to trigger laughter from readers. She argued that this translation strategy can facilitate the translation of humour because it explains the elements that trigger laughter but could be easily dismissed.

The third theme – the intersemiotic translation of humour, is a much less-covered topic in previous humour studies. The humour translation herein refers to the interpretation of humour across different media modalities. In Chapter 4, Sierra took a comic book and a film featuring Superlópez as two typical media cases, and found that while the comic book relies on facial expressions and textual information to create humour, the film features more paralinguistic information such as tones, and gestures, as well as the sound and visual effect. In Chapter 7, Manteli compared the novel Animal Farm and its play adaptation, and concluded that compared with the novel, the use of costumes, lighting, and especially the songs in the play significantly facilitated the conveying of humour from texts to the stage performance. Likewise, Dore, in Chapter 8, compared the screenplay, the stage play, and the TV series of Fleabag in terms of the presentations of humour, and found that the way textual humour triggers laughter is different from visual or audio humour, which makes the transmedial transfer of humour challenging. Therefore, she noted that Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator of Fleabag, used different approaches to conveying humour in plays and TV adaptations, such as adjusting the timing in dialogue or monologue delivery and finetuning the behaviours of certain characters. In Chapter 11, Iaia analyzed the “otherness” (p 210) in social media memes and noted that such a combination of texts and pictures can convey elevated humour.

This volume excels in the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach and a broad research scope. Interdisciplinary approach is one of the defining features of critical theory. By adopting this approach, this volume includes linguistics, translation, culture, and media studies, which form a synergy that widens the research scope and enhances the multi-layered discussions of humour. Regarding the research scope, this volume covers the creation of humour and the interlinguistic translation of humour across different cultures. Moreover, this volume also covers intersemiotic translation of humour across a wide range of media modalities, such as movies, TV series, and plays, as well as reels and memes on social media. This is a key feature of this volume that sets it apart from the previous research. All in all, such an all-encompassing research scope helps readers gain a more profound understanding of humour and the other activities related to humour.