4.1Language-based jokes

According to Allan and Burridge (2006Allan, Keith and Burridge, Kate 2006 Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 144), “[s]exual activity is tabooed as a topic for public display and severely constrained as a topic for discussion. The language of sexual pleasuring and copulation gives rise to a great deal of verbal play and figurative language”. Partly due to the fact that sex is associated with taboo, ambiguity is very often resorted to when a joke has a sexual content. In addition, as signalled by Blake (2007Blake, Barry J. 2007 Playing with Words: Humour in the English Language. London: Equinox., 39), “[o]blique references to sex often have a certain cleverness that would be missing from direct reference”. Ross (1998Ross, Alisson 1998 The Language of Humour. London and New York: Routledge., 65) says, in this sense, that one of the factors which makes sex, which is certainly a taboo, to be accepted in humour and which affects the audience’s response is “the use of euphemisms or innuendos rather than explicit language or taboo words”. Although she also says that the sex taboo seems to be universal, it is also true that there are cross-cultural differences in this respect.

As suggested by divergences, for example, in the classification of certain films in the United States and Spain, it could be affirmed that there are some cultural differences between the two countries regarding the public treatment of sex. Thus, for instance, some of Almodóvar’s films were initially classified as X-rated films in the United States, until a change in the American film rating took place precisely with one of Almodóvar’s films – Átame, or Tie Me Up Tie Me Down –, which initially received an X‑rating and was the first film to be rated as NC-17.66.See https://​elpais​.com​/diario​/1990​/04​/25​/cultura​/640994410​_850215​.html, an article which explains that Tie Me Up Tie Me Down provoked the change from X to NC-17 in film ratings in the United States. X-rated films were popularly associated with pornography, and therefore, X‑rating was replaced by NC-17, meaning “No One 17 and Under Admitted”. Similarly, the poster of another of Almodóvar’s films – Los amantes pasajeros or I’m So Excited – was modified for the American market to erase a couple who seemed to be having sex on the wing of a plane.77.See in this respect Díaz-Pérez (2014Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier 2014 “Relevance Theory and Translation: Translating Puns in Spanish Film Titles into English.” Journal of Pragmatics 70: 108–129. , 118). These cultural differences in the public attitude towards sex make it interesting to research into the translation of jokes containing sexual innuendos from English into Spanish or vice versa.

Ambiguity itself may give rise to misinterpretations and/or to incongruity, and, hence, to humorous effects.88.In a different type of context, misinterpretations and incongruity would not give rise to humorous effects. It is partly the fact that these misinterpretations or incongruity occur in a type of context in which a humorous outcome is expected that incongruity turns into humour. As regards translation, verbal ambiguity is normally reflected in the TT as well. Hence, the cognitive effects, and particularly the humorous effects, yielded in the ST will also be accessible to the TT audience.

The sequence in (1) involves a conversation between Gloria and the Dunphies – Claire and Phil – crowded with ambiguous utterances. The conversation in the scene takes place after Gloria goes to the Dunphies’ in order to apologize for an offensive e-mail message she had accidentally sent to Claire. When she gets there, she finds the Dunphies in dismay after their children walked in on them while they were having sex.

Ambiguity in this exchange is related to reference assignment, particularly of the pronoun it, and also to polysemy of several lexical items, such as hurt, ride or cupcakes, which gives rise to some polysemic puns. Other instances of wordplay are based on idiomaticity. Thus, in utterances such as It was bad, it was an accident; It happened to me before, with another woman; I was the one getting it; or And it hurt, the referent of the pronoun it is ambiguous. Whereas for Gloria the referent is the e-mail incident, the Dunphies believe that she is talking about their own incident with their children. Polysemy is the source of ambiguity in utterances which contain lexical items such as the verbs get, hurt, join, or ride, and nouns like cupcakes, all of which have an interpretation related to sex. Likewise, the idiomatic expression crack the whip has two simultaneous interpretations in this situation. Although the most accessible interpretation – and that intended by Gloria – is the idiomatic one, Claire and Phil interpret this phrase in a literal sense.

Several of the ambiguous utterances referred to above, then, contain humorous puns of two different types. In this sense, in Juckel et al. (2016)Juckel, Jennifer, Steven Bellman, and Duane Varan 2016 “A Humor Typology to Identify Humor Styles Used in Sitcoms.” Humor 29 (4): 583–603. , it is proved that the frequency of humorous puns in Modern Family is much higher than in other three situational comedies also focused on in the same study, namely The Big Bang Theory, Family Guy and The Office. Attardo (2018)Attardo, Salvatore 2018 “Universals in Puns and Humorous Wordplay.” In Cultures and Traditions of Wordplay and Wordplay Research, ed. by Esme Winter-Froemel, and Verena Thaler, 89–110. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter. defines a humorous pun as

a textual occurrence in which a sequence of sounds must be interpreted with a reference to a second sequence of sounds, which may, but need not, be identical to the first sequence, for the full meaning of the text to be accessed. The perlocutionary goal or effect of the pun is to generate the perception of mirth or of the intention to do so.(p. 91)

The utterances I was the one getting it; It hurt; we all know how you ride Phil, and maybe even taste my cupcakes contain polysemic puns, whereas the utterance you have to admit that you’re only happy when you’re the one cracking the whip includes an idiomatic pun. In the majority of these cases, there is also ambiguity in the TT. Thus, Y esa vez me dieron a mí; Y me dolió; Pero reconoce que solo estás contenta cuando tú tienes el látigo contain puns very similar to their ST counterparts, regarding both semantic content and the linguistic device that serves as the basis for the pun. In these cases, following Yus (2012Yus, Francisco 2012 “Relevance, Humour and Translation.” In Relevance Theory: More than Understanding, ed. by Ewa Walaszewska, and Agnieszka Piskorska, 117–145. New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing., 2016Yus, Francisco 2016 Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ), it could be said that the semantic scenario has been maintained – since the two senses conveyed by the original puns are also present in the TT puns –, and, in addition, the pragmatic scenario has also been preserved, both in terms of quantity and quality of inferential strategies and balance between the processing effort and cognitive effects. In the other two cases, however, there is no pun in the TT. It is true that in Todos sabemos lo que le haces a Phil there is a certain degree of ambiguity, as the verb hacer (“do”) in Spanish has a very wide meaning that could refer to almost any type of action, but there is no pun in the TT in this case. The punning lexical item cupcakes, which is used in English not only to mean “a cake baked from ingredients measured by the cupful, or baked in a small (frequently paper) cup,”1010. http://​www​.oed​.com ​/view​/Entry​/45878​?redirectedFrom​=cupcake#eid7758306 but also as a slang term meaning “women’s breasts,”1111. http://​www​.listaholic​.com​/138​-slang​-words​-for​-breasts​.html is literally translated as magdalenas, a noun which is not commonly used in Spanish to refer to women’s breasts. In this sense, the punning fragment could be said to be translated by means of a non-punning fragment. This translation solution would imply that the ST-intended cognitive effects – and specially the humorous ones – would not be accessible to the TT viewer. It is also true, however, that, considering the general content of the conversation, the situational context, and kinesics or body gestures (see Figure 1), the TT viewer could interpret that in this particular case, magdalenas could refer to Gloria’s breasts. If this were the case, the translation solution would be transference, as a TL lexical item would acquire a meaning it does not normally have and which corresponds to its SL counterpart. In Delabastita’s words, transference “imposes source language signifieds on a target language text” (Delabastita 1993Delabastita, Dirk 1993 There’s a Double Tongue. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi., 212).

Furthermore, different studies in the field of lexical pragmatics maintain that the meanings of words may be pragmatically adjusted and fine-tuned in context. Lexical broadening involves “the use of a word to convey a more general sense than the encoded one, with a consequent expansion of the linguistically-specified denotation” (Wilson and Carston 2007Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston 2007 “A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and Ad Hoc Concepts.” In Pragmatics, ed. by Noel Burton-Roberts, 230–259. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. , 234), whereas lexical narrowing implies “the use of a word to convey a more specific sense than the encoded one, with a more restricted denotation (picking out a subset of the items that fall under the encoded concept)” (Wilson and Carston 2007Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston 2007 “A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and Ad Hoc Concepts.” In Pragmatics, ed. by Noel Burton-Roberts, 230–259. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. , 234).1212.An example of lexical narrowing would be the use of the verb drink to refer to drinking considerable amounts of alcohol and an example of lexical broadening would be the use of the noun chameleon to refer to people who can easily adapt to their surroundings. As Wilson and Carston (2007Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston 2007 “A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and Ad Hoc Concepts.” In Pragmatics, ed. by Noel Burton-Roberts, 230–259. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. , 238) state, in this sense, a theory of lexical pragmatics may explain punning cases, such as those presented above. Thus, the interpretation of the lexical item cupcakes in its context, for instance, would be explained by lexical pragmatics within relevance theory by saying that it involves the construction of an ad hoc concept of cupcakes* whose denotation includes both cakes normally baked in a paper cup (cupcakes ₁) – literal meaning – and women’s breasts (cupcakes ₂) – metaphorical or figurative meaning –.1313.It is the standard practice to represent ad hoc concepts as starred concepts, for instance cupcakes*. For further discussion of ad hoc concept construction within the relevance theoretic framework, see for instance Carston (2002aCarston, Robyn 2002a Thoughts and Utterances. Oxford: Blackwell. , 2002bCarston, Robyn 2002b “Linguistic Meaning, Communicated Meaning and Cogntive Pragmatics.” Mind & Language 17: 127–148. ). This metaphorical or loose sense involves, according to Wilson and Carston, lexical broadening. As Wilson and Carston (2007Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston 2007 “A Unitary Approach to Lexical Pragmatics: Relevance, Inference and Ad Hoc Concepts.” In Pragmatics, ed. by Noel Burton-Roberts, 230–259. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. , 239) highlight, lexical adjustment, which is guided by expectations of relevance, may be a ‘one-off process’, by means of which an ad-hoc concept is created and linked to a particular context, probably never to be used again. Of the two senses in the ST pun, nevertheless, only the literal one is present in the Spanish TT, unless it is assumed that, at least for some viewers, the metaphorical one is exceptionally transferred in this particular situation to the Spanish noun magdalenas.

In the majority of the cases discussed so far, then, a word-for-word translation into Spanish has reproduced ambiguity in the TT. Thus, for instance, the translation of the sequence crack the whip as tener el látigo has yielded a congenial pun in Spanish, a pun which is based on the same linguistic device as its ST counterpart and which conveys roughly the same meanings (see Delabastita 1993Delabastita, Dirk 1993 There’s a Double Tongue. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi., 196). The translator took advantage of the fact that the relation between the signifier and the signified is almost identical in the SL and the TL in this case. Before adopting the translation solution, nevertheless, the translator had to metarepresent or analyse the cognitive environments of both the ST addresser and the TT addressee. The analysis could be summarized along the following lines:

The five cognitive effects derived by the ST addressee would also be accessible to the TT addressee without any gratuitous processing effort, since s/he would depart from the same assumptions. Therefore, not only the inferential steps, but also the balance between cognitive effects and processing effort would be very similar in ST and TT. As a result of the translation solution adopted in this case, the TT addressee will have access to roughly the same cognitive effects intended by the source addresser. Had the translator reflected the meaning without reproducing wordplay in the TT, the TT addressee would have had to invest less processing effort, but s/he would have also been deprived of deriving the ST-intended cognitive effects, humorous effects included. Therefore, the translation solution adopted may be explained by resorting to the principle of relevance.

4.2Language-based and culture-based jokes

There are some instances of wordplay that also involve culture-bound terms as one of the senses reflected in the pun. In these cases, following Chiaro (1992Chiaro, Delia 1992 The Language of Jokes. Analysing Verbal Play. London & New York: Routledge. , 87), it could be said that “jokes in which sociocultural references cross-cut play on language are the most difficult of all to render in another language.” This is the case, for instance, of Dick Butkus in (2),1515.This example is also dealt with in Díaz-Pérez (2017)Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier 2017 “The Translation of Humour Based on Culture-Bound Terms in Modern Family. A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach.” In Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación 9. The Translation of Humour/La traducción del humor, ed. by Juan José Martínez Sierra, and Patrick Zabalbeascoa Terran, 49–75. Alicante: Universidad d’Alacant, Universidad de Valencia, Universidad Jaume I.. corresponding to a scene in which the whole family gather at Jay and Gloria’s to watch an American football match. Dick Butkus is the name of a famous American football player, a linebacker. In this context, the phonological similitude with two parts of the male human body serves as the basis for a phonologic pun and, hence, for semantic ambiguity. Moreover, there is an additional phonologic pun based on the paronymy between Butkus and butt kiss. This ambiguity leads Mitchell, who knows nothing about American football, to misinterpret Jay, which gives rise to humorous effects.

The type of translation solution adopted in this case by the subtitler involves leaving ST words or sequences in their original forms, in the SL – English in this case – and it has received different names depending on the author: exoticism (Haywood et al. 2009Haywood, Louise, Michael Thomson, and Sandor Hervey 2009 Thinking Spanish Translation. A Course Translation Method: Spanish to English. 2nd ed. London & New York: Routledge.), loan (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2014), repetition (Franco Aixelá 1996Franco Aixelá, Javier 1996 “Culture-Specific Items in Translation.” In Translation, Power, Subversion, ed. by Román Álvarez, and M. Carmen Africa Vidal, 52–78. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.), retention (Pedersen 2011Pedersen, Jan 2011 Subtitling Norms for Television. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ) or direct copy (Delabastita 1993Delabastita, Dirk 1993 There’s a Double Tongue. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi., 1997Delabastita, Dirk 1997 “Introduction.” In Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation, ed. by Dirk Delabastita, 1–22. Manchester: St. Jerome.). It constitutes an extreme case of what Venuti (1995Venuti, Lawrence 1995 The Translator’s Invisibility. London & New York: Routledge., 20) called foreignizing translation. As put forward by Martínez-Sierra (2008, 237), the adoption of foreignizing or exoticizing solutions might increase the processing effort and, consequently, affect the derivation of humorous effects. Shared background knowledge is, therefore, particularly important in this case, as highlighted more than once (Zabalbeascoa 2005Zabalbeascoa, Patrick 2005 “Humor and Translation – An Interdiscipline.” Humor 18 (2): 185–207. ; Chiaro 2008Chiaro, Delia 2008 “Verbally Expressed Humour and Translation.” In Primer of Humour Research, ed. by Viktor Raskin, 569–608. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ; Martínez Sierra 2010Martínez Sierra, Juan José 2010 “Using Relevance as a Tool for the Analysis of the Translation of Humor in Audiovisual Texts.” In Los caminos de la lengua. Estudios en homenaje a Enrique Alcaraz Varó, ed. by José Luis Cifuentes, Adelina Gómez, Antonio Lillo, José Mateo, and Francisco Yus, 189–209. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante.). In Yus’s (2012Yus, Francisco 2012 “Relevance, Humour and Translation.” In Relevance Theory: More than Understanding, ed. by Ewa Walaszewska, and Agnieszka Piskorska, 117–145. New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing., 2016Yus, Francisco 2016 Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ) terms, it can be said that the cultural scenario has been promoted to the detriment of the pragmatic one, since the ST culture-bound term has been conveyed to the TT, even if the pun and at least one of its senses will not be accessible to the monolingual TT addressee. The monolingual Spanish viewer would not be able to derive the ST-intended cognitive effects – particularly humorous ones – and would wonder what the American football player’s name has to do with homophobia. In the dubbed version, on the contrary, the cultural scenario has not been preserved, as the culture-bound term is translated as el Ballena (“the Whale”), probably to make fun of Cameron’s overweight. However, there is no pun or sexual allusion in this case. The pragmatic and semantic scenarios, therefore, have not been maintained either. Besides, the target viewer might also wonder why Mitchell talks about homophobia in this situation.

The difference between the dubbed and subtitled versions in this case may be due to one of the defining characteristics of subtitling, namely its additive nature, following Gottlieb’s (1997Gottlieb, Henrik 1997 Subtitles, Translation and Idioms. Copenhaguen: Centre for Translation Studies, University of Copenhaguen., 141) and Pedersen’s (2011Pedersen, Jan 2011 Subtitling Norms for Television. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. , 113) terminology. The fact that, unlike dubbing, subtitling adds information (in the sense that both the ST and TT are present) also has important consequences for translation. The simultaneous presence of the two texts allows the viewer to compare both messages, something which is not possible in dubbing. This characteristic of subtitling led Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2014Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Remael, Aline 2014 Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. , 57) to consider it an instance of “vulnerable translation”, subject to the scrutiny of a target audience who might have some knowledge of the SL. Karamitroglou (1998Karamitroglou, Fotios 1998 “A Proposed Set of Subtitling Standard in Europe”. Translation Journal 2 (2). [available at http://​translationjournal​.net​/journal​/04stndrd​.htm], 6) states, in this sense, that according to certain studies in the psychology of viewing, when certain linguistic items are recognized by the viewers, they expect those items to be literally translated into the TL in the subtitles.

Similarly to (2), (3) also contains a pun in which one of the senses is a culture-bound term. Cameron, as an enthusiastic interim music director at a children’s school, gets angry at the criticisms of his partner, Mitchell. In this context, the verb Sondheim-ize is a newly coined word in which the morphologic base, Sondheim, is the name of a well-known American composer and lyricist, to which the suffix -ize was added to derive the verb. This new coinage phonologically resembles the verb sodomize, which implies a high level of taboo, not only because it refers to a type of sexual intercourse “characterized as unnatural or immoral, or otherwise culturally stigmatized; esp. (of a man) to penetrate the anus of (a person or animal) with the penis”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary entry,1616. http://​www​.oed​.com ​/view​/Entry​/183886​?redirectedFrom​=sodomize#eid but also, and more importantly, because the pronoun them, direct object of the verb, refers to children.

By providing a congenial pun in the TT, the cultural, pragmatic, and semantic scenarios have been preserved in the TT in this case. The source-culture bound term is also present in the TT, which, moreover, contains a congenial pun, reflecting the same senses or semantic layers as its ST counterpart. The degree of interpretative resemblance between ST and TT is very high, and the ST-intended cognitive effects, especially humorous ones, will be accessible to the TT viewer as well.

In (4), Luke is speaking to his mother about Heather, the receptionist at his father’s workplace. The most accessible sense of woody in this context is the sexual one, because of the set phrase give sb. a woody. However, later on, that sense is ruled out, when Luke mentions that Woody was his favourite character from the animated film Toy Story. This second sense of Woody is a culture-bound term. The initially selected sexual frame immediately afterwards turns into a children’s film frame. The concept that is activated first – woody ₁ (“an erection of the penis”) – after a reanalysis of the text is cancelled in favour of a more plausible interpretation in which woody ₂ (“character from an animated film”) is activated. Although this is a single-retention pun, the first interpretation lingers in the addressee’s mind and gives rise to humorous effects, inasmuch as incongruity and sexual innuendos are typical components of jokes. With regard to humorous puns in which the audience are misled to a plausible but incorrect first interpretation, Padilla Cruz (2015)Padilla Cruz, Manuel 2015 “On the Role of Vigilance in the Interpretation of Puns.” Humor 28 (3): 469–490. argues that their comprehension involves a set of cognitive mechanisms of vigilance, which lead the audience in their search for alternative interpretations. In his own words, “these mechanisms alert the audience to the punster’s jocular intention, which surfaces in the production of a text amenable to reinterpretation” (Padilla Cruz 2015Padilla Cruz, Manuel 2015 “On the Role of Vigilance in the Interpretation of Puns.” Humor 28 (3): 469–490., 469).

As far as the translations are concerned, in the subtitled version, the cultural scenario has been preserved, while the pragmatic scenario has not. On the contrary, in the dubbed version, the pragmatic scenario has been favoured over the cultural and semantic ones. The ST punning sequence is translated as Una vez me dio un mordisco (“Once she gave me a bite”), which is initially interpreted as “Once she bit me”, an interpretation with sexual overtones. However, immediately afterwards, Luke adds “she always orders a cheese sandwich I love”, in such a way that the initial interpretation is invalidated and replaced by one along the lines of “she offered me a bite of her cheese sandwich”. Consequently, in the dubbed version, as in the ST one, there is ambiguity and the TT viewers will, hence, follow very similar inference steps and will have access to some of the cognitive effects available to the ST audience, humorous effects included. Moreover, the balance between cognitive effects and processing effort is very similar in the ST and TT as well. As in (2) above, the additive nature of subtitling may have favoured a source-culture bias in the Spanish subtitles.1717.Other specific characteristics of subtitling which may affect the translation solutions adopted are time and space constraints, such as the maximum number of characters per line – 39 – and per subtitle – 78 – (see Díaz Cintas and Remael 2014Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Remael, Aline 2014 Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. , 85), as well as the maximum reading speed demanded from the viewer, which depends on the medium but oscillates between 15 CTS and 19 CTS. As regards dubbing, there are also constraints, such as synchronization or “one of the features of translation for dubbing that consists of matching the target language translation and the articulatory and body movements of the screen actors and actresses, and ensuring that the utterances and pauses in the translation match those of the source text”, as defined by Chaume (2012Chaume, Frederic 2012 Audiovisual Translation: Dubbing. Manchester: St. Jerome., 68). Section 5 will deal with another peculiarity of audio-visual translation that affects both dubbing and subtitling and which is derived from the polysemiotic nature of audio-visual texts.

5.1The polysemiotic nature of audiovisual texts

The most defining characteristic of audio-visual texts is their polysemiotic nature. As Gottlieb states, films are polysemiotic texts in which four semiotic channels can be identified: the non-verbal visual channel (i.e. the picture), the non-verbal audio channel (e.g. music and sound effects), the verbal visual channel (e.g. written signs, captions, etc.), and the verbal audio channel (i.e. the dialogues). All four may interact, but the interest of this paper particularly lies in the interplay between the visual channel and the audio verbal channel in the case of dubbing, and among the audio verbal, the visual non-verbal and verbal channels in the case of subtitling. Figure 2 below, extracted from Zabalbeascoa (2008), represents these four semiotic channels in a graphic way. The fact that audiovisual translation deals with polysemiotic texts, which involve both audio and visual semiotic channels, may have some consequences for the adopted translation solutions.

5.2Visual channel as an aid to the translator

Thanks to the polysemiotic nature of audio-visual texts, the image may be used as another element that may be exploited for humorous purposes. Ambiguity may also affect the visual component, which, in association with the verbal component, can be misinterpreted, as illustrated by Figures 3, 4 and 5, and by Example (5) below.

Phil had a poster made showing his own family, as portrayed in Figure 3, to wrap his van and advertise his real estate business. However, when the poster is actually wrapping the van, the Dunphies fail to notice that what can be seen on one side of the van is Claire’s picture together with the motto I can’t be satisfied and a phone number (Figure 4), whereas on the other side Haley’s picture appears next to the motto Let me make your dreams come true and the same phone number (Figure 5). What was designed within a real estate agency frame, therefore, becomes a sexual services frame for addressees of the messages contained in the poster, both TV viewers and passers-by that could see the advertisement on the van. Hence, the interpretation of the utterances I can’t be satisfied and Let me make your dreams come true depends on the frame or mental script that is activated. The most accessible one for by-passers was the sexual one, as reflected in the telephone conversation in (5) between Phil and a man who had seen the advertisement on the street. That conversation is crowded with utterances that have totally different interpretations depending on the frame which is activated, such as The carpet matches the drapes; you’re planning to flip one; or It’ll give me a chance to give them both a good scrubbing. This ambiguity involving a sexual interpretation is in general maintained in the TT. Reference assignment also contributes to ambiguity, as the pronoun one in the little one refers to “woman” or “house”, depending on the interpretation, and similarly, them refers to “the women” or “the houses”.

The sequence corresponding to the dialogue in (6) and Figure 6 (which portrays a frame within that sequence) also serve to illustrate ambiguity at the visual level. Regarding the verbal component, there is ambiguity in utterances such as be one with me, Jay; Now get your hands up there, like you’re lifting me off the ground; Just snap the damn thing; or that kind of hurt, all of which may have, apart from the interpretation intended by the speaker, also a sexual interpretation. This sexual interpretation is reinforced by the image, which, as mentioned above, also reflects ambiguity. Yus (2009)Yus, Francisco 2009 “Visual Metaphor Versus Verbal Metaphor: A Unified Account.” In Multimodal Metaphor, ed. by Charles J. Forceville, and Eduardo Urios-Aparici, 147–172. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. focuses on visual metaphors and maintains that the interpretations of both verbal and visual metaphors involve similar cognitive procedures. In both cases, Yus argues, the addressee will adjust the conceptual information and, in so doing, will generate an appropriate ad hoc concept. Likewise, in cases of ambiguity in the visual component, such as the one portrayed in Figure 6, it could be said that an ad hoc concept has been generated, so that the image may be simultaneously interpreted in two different ways. The real interpretation of the image, within an American football frame, coexists with another interpretation, within a sexual frame, which the viewer can access in his/her search for relevance and which yields additional cognitive effects, mainly humorous ones.

As put forward by Martínez Sierra (2009Martínez Sierra, Juan José 2009 “El papel del elemento visual en la traducción del humor en textos audiovisuales: ¿un problema o una ayuda?” TRANS. Revista de Traductología 13: 139–148., 147), although the visual component may complicate the translator’s task, in some cases it may become an aid to both the translator and the viewer. In Examples (5) and (6), the visual channel, rather than constraining the translator’s task, contributes to the creation of humorous effects.

5.3Visual channel as a challenge to the translator

In spite of what was said above, there are some other cases in which the image makes the translator’s task really difficult to such an extent that the ST-intended humorous effects may not be accessible to the TT viewer, the sexual allusion may be lost, or there may even be lack of intersemiotic cohesion in the TT. That is what happens in (7), which corresponds to the end of a musical show performed by Luke and his schoolmates at their school. To close this show, the kids were to display one letter each to form the phrase “We love the world”, together with the letter F (standing for Frankling Middle School), which would come down from the ceiling. However, Luke – who was to show the letter L – cannot land, since the machinery gets stuck, and when his mates start to raise their letters, what can be read is “We love the word”, which gets even worse when the letter F comes down, giving as a result “We love the F word”. Jaki (2016Jaki, Sylvia 2016 “ Sie haben feuchte Nüsse ‒ The Translation of Verbal Humour in German Subtitles of US American Sitcoms.” In Crossing Languages to Play with Words, ed. by Sebastian Knospe, Alexander Onysko, and Maik Goth, 357–378. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter., 377) refers to the polysemiotic nature or multimodal character of audio-visual texts as a restriction of the potential translation options at hand. However, the translator may decide to sacrifice intersemiotic cohesion. Thus, in (7), for instance, there is no intersemiotic cohesion between the visual component (what may be seen on the screen) and what may be read in the subtitles or heard in the dubbed version. For example, whereas the message formed by the letters held by the children reads We love the word, what the viewer of the Spanish dubbed version may hear is Queremos a mundo 1818.This is an ungrammatical sentence in Spanish, since it lacks the definite article. (“*We love world”), and what the viewer of the Spanish subtitled version may read is Amamos al mudo (“We love the dumb one”). Afterwards, the message We love the F word appears on the screen and in both versions it is translated as Amamos el judo by means of a caption. Therefore, in the subtitled as well as in the dubbed version, there is a lack of intersemiotic cohesion, between the multimodal verbal-visual semiotic channel and the verbal-audio channel in the translation for dubbing, and between the visual English semiotic channel and the visual Spanish semiotic channel of the subtitles. The Spanish viewer who has some knowledge of English, then, will be able to perceive that there is no coincidence between what is written in English and the Spanish translation in both versions. Moreover, since the F word has been translated as mundo [“world”] in one of the versions and as el mudo [“the dumb one”] in the other one, the sexual allusion has been lost in both cases. Concerning the humorous effects available to the Spanish viewers of both versions, in the subtitles the pragmatic scenario has been favoured over the semantic one, as a new pun was created at the expense of a sacrifice of the semantic content and of intersemiotic coherence. The new pun in Spanish is a phonologic one based on the paronymy between mudo and judo [see Figures 7 and 8]. Thanks to this TT pun, part of the ST-intended cognitive effects, and particularly humorous ones, will also be available to TT viewers of the Spanish subtitled version.