Cover not available

In:Humour in Self-Translation
Edited by Margherita Dore
[Topics in Humor Research 11] 2022
► pp. 41–62

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 3
Punning herself

Nancy Huston’s puns in two self-translated novels

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de León
Published online: 13 October 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.11.03ric
Abstract
Plays on words, humorous or not, pose serious challenges to the translator, as Dirk Delabastita (1997), among many others, has stated. Self-translators know the intended communicative effect behind the puns, giving them a privileged perspective regarding their translation. This is the case with author Nancy Huston, born in 1953 in Alberta, Canada, and residing permanently in France since 1973. She started using self-translation consistently after discovering she could thereby improve her work, which regularly includes wordplays.
This work looks at puns from two of her earlier self-translated novels, comparing Huston’s English and French version to see how she deals with the complexity they entail. Following Delabastita’s typology of puns (1996: 128, 2014: 604), Huston’s puns are both vertical and horizontal wordplay, display paronymy and homophony as well as many more aspects. This chapter comments on cases of pun-to-pun translation, pun-to-alliteration, pun-to-no pun, etc. Huston herself claims she desires the two versions to be as alike as possible (Mi-Kung YI, 2001), and this article aims at confirming this.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A short biography of Nancy Huston
  • 3.Humor in translation
    • 3.1Priorities and restrictions
    • 3.2General theory of verbal humor (GTVH)
  • 4.The pun in translation
  • 5.Huston’s wordplays in translation
    • 5.1Pun to Pun
    • 5.2Pun to Non-pun
    • 5.3Zero pun to Pun
    • 5.4Pun to Other rhetorical device
    • 5.5Other rhetorical device to Pun
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Original Works by Nancy Huston
  • Works cited
  • References
References (31)
Original Works by Nancy Huston
Huston, Nancy. (1993). Plainsong. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1993). Cantique des plaines. Montreal: Lemeac; Arles: Actes Sud.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1994). La virevolte. Montreal: Lemeac; Arles: Actes Sud.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1996). Slow Emergencies. Toronto: Little Brown.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Works cited
Huston, Nancy. (1998). Cantique des plaines. Paris: Editions J’ai lu.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2002). Plainsong. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press L.C.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2002b). Slow Emergencies. New York: Vintage International.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2008). La virevolte. Paris: Editions J’ai lu.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
References
Anonymous. (26 February 2000). Une Canadienne à Paris, or is she? [URL] (accessed: 30 November 2020)
Argand, Catherine Argand. (2001). Interview Nancy Huston. Lire. [URL] (accessed 15 January 2021).
Attardo, S. & Raskin, V. (1991). Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model. Humor 4:3–4, 293–347. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore. (2002). Translation and Humour: An Approach Based on the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). The Translator. Vol. 8, No. 2, 173–194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beaujour, Elizabeth Klosty. (2014). Nancy Huston’s Danse noire. [URL] (accessed: 15 Jan 2021)
Chiaro, Delia. (Ed.). (2010). Translation, Humour and Literature Volume I. Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Danby, Nicola. (2004). The Space between: Self-translator Nancy Huston’s Limbes/Limbo. La linguistique. 2004/1, Vol. 40, 83–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delabastita, Dirk. (1996). Introduction. The Translator, 2:2, 127–139. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1997). Introduction. Traductio: Essays on Punning and Translation. In Dirk Delabastita, (Ed.), Kindle ed., Special Issue of Target 12(1), 161–166.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2014). Wordplay as a translation problem: A linguistic perspective. In H. Kittel, A. P. Frank, N. Greiner, T. Hermans, W. Koller, J. Lambert, F. Paul (Eds.), Übersetzung, Translation, Traduction (pp. 600–606). Berlin, Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. [URL] (accessed: 21 Jan, 2021)
Dore, Margherita. (2019). Humour in Audiovisual Translation: Theories and Applications. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dorfman, Ariel. (2002). Resisting Hybridity. In D. Balderstone & M. E. Schwarz (Eds.) Voice-Overs. Translation and Latin American Literature (pp. 55–57). Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentes, Eva. (2020). Bibliography on Self-Translation. [URL] (accessed: 20 January 2021)
Huston, Nancy. (2002c). Losing North: Musings on Land, Tongue and Self. Toronto: McArthur & Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein-Lataud, Christine. (1996). Les voix parallèles de Nancy Huston [The parallel voices of Nancy Huston]. TTR: traduction, terminologie, rédaction, vol. 9, n° 1, 211–231. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morreall, John. (2020). Philosophy of Humor. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. [URL] (accessed: 30 April 2021)
Santoyo, Julio César. (2005). Autotraducciones: Una perspectiva histórica [Self-translation: A historical perspective]. Meta: journal des traducteurs / Meta: Translators’ Journal, vol. 50, n° 3, 858–867. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Santoyo, Julio–César. (2013). Autotraducciones: ensayo de tipología [Self-translation: An essay on typology]. In P. M. Alba, J. A. Albaladejo Martínez & M. Pulido (Eds.) Al humanista, traductor y maestro Miguel Ángel Vega Cernuda (pp. 205–221). Madrid: Dykinson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shread, Carolyn. (1998). An Interview with Nancy Huston. Sites: The Journal of 20th-Century Contemporary French Studies. 2.2 (Fall), 246–252.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vandaele, Jeroen. (2011). Wordplay in translation. In Y. Gambier and L. van Doorslaer (Eds.) Handbooks of Translation Studies. Vol. 2 (pp. 180–183). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wigston, Nancy. Ca. (2001). Nancy Huston Unbound. Interview. Books in Canada. [URL] (accessed: 15 May 2021)
Yi, Mi-Kyung. 2001. Épreuves de l’étranger: entretien avec Nancy Huston réalisé par Mi-Kyung [Trials of the foreigner: interview with Nancy Huston by Mi-Kyung]. Horizons philosophiques, vol. 12, n° 1, 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zabalbeascoa, Patrick. (2005). Humor and translation – an interdiscipline. Humor 18–2, 185–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue