Beyond equivalence

The concept of untranslatability has gained renewed relevance in contemporary media environments, where increasing hybridity of linguistic, visual, and cultural codes challenges traditional notions of translation (Apter 2013Apter, Emily. 2013. Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. London: Verso.; Cassin 2014Cassin, Barbara, ed. 2014. Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon. Translated by Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ). In this context, translation cannot be understood merely as interlingual transfer, but rather as a situated discursive practice involved in the construction and negotiation of meaning (Fairclough 1995Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.; Venuti 1995Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London: Routledge.s).

In this sense, mockumentary provides a useful point of entry into the question of translation. As a hybrid and satirical genre, it depends on documentary conventions, wordplay, irony, intertextuality, and parody, all of which are closely tied to specific linguistic and cultural contexts (Roscoe and Hight 2001Roscoe, Jane, and Craig Hight. 2001. Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality. Manchester: Manchester University Press.). The difficulty of translating mockumentary, then, cannot be reduced to the search for verbal equivalence. It also requires attention to the ways in which language, cultural reference, and audiovisual form jointly contribute to meaning. This article explores these issues through a case study of Cunk on Earth (2022Brooker, Charlie. 2022. Cunk on Earth. BBC; Netflix.), written by Charlie Brooker and distributed internationally on Netflix. The series relies on humour built on the tension between documentary authority and epistemic incompetence, as well as on dense cultural and intertextual references. Its circulation through subtitling highlights the challenges of translating strongly language-dependent and multimodal humour.

Drawing on Audiovisual Translation and Critical Discourse Analysis, the study examines selected subtitling choices in Italian, French, and Spanish. The analysis shows that translational difficulties do not simply result in loss, but involve a redistribution of meaning across semiotic modes, affecting humour and discursive positioning. Untranslatability thus emerges not as an inherent property of the text, but as a relational phenomenon shaped by the interaction between translation, multimodality, and cultural context.