Translating Humour from English to Dutch in "Catch-22" and "Slaughterhouse-Five"
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2021-07-02
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en
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This thesis explores the topic of translating humour in literature. Humour is a particularly significant aspect of translation, because it is regarded as one of the most challenging things to translate. Most of the research done on this subject has shown that verbal humour, specifically, often leads to humour loss in translation. This thesis will test previous research by applying it to two cases studies, the novels Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, as well as their Dutch translations by J.F. Kliphuis and Else Hoog, respectively. The main strategy applied in analysing the translations argued that faithfulness in reproducing humorous effects is more important in translating humour than faithfulness in reproducing coded content.
The analyses showed that both novels rely more on situational humour than verbal humour, and the situational humour did not result in many translation problems, whereas the verbal humour did, indeed, cause more translation problems. The Dutch translation by Kliphuis sometimes chose coded content over humorous effects, and his translation suffered some humour loss because of it. At the same time, the translation by Hoog proved that choosing humorous effects over coded content leads to better translations.
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