This article explores the phenomenon of stand-up comedians performing in more than one language, which poses the question of whether and how they translate their material. Past research on stand-up comedy emphasizes its conversational nature, sometimes at the expense of recognizing its content. Empirical evidence gathered from interviews with bilingual stand-up comedians, on the other hand, proposes that they perform a form of oral self-translation, which implies a tertium comparationis, the transfer of content. The notion of mental text, borrowed from ethnography, is then productively employed to define this content. As is then suggested, two types of memory, namely declarative and procedural, are involved in the memorization of this mental text. The declarative part accounts for what is repeatable across performances and is the part involved in conscious translation; its minimal content is identified in the punch lines. The procedural part accounts for variation, improvisation and interaction. A model of the oral-self translation process of stand-up is then presented. It is concluded that re-focusing on the (mental) text of stand-up comedy can provide a better comprehension of its translation, which in turn can add to a better comprehension of humor in a multilingual and multicultural context in future inquiry.