Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Help with dissertation please!
Poster: Max Deryagin
Post title: -
[quote]Kirsten Bodart wrote:
I think you'd need to be incredibly lucky with your target language to be able to translate it all, with the images. In a sense, puns are potentially easier if you can find a different expression that means the same.
Like the pointless one. Is it really untranslatable? Or might there be another Russian expression you could use to make a pun?
[/quote]
You could — in theory — come up with something decent for the "pointless" pun, but in the case of the Four Candles sketch it's impossible, because you are restricted by the visuals. If you see fork handles on the screen, you expect to hear something about fork handles specifically, and not something different that mimics the original. So yes, you need to be incredibly lucky with your target language to be able to translate even one such pun — but the problem is, the sketch blazes them away like a machine gun.
Topic: Help with dissertation please!
Poster: Max Deryagin
Post title: -
[quote]Kirsten Bodart wrote:
I think you'd need to be incredibly lucky with your target language to be able to translate it all, with the images. In a sense, puns are potentially easier if you can find a different expression that means the same.
Like the pointless one. Is it really untranslatable? Or might there be another Russian expression you could use to make a pun?
[/quote]
You could — in theory — come up with something decent for the "pointless" pun, but in the case of the Four Candles sketch it's impossible, because you are restricted by the visuals. If you see fork handles on the screen, you expect to hear something about fork handles specifically, and not something different that mimics the original. So yes, you need to be incredibly lucky with your target language to be able to translate even one such pun — but the problem is, the sketch blazes them away like a machine gun.
