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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 31:3 (2021) ► pp.331–356

A relevance-theoretic account of translating jokes with sexual innuendos in Modern Family into Spanish

ORCID logo | University of Jaén

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse jokes containing sexual innuendos in ambiguous utterances from the first two seasons of Modern Family and their translation into Spanish using relevance theory. More often than not, the ambiguity and sexual innuendos are also reflected in the Spanish versions analysed. Hence, in all those cases, in relevance-theoretical terms, the cognitive effects intended in the source text (ST), including humorous ones, will also be accessible to target text (TT) viewers. It, therefore, follows that the pragmatic scenario is preserved in the TT, sometimes at the expense of a sacrifice in the semantic scenario. In audio-visual texts, ambiguity may also impact the visual channel. Although in some cases the visual component may render the translator’s task difficult, in others it may act as an aid to both the translator and TT viewer, contributing to the yielding of humorous effects.

Keywords: humour, sexual innuendo, audio-visual translation, Modern Family , relevance theory, ambiguity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relevance theory, humour and translation
  • 3.Description of the corpus: Modern Family
  • 4.Ambiguity in the verbal component
    • 4.1Language-based jokes
    • 4.2Language-based and culture-based jokes
  • 5.Ambiguity in the visual component
    • 5.1The polysemiotic nature of audiovisual texts
    • 5.2Visual channel as an aid to the translator
    • 5.3Visual channel as a challenge to the translator
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 8 January 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20017.dia
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