Transferts intersémiotiques et transfert des sens dans les comédies françaises sous-titrées en roumain

Abstract

The present article represents a study of humour in audiovisual translation. Our aim is to explore the way certain types of humour are translated from French into Romanian via subtitling of the comedy La ch’tite famille (English title: Family is Family), to identify the problems the translator encounters in the process of rendering humour in these audiovisual productions, to determine the existent solutions the translator can resort to in order to solve these problems. Rendering humour in audiovisual translation poses some challenges which are emphasised by the constraints specific of this domain and by the peculiarities of the type of audiovisual production under analysis. The transfer of humour from one language into another and its understanding in audiovisual translation can occur at nonverbal level (images, sounds and sound effects) and at verbal level (humourous expressions, wordplay) which are important elements in receiving and reproducing humour at intralinguistic and interlinguistic level. The semiotic content of the audiovisual production that contains four channels: verbal-auditory (dialogue, background noise, etc.), nonverbal-auditory (natural sounds, sound effects, music), verbal- visual (subtitling, any text that appears in the film like letters, books, newspapers, advertising, etc.) and nonverbal-visual (the composition of the image, the position and movement of video cameras, etc.) contribute to building the meaning and compel the translator to condense the elements transmitted in the message through a single dimension (the written text). Humour can be conditioned by the words that are used intentionally (wordplay) and unintentionally. Therefore, the mere substitution of these words with others like synonyms or equivalents is sometimes conducive to the loss of the humorous effect. The majority of the problems a translator may face also originate in sociocultural connotations. The strategies used by the translator in transferring humorous units of meaning are illustrated through examples from the French comedy Family is Family.