La traducción del humor en textos audiovisuales

The study of the translation of humour in audiovisual texts remains an issue that demands further reflection and empirical findings. Progress in recent years has been remarkable, although the intrinsic complexity of this matter, so rooted in tangled dimensions such as the cultural one, makes it necessary to restate what has already been presented, and even to adopt additional perspectives. This article is based on that premise, and is an attempt to take a further step towards understanding the mechanisms which have the potential to activate humour not only within the community in which it was created, but also in the one to which it has been transferred through a translation process. The central idea of this contribution is the consideration, based on the audiovisual field, of jokes as prototypes; that is, as entities in most cases composed of different types of potentially humorous elements that combine together and feed back in order to produce the effect that their author intended: humour. As will be seen, it is a comprehensive approach, capable of responding to the functioning of humour in the different modes of audiovisual translation. Moreover, its potential and applicability can be transferred to other types of texts, such as oral and written. The discussion will be illustrated with some examples from the popular television series The Simpsons.