Public Lecture: Criss-cross Humour aka Translation across the great divide

Abstract:

This talk will deal with the complexity of translating humor from one language to another highlighting the fact that translational difficulties are not limited to language alone but also to cultural references that are usually only typical of the lingua-cultural community of the original exemplar. Translation is increasingly relevant today as English has become the digital lingua franca, and humor couched in English is widely consumed in diverse media. Consumers/ speakers who are not completely fluent in English may lack the cultural context required to understand some of the humor which is based on various cultural aspects of the language context. The digital ubiquity of humor in English means that languages other than English require translation into English in order to occupy a place on global platforms. So far, the topic of humor translation has been mainly studied in literary disciplines and have focused on issues related to equivalence and translatability. Currently, though, as humor and debates concerning humor are becoming ever more prominent within the public sphere, the translation of humour has gained in importance in all computer mediated communication especially in the diverse subfields of media studies, advertising, and digital humanities in general. Of increasing centrality, is the development of various AI (artificial intelligence) programs to understand, create and translate contextual humor. This remains one of the toughest challenges for the translation of humour, which is so culturally and contextually bound. I will reflect on this issue.

Speaker:

Professor Delia Chiaro is from the Department of Interpreting and Translation at the University of Bologna (Italy) and is a world-renowned expert in translation and humour studies, with a particular focus on the perception of verbally expressed humour on screen (film, television and video games) across different linguistic and cultural boundaries. She was also President of the International Society of Humor Studies (ISHS) from 2015-2017.

A welcome reception will follow the public lecture from 5-5.30pm