A relevance-theoretic account of translating jokes with sexual innuendos in Modern Family into Spanish

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse jokes containing sexual innuendos in ambiguous utterances from the first two seasons of Modern Family and their translation into Spanish using relevance theory. More often than not, the ambiguity and sexual innuendos are also reflected in the Spanish vers...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Díaz-Pérez, Francisco Javier
Format: article
Status:Draft version
Publication Date:2021
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Jaén
Repository:RUJA. Repositorio Institucional de la Producción Científica de la Universidad de Jaén
OAI Identifier:oai:ruja.ujaen.es:10953/2845
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20017.dia
https://hdl.handle.net/10953/2845
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:ambiguity
audio-visual translation
humour
Modern Family
relevance theory
sexual innuendo
8 Lenguaje. Lingüística. Literatura
Description
Summary:The main purpose of this paper is to analyse jokes containing sexual innuendos in ambiguous utterances from the first two seasons of Modern Family and their translation into Spanish using relevance theory. More often than not, the ambiguity and sexual innuendos are also reflected in the Spanish versions analysed. Hence, in all those cases, in relevance-theoretical terms, the cognitive effects intended in the source text (ST), including humorous ones, will also be accessible to target text (TT) viewers. It, therefore, follows that the pragmatic scenario is preserved in the TT, sometimes at the expense of a sacrifice in the semantic scenario. In audio-visual texts, ambiguity may also impact the visual channel. Although in some cases the visual component may render the translator’s task difficult, in others it may act as an aid to both the translator and TT viewer, contributing to the yielding of humorous effects.