The influence of translational norms on the translation of humor manifested in prose fiction has not been a focus of much research. This paper will try to establish the existence of an institutionalized strategy of amplification, presumably born out of a wish to bridge the cultural gap reflected in two different national traditions of literary humor. The effect of amplification, as it is implemented in the various Hebrew translations of Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers and Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, is analyzed on the basis of Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo 2001, 2002). The use of amplification as a model for the translation of humor from the beginning of the 20th century, and its diminishing currency from the 1980s onwards are also discussed.
Dickens, Charles. 2000 [1842]. The Pickwick Papers. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics.
Jerome, K. Jerome. 1994 [1889]. Three Men in a Boat. London: Penguin Books.
Hebrew translations:
Taviov, Y. H.1922. Warsaw: Avraham Yosef Shtibel.
Sivan, Aryeh. 1956. Jerusalem: M. Newman.
Amir, Aharon. 1990. Tel-Aviv: Sifriyat Ma’ariv.
Epstein, A.1924. Frankfurt: Omanut.
Burla, Yair. 1971. Jerusalem: Keter.
Bar, Aharon. 1985. Tel-Aviv: Tamuz.
Ofek, Bina. 2001. Tel-Aviv: Ofarim.
Kerman, Danny. 2002. Kfar-Saba: Aryeh Nir.
Scholarly Works
Antonini, Rachele. 2005. “The Perception of Subtitled Humor in Italy”. Humor 181:21. 209–225.
Antonopoulou, Eleni. 2002. “A Cognitive Approach to Literary Humour Devices: Translating Raymond Chandler”. The Translator 8:2. 195–220.
Asscher Omri. 2008. The Influence of Stylistic Norms on the Hebrew Translation of British humor. Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University. [M.A. thesis; Hebrew].
Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Attardo, Salvatore. 2001. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Attardo, Salvatore. 2002. “Translation and Humor: An Approach Based on the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH)”. The Translator 8:2. 173–194.
Ben-Ari Nitsa. 1999. “”Translationese” or the Hebrew of translations”. Ziva Ben-Porat, Ed.The Jubilee Book for Benjamin Harshav, vol.11. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University. 292–304. [Hebrew]
Bergson, Henri. 1999 [1911]. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Los Angeles: Green Integer.
Chiaro, Delia. 2003. “The Implications of the Quality of Translated Verbally Expressed Humor and the success of Screen Comedy”. Antares 61. 14–20.
Chiaro, Delia. 2005. “Verbally Expressed Humor and Translation: An Overview of a Neglected Field”. Humor 18:2. 135–145.
Delabastita, Dirked. 1996. Wordplay and Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Ermida, Isabel. 2008. The Language of Comic Narratives: Humor Construction in Short Stories. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1990. Polysystem Studies. Tel-Aviv: The Porter Institute of Poetics and Semiotics—Durham: Duke University Press. [a special issue of Poetics Today 11:1]
Faurot, Ruth Marie. 1974. Jerome K. Jerome. New York: Twayne Publishers Inc.
Garrett, Leah. 1997. “The Jewish Don Quixote”. Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 17:2. 94–105.
Kincaid, James R.1971. Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mateo, M.1995. “The Translation of Irony”. Meta 40:1. 171–177.
Mikes, G.1980. English Humour for Beginners. London: André Deutsch.
Oring, Elliot. 1981. Israeli Humor: The Content and Structure of the Chizbat of the Palmach. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Perry, Menakhem. 1981. “Thematic and Structural Shifts in Auto-Translations by Bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish Writers: The case of Mendele Mokher Sforim”. Poetics Today 2:4. 181–192.
Pritchett, V.S.. 1957 (June 15). “The Tin-openers”. The New Statesman and Nation. 783–784.
Spanakaki, Katia. 2007. “Translating Humor for Subtitling”. Translation Journal 11:2.
Toury, Gideon. 1977. Translational Norms and Literary Translation into Hebrew, 1930–1945. Tel Aviv: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University. [in Hebrew]
Toury, Gideon. 1997. “What Is It That Renders a Spoonerism (Un)translatable”. Traductio: Essays on Punning and Translation. Dirk Delabastita, ed. Manchester and Namur:. St. Jerome and Université de Namur. 271–91.
Vandaele, Jeroen. 2002. “Introduction: (Re-)Constructing Humor: Meanings and Means”. Jeroen Vandaele, ed. The Translator 8:2. [Special issue: Translating Humor] 173–194.
Vandaele, Jeroen. 2002. “Funny Fictions: Francoist Translation Censorship of Two Billy Wilder Films”. The Translator 8:2. 267–302.
Weissbrod, Rachel. 1989. Trends in the Translation of Prose Fiction from English into Hebrew, 1958–1980. Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University. [Hebrew]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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