Preserving the Humour in Puns in Audio-visual translation from Spanish. Practical Solutions

Abstract

The article reveals specific features of the translation from Spanish to Bulgarian of some comic word games/ puns in the American television series Silvana sin lana, especially those based on polysemy and paronymy, neologisms and certain proper names. Based on the requirements presented in the audio-visual translation, several translation proposals are analysed, including different options for translation compensations aimed at generating the same comic impact on the Bulgarian public as the original version exerts on Spanish-speaking viewers. The results show that this objective, however complicated it may seem, in many cases is achievable, although with certain inevitable losses. Nevertheless, on other occasions the word games have practically disappeared from the target text both for purely linguistic reasons, and because of the limitations of audio-visual translation caused by the interpenetration of several codes of different kinds.