Strategies Used in Translating Humor

Abstract

The present study focused on investigating the strategies used in translating humor. To this end, two English texts along with their corresponding translations into Persian were studied using Delabastita’s translation strategies of wordplay (1996). The results indicated that the most commonly used strategies by Iranian translators were: 1. rendering the humor of the source text into a humor in the target language, and 2. omission, and the least commonly used ones were 1. editorial techniques, and 2. literal rendering of the source text humor in the target language. The results also indicated that taboo humors were mostly translated either by omitting the taboo term in the humor or by rendering the humor into non-humor. It was also found that most of the humorous elements related to political events were much easier to be translated into another language with no change in the elements of humor.