Cover not available
Part of
Humour in Self-Translation
Edited by Margherita Dore
[Topics in Humor Research 11] 2022
► pp. 257–274

Chapter 12
Second thoughts about second versions

Self-translation and humour

ORCID logo | University of Ottawa
This rejoinder proceeds in a dialectical fashion. For the sake of argument, the first part takes the opposite view of the thesis according to which the translator’s identity must modify the parameters of translating different forms of humour (comedy, satire, irony, wordplay). Upon reflection, it appears that self-translators also face the constraints inherent in this exercise, whether broader cultural transfers need to be re-contextualized or specific aspects raise questions of a linguistic or rhetorical nature. This observation allows for a clearer appreciation of the specificity of self-translation in a second part of the demonstration, where received notions such as agency or intention are examined anew. Agency is not unlimited, nor is access unmediated, but both are part of the cocktail of self-translation, whose main originality resides elsewhere, however: in the possibility of embarking on a translation before completing the first text, that is, self-translating “simultaneously.” The demonstration is illustrated with many examples, and due notice is taken of articles in this volume that deal with self-translated texts and their (re)writers.
Keywords: translation of humour, wordplay, puns, self-translation, collaborative translation, agency, intentionality, directionality
Article outline
  • 1.Questioning self-translational specificity
    • 1.1The cultural matrix of humour
    • 1.2Wordplay
      • 1.2.1Are puns always funny?
      • 1.2.2Patterning puns: Nancy Huston
      • 1.2.3Compensating for lost puns: Samuel Beckett
  • 2.Towards self-translational specificity
    • 2.1Directionality
    • 2.2Agency
    • 2.3Intentionality
    • 2.4Simultaneity
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.11.12gru
References (64)
References
Abastado, Claude. (1979). Mythes et rituels de l’écriture. Brussels: Complexe.Google Scholar
Abrams, Meyer H. (1953). The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ackerley, Chris. (2008). FUN DE PARTIE: Puns and Paradigms in Endgame. Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui 19: 315–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alibrahim, Bashair. (2020). A Barbarian in Rome. On Writing and Translating Between Two Literatures: A Conversation with Sinan Antoon. New Voices in Translation Studies 22: 1–18.Google Scholar
Anokhina, Olga. (2017). Vladimir Nabokov and his translators: Collaboration or translation under duress? In Anthony Cordingley and Céline Frigau Manning (Eds.) Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age (pp. 111–129). London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore. (2020). The Linguistics of Humor: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barthes, Roland. (1977 [1968]). The Death of the Author. In Image Music Text. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath (pp. 142–148). London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Ben-Amos, Dan. (1973). The ‘Myth’ of Jewish Humor. Western Folklore, 32(2): 112–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. (1986). Shifts of cohesion and coherence in translation. In Juliane House and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (Ed.) Interlingual and Intercultural Communication (pp. 17–35). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Brisset, Frédérique; Audrey Coussy, Ronald Jenn, and Julie Loison-Charles (Eds.) (2019). Du jeu dans la langue. Traduire le jeu de mots. Lille: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
Castillo García, Gema Soledad. (2006). La (auto)traducción como mediación entre culturas, Alcalá de Henares: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá.Google Scholar
Chiaro, Delia. (2010). Laughing at or laughing with? Italian comic stereotypes viewed from within the peripheral group. In Graeme Dunphy and Rainer Emig (Eds.) Hybrid Humour: Comedy in Transcultural Perspectives (pp. 65–84). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Cohn, Ruby. (1961). Samuel Beckett self-translator. PMLA 76(5): 613–621. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collinge, Linda. (2000). Beckett traduit Beckett: de Malone meurt à Malone Dies, l’imaginaire en traduction. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar
Coquillat, Michelle. (1982). La Poétique du mâle. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Coulton, George Gordon. (1943). Fourscore Years: an Autobiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dasilva, Xosé Manuel. (2016). En torno al concepto de semi-autotraducción. Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 23: 15–35.Google Scholar
Delabastita, Dirk. (1987). Translating puns. Possibilities and restraints. New Comparison 3: 43–159.Google Scholar
. (1994). Focus on the pun: wordplay as a special problem in translation studies. Target 6 (2): 223–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dore, Margherita. (2018). Laughing at you or laughing with you? Humor negotiation in intercultural stand-up comedy. In Villy Tsakona, and Jan Chovanec (Eds.) The Dynamics of Interactional Humor. Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters (pp. 105–126). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2019). Humour in Audiovisual Translation: Theories and Applications. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, John. (1964). The Novels of Samuel Beckett. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Forster, Leonard. (1958). Translation: An Introduction. In Albert H. Smith (Ed.) Aspects of Translation (pp. 1–28). London: Secker and Warburg.Google Scholar
Gentes, Eva. (2017). (Un-)Sichtbarkeit der literarischen Selbstübersetzung in der romanischsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. Eine literatur- und übersetzungssoziologische Annäherung, Ph.D. dissertation Düsseldorf: Heinrich-Heine-Universität. On-line: [URL]
Grutman, Rainier. (1998). Autotranslation. In Mona Baker (Ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp. 17–20). London-New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. (2013). A sociological glance at self-translation (and self-translators). In Anthony Cordingley (Ed.) Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture (pp. 63–80). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
. (2018a). The Self-translator as Author: Modern Self-fashioning and Ancient Rhetoric in Federman, Lakhous, and De Kuyper. In Judith Woodsworth (Ed.) The Fictions of Translation (pp. 15–30). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2018b). Introduction: from Italian Insights to Self-Translation Studies. Testo e Senso 19, 1–19. On-line: [URL]
. (2019). «La double dynamique verticale de l’autotraduction.» In Anna Lushenkova Foscolo, and Malgorzata Smorag-Goldberg (eds.) Plurilinguisme et autotraduction : langue perdue, langue sauvée (pp. 17–30). Paris: Eur’Orbem Éditions (Institut d’Etudes slaves de la Sorbonne).Google Scholar
Harvey, Keith. (1995). A Descriptive Framework for Compensation. The Translator 1(1): 65–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hersant, Patrick. (2017). Author-Translator Collaborations: A Typological Survey.” In Anthony Cordingley, and Céline Frigau Manning (Eds.) Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age (pp. 91–110). London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
House, Juliane. (1973). Of the Limits of Translatability.” Babel 19(4): 166–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hugo, Victor. (1887). The Romances of Victor Hugo: Les Misérables [transl. Charles E. Wilbour], vol. II, Boston: Little Brown & Company.Google Scholar
Huston, Nancy. (1996). Instruments des ténèbres. Arles: Actes Sud.Google Scholar
. (1997). Instruments of Darkness. Toronto: McArthur & Company.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. (1960). Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Thomas A. Sebeok (Ed.) Style in Language (pp. 350–377). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
James, William. (2000 [1895]). Is Life Worth Living? In James, Pragmatism and Other Writings. Edited with an introduction by Giles Gunn. (pp. 219–241). New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Jauss, Hans Robert. (1970). Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory. (transl. Elizabeth Benzinger) New Literary History 2(1): 7–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jung, Verena. (2002). English-German self-translation of academic texts and its relevance for translation theory and practice. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Katamba, Francis. (1994). English Words. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Koller, Werner. (2004 [1979]). Einführung in die Übersetzungswissenschaft. 7th ed. Wiebelsheim: Quelle & Meyer.Google Scholar
Leibold, Anne. (1989). The Translation of Humour, Who says it can’t be done? Meta 34(1): 109–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lievois, Katrien, and Pierre Schoentjes (Eds.) (2010). Translating Irony. Special issue of in LANS-TTS (Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies) 9. On-line: [URL]. DOI logo
Manterola, Elizabete. (2017). Collaborative Self-Translation in a Minority Language: Power Implications in the Process, the Actors and the Literary Systems Involved. In Olga Castro, Sergi Mainer, and Svetlana Page (Eds.) Self-translation and Power (pp. 191–215). London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mateo, Marta. (1995). The translation of irony. Meta, 40(1): 171–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Niculescu, Alexandru. (1973). L’autotraduzione: Un tipo particolare di traduzione.” In Bertil Malmberg et al. (Eds.) La traduzione: Saggi e studi (pp. 305–318). Trieste: Lint.Google Scholar
Nida, Eugene. (2000 [1964]). Principles of Correspondence.” In Lawrence Venuti (Ed.) The Translation Studies Reader (pp. 126–142). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Noonan, Will. (2013). Self-translation, Self-reflection, Self-derision: Samuel Beckett’s Bilingual Humour. In Anthony Cordingley (Ed.) Self-Translation: Brokering Originality in Hybrid Culture (pp. 159–176). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Patrick. (2017). Trilingual Joyce. The Anna Livia Variations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Oring, Elliott. (1983). People of the Joke: On the Conceptualization of a Jewish Humor. Western Folklore, 42(4): 261–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palmieri, Giacinto. (2018). Self-translation and orality: the case of bilingual stand-up comedy. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 26(3): 1–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. (2003). Tongue Ties: Logo-Eroticism in Anglo-Hispanic Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Regattin, Fabio. (2015). «Traduire les jeux de mots: une approche intégrée.» Atelier de traduction 23: 129–151.Google Scholar
Riffard, Claire. (2007). «Écrire en deux langues: l’expérience de Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo et d’Esther Nirina.» Études littéraires africaines 23: 35–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roesler, Stéphanie. (2016). Yves Bonnefoy et Hamlet. Histoire d’une retraduction. Paris: Classiques Garnier.Google Scholar
Sperti, Valeria. (2016). “La collaboration littéraire collaborative entre privilège auctorial et contrôle traductif.” In L’Autotraduction littéraire: perspectives théoriques, ed. by Alessandra Ferraro, and Rainier Grutman, 141–167. Paris, Classiques Garnier.Google Scholar
Stackelberg, Jürgen von. (1988). “Translating Comical Writing.” Translation Review 28: 10–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stora-Sandor, Judith. (1984). L’Humour juif dans la littérature de Job à Woody Allen. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandaele, Jeroen. (2010). Humor in Translation. In Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer (Eds.) Handbook of Translation Studies, Col. 1, 147–152. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2011). Wordplay in Translation. In Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer (Eds.) Handbook of Translation Studies, Vol. 2, 180–183. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venzo, Paul. (2016). Self-translation and the poetry of the in-between. Cordite Poetry Review 50(3): 1–6. On-line: [URL]
Wimsatt, William K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. (1946). The Intentional Fallacy. The Sewanee Review 54(3): 468–488.Google Scholar
Wisse, Ruth L. (2013). No Joke: Making Jewish Humor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zabalbeascoa, Patrick. (2005). “Humour and translation – an interdiscipline.” Humor – International Journal of Humour Research 18(2): 185–207.Google Scholar