Methods of transferring linguistic humor in J.K. Jerome’s novel "Three men in a boat ..." translated by Y. Lisnyak

 Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe to be false.

 Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

 Maxim of relation: Be relevant.

 Maxim of manner: Avoid obscurity of expression.

 Avoid ambiguity.

 Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

 Be orderly.

If any of the maxims is not observed, or is flouted, the hearer has to make so-called “conversational implicature”, i.e. an assumption about what the implied meaning is. If the implicature does not correspond to the intended meaning, ambiguity or incongruity occurs in the conversation. This result is often employed by writers to create pragmatics-based humour (Zemanová 29). In the following extract, Harris and J. have to sleep together in one bed and Harris asks his friend which side of the bed he prefers:

We tossed for beds, and Harris had to sleep with me. He said:

“Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?”

I said I generally preferred to sleep inside a bed. (Jerome 40)

Here Harris flouts the maxim of quantity and manner when he does not give enough information about what the inside and the outside refer to (he could say “the inside or the outside of the bed”), thus creating ambiguity (in the bed or on the floor, for example). Even though the intended meaning is clear due to the context, J. takes advantage of Harris’s flouting the maxims and makes an incorrect implicature in order to react wittily.

 The already mentioned phenomenon of ambiguity is closely related to puns and wordplay in general. Dirk Delabastita defines wordplay as “the general name for the various textual phenomena in which structural features of the language(s) used are exploited in order to bring about a communicatively significant confrontation of two (or more) linguistic structures with more or less similar forms and more or less different meanings” (in Korhonen 10). The ambiguity alone, however, is not the only trigger of humorous effect of wordplay. It is the context, either verbal or situational, that activates the resulting effect (Koponen 35).

 Wordplay is a powerful device for creating humour as it captures reader’s attention because it stands out from the surrounding text. Ambiguity contained in wordplay can occur on phonological, graphological, morphological, lexical and syntactical level (Ross 8). In Jerome’s novel lexical and syntactical ambiguities are most frequent. Syntax refers to “the way that meaning is created by the structure of words in a sentence” (Ross 20). Syntactical ambiguity occurs when there are two possible ways of grouping the words in relation to each other, as in this example:

For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin Captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) and soda-water . . . (Jerome 14)

The syntactical ambiguity here lies in the possibility of interpreting the phrase ‘thin Captain’s biscuits’ in two ways – the Captain was thin or the biscuits were thin. Jerome immediately explains what he means in brackets and thus draws attention to the ambiguity even more.

 Another source of ambiguity is the lexicon, or vocabulary, of a language. Lexical ambiguity can be based on polysemy, i.e. “the phenomenon of words having various, related meanings” (Ross 17) In the following extract, the three characters are sitting in their boat, being lifted by water in the lock and at the same time a photographer is going to take a picture of them. Suddenly, somebody tries to warn them against the danger of getting upset as the nose of their boat got stuck in the lock:

 As we stood, waiting for the eventful moment, I heard someone behind call out:

 “Hi! look at your nose.”

I could not turn round to see what was the matter, and whose nose it was that was to be looked at. I stole a side-glance at George’s nose! It was all right – at all events, there was nothing wrong with it that could be altered, I squinted down at my own, and that seemed all that could be expected also.

. . .

We looked then, and saw that the nose of our boat had got fixed under the woodwork of the lock, while the in-coming water was rising all around it, and tilting it up. In another moment we should be over. (Jerome 175 – 6)

The author plays with the word ‘nose’ which can refer both to the part of the face and the front part of a boat. Moreover, he reinforces the humorous tone of the situation by incorrect inference on the part of J.

 The phenomenon of idioms can be also exploited as a source of lexical ambiguity. An idiom is a group of words that should be perceived as a single unit as its meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words. Ambiguity occurs “if the group of words can be interpreted both as an idiom and as individual words” (Ross 18). The example below presents Harris using an idiomatic expression ‘to a T’, which means ‘exactly right’, and J.’s wrong inference that Harris talks about ‘tea’, i.e. a light meal eaten in the early evening:

 Harris, said, however, that the river would suit him to a “T”. I don't know what a “T” is (except a six-penny one, which includes bread-and-butter and cake ad lib., and is cheap at the price, if you haven’t had any dinner). (Jerome 16)

 Jerome K. Jerome also employs repetition of certain words as a form of wordplay, as in the following extract in which J. uses the expression ‘to give worlds for mustard’, meaning he desperately longs for a bit of mustard:

I don’t think I ever in my life, before or since, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted it then. I don’t care for mustard as a rule, and it is very seldom that I take it at all, but I would have given worlds for it then.

I don’t know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have had them all. . . .

Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard, too. It would have been a good thing for anybody who had come up to that spot with a can of mustard then; he would have been set up in worlds for the rest of his life. (Jerome 118)

 Pragmatics and wordplay represent a very effective well of humour, whether the device used is the gap between what is intended and what is inferred, flouting of any maxim of the co-operative principle, or the exploitation of the phenomenon of ambiguity. However, translation of these devices may be really challenging for a translator since the source language linguistic characteristics employed for creating humour often do not correspond to those of the target language.

5.2 Translation of Pragmatics-based Devices, Wordplay and Ambiguity

As for translation, the pragmatic devices – the gap between the sense and force of an utterance (i.e. the gap between what is intended and what is interpreted) and maxim flouting – do not represent any insuperable problem. What could become a stumbling block, however, is the necessity to create ambiguity in the target text since ambiguity is a phenomenon on which the pragmatic expedients of humour often build upon. Peter Newmark claims that “in all cases of linguistic ambiguity, the translator has to bear in mind that the ambiguity may be deliberate, in which case it is his job to reproduce it, even if it means expanding the original” (25). As the ambiguity in Three Men in a Boat is supposed to produce humorous effect, one can assume that the ambiguity is deliberate and thus should be preserved. Let us see what the Ukrainian translators’ solutions to the ambiguity in the already mentioned extract concerning the breakfast and the frying-pan are:

 “Begin with breakfast.” (George is so practical.) “Now for breakfast we shall want a frying-pan” – (Harris said it was indigestible; but we merely urged him not to be an ass, and George went on) – “a tea-pot and a kettle, and a methylated spirit stove.” (Jerome, 30)

Почнемо із сніданку. (Джордж такий практичний.) Для сніданку нам знадобиться сковорідка (Гарріс зауважив, що вона погано перетравлюється, але ми запропонували йому не бути віслюком, і Джордж продовжував далі), чайник та спиртівка. (Лісняк, 44)

 

In this example, the ambiguity is based on the phrase ‘for breakfast we shall want a frying-pan’ which can be interpreted as ‘we shall want to eat a frying-pan’ or ‘we shall need a frying-pan’. The Ukrainian translators opt for the Ukrainian word ‘знадобитися’ which in the phrase ‘для сніданку нам знадобиться сковорідка’ can be understood in two ways as well – as ‘we shall need it for using’ or ‘we shall need it for eating it’. Even though the misinterpretation is highly improbable (thanks to the context and the general knowledge), the translators succeed in retaining the ambiguity and the humorous effect.

 In the second example presented in this chapter, the task was surely more difficult:

“Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?”

I said I generally preferred to sleep inside a bed. (Jerome, 40)

-Ти  як любиш спати: від стіни  чи скраю? – спитав Гаріс.  – Бо я волію від стіни.

Я вдав, ніби не зрозумів тонкого натяку, і  сказав, що теж волію спати від  стіни. (Лісняк, 57)

Here the ambiguity lies in the words ‘the inside or the outside’ by which Harris intends to say ‘the inside or the outside of the bed’, but J. wrongly interprets it as ‘in or out of the bed’. As there are no words in Ukrainian that would allow the ambiguity to be preserved, Lisnyak drop the ambiguity and adapt J.’s answer following his own creativity.

 Puns and wordplay also rest on ambiguity. Translating wordplay can be a challenging task since it is often impossible to find a counterpart in the target language (Korhonen 21), as in the above example, and since the translator is bound to preserve it if s/he wants the translated text to have the same effect as the original. The difficulty of this task consists in the fact that “the translator must usually solve the clash between the demand of semantic adequacy on the one hand, and stylistic and pragmatic adequacy on the other hand” (Poláčková 90). As homonymous expressions of the same semantic content in two different languages are very rare, Poláčková suggests that, when translating wordplay, the translator should transpose the information invariant, i.e. the complex of semantic, stylistic and pragmatic information, into the target language text. This transposition is, of course, accompanied by necessary adaptations and adjustments that are carried out from a modification of a single expression to reorganising the whole text (90 – 1). In Delabastita’s view, “this leads to the paradox where the translator is able to be faithful to the source text in terms of its wordplay only through being unfaithful to the grammatical and lexical aspects” (in Koponen 43).

 According to Newmark, when ambiguity occurs within a lexical unit, the translator has several options of tackling it. First of all, s/he should attempt to retain the word with the same double meaning in the target language. If this is not possible, s/he may substitute a synonym with a comparable double meaning. The last two options are: distributing the two senses of one lexical unit over two or more lexical units, or sacrificing one of the two meanings (108). Leppihalme claims that when choosing a strategy for translating wordplay, the translator should also bear in mind the importance of different factors, such as the function of the wordplay, the expectations of the audience, and the norms and conventions of the target language (in Koponen 45).

 Let us see how the Ukrainian translator cope with the syntactical and lexical ambiguity contained in wordplay in Three Men in a Boat:

For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin Captain’s biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) and soda-water . . . (14)

Наступні чотири дні він жив скромно й безгрішно. Живлячись самими сухариками та содовою  водою… (Лісняк, 23)

The order of words in this case (‘thin Captain’s biscuits’) causes syntactical ambiguity since the adjective ‘thin’ can refer either to the Captain or the biscuits. Jerome, moreover, makes the ambiguity even more apparent by explaining it in the brackets. Lisnyak decides on leaving the ambiguity out, which, of course, deprives the text of the humorous tone.

 As for the second case of syntactical ambiguity, the translator use almost the same technique as in the previous case:

I begin to strike out frantically for the shore, and wonder if I shall ever see home and friends again, and wish I’d been kinder to my little sister when a boy (when I was a boy, I mean). (Jerome, 29)

Я починаю шалено рватись до берега, і думаю, що більш  не побачу своїх рідних і друзів, і шкодую, що в дитинстві так  знущався з меншої сестри. (Лісняк, 42)

The majority of instances of wordplay in the novel are created on the basis of polysemy which means that a word can have various, related meanings. It can sometimes happen that an expression with several meanings in source language has an equivalent expression with the same meanings in the target language.

Nevertheless, this is not always the case. There are much more instances in which the source language polysemous expression has no applicable counterpart in the target language, and thus are more challenging from the point of view of translation.

There is only one instance of ambiguity based on an idiom in the novel. The ambiguity in this example lies in the possibility to interpret the ‘T’ in the idiomatic expression ‘to a T’ as ‘tea’, a light evening meal:

Harris, said, however, that the river would suit him to a “T”. I don’t know what a “T” is (except a six-penny one, which includes bread-and-butter and cake ad lib., and is cheap at the price, if you haven’t had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit. (16)

А втім, додав Гаріс, йому самому Темза підійде «на всі  сто».

Я ніколи не розумів, що це за «сто» - сто пенсів чи сто шилінгів, сто дюймів чи сто футів, - але  так кажуть усі; отже, мабуть, і справді  це якесь дуже підходяще «сто».

Lisnyak employs the Ukrainian idiomatic expression ‘на всі сто’ and then fittingly recreates the following remark, only leaving out the brackets.

 It was already pointed out that translation of humour activated by pragmatic devices and ambiguity is a demanding work and that it is up to the translator to provide the target language readership with a meaningful text, preserving as many wordplays and ambiguities as possible, especially when a humorous text is in question. Ukrainian translator Y.Lisnyak manages to preserve the majority of instances of ambiguity by transposing the invariant from the original into the target text, sometimes at the cost of full naturalness and fluency in the Ukrainian version, however.

 

Conclusions

This study was performed in order to define and exemplify the leading humour devices in Jerome Klapka Jerome’s novel Three Men in a Boat and to present their Ukrainian translation, the translation procedures the Ukrainian translator employed and his final solutions.

 Translation of humour based on irony and reversal of situation should not constitute any substantial problems. The only obstacle that could make the translation more difficult is culture-specific irony which, however, is not present in the novel. Moreover, the mechanisms for creating irony in English are the same as in Ukrainian (e.g. overemphasis, contradiction, understatement, pretended innocence etc.), therefore, the translator was not forced to make any considerable changes in the text. He preserved the above stated mechanisms.. All in all, the translator maintained the effect of the irony in the novel, the irony ranging only in its intensity: Lisnyak stuck to the original and did not play with the language very much.

 In chapter three metaphorical language and its contribution to humour was explored. Two types of metaphor – stock metaphors (idioms) and original metaphors – and two categories of metaphor (simile and personification) were chosen to be studied. Metaphorical language was used in the descriptive, nature-depicting as well as humorous parts of Jerome’s novel. As the metaphors were not culturally based and involved only universally applicable symbols, their translations did not require any substantial changes or recreations. If there were any, they were the results of the translators’ own initiative, not of the necessity (for example, on the grounds of cultural differences) to recreate them. Peter Newmark suggested five approaches to rendering metaphors in translation, out of which three were employed by the Ukrainian translator. In the overwhelming majority of cases the strategy of translating metaphor using the same image was applied by the translator. As far as the translation of idioms (stock metaphors) is concerned, the translator either made use of Ukrainian idiomatic equivalents or opted for Ukrainian unidiomatic expressions with the same sense, both ways being equally successful. The categories of personification and simile were rendered literally for the most part.

 The linguistic device of register was also exploited to establish humour in Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. The author employed very formal register in inappropriate situations to exaggerate or to create irony, and informal register, including colloquial language used by the three characters and language of villagers, to characterise and mock the figures. The mechanism of juxtaposition or mixing of different registers could be also found in the novel. As for the translation of register, Y. Lisnyak chose standard, formal Ukrainian for translating all the register types. This approach worked when formal English appeared in the original as well; when the text was written in non-standard, colloquial English, however, applying standard Ukrainian didn’t spoil the original author’s intention to portray and mock the characters and impaired the comic effect.

 The last chapter discussed pragmatics-based expedients of humour, among them maxims flouting and breaking the cooperative principle which can lead to misunderstanding. Misunderstanding can be also caused by ambiguity, mainly lexical (polysemy) and syntactical as far as Three Men in a Boat is concerned. The phenomenon of wordplay was included in this chapter as well as it was very frequently built on lexical ambiguity. The pragmatics-based devices and wordplay are really effective sources of humour but also very difficult to deal with in translation. The very pragmatic devices, such as the gap between what is intended and what is interpreted or the maxims flouting, are not difficult to tackle; problems arise when the pragmatics-based humour exploits ambiguity. Translating ambiguity presents a demanding task as the source language linguistic features used ambiguously do not have to correspond to the target language ones and as homonyms of the same semantic content in two languages occur very rarely. Poláčková suggested that it is important for a translator to transpose the information invariant of the ambiguity-based humour and then make necessary stylistic and other adaptations.

 This thesis serves as an in-depth study of four principal humour devices present in Jerome’s novel Three Men in a Boat – irony, metaphor, register, and ambiguity and wordplay. It also provides the findings concerning the individual translators’ procedures, approaches, solutions and tendencies as well as comments on the renderings, though these are mostly subjective and are a matter of personal preferences. This work gives a deeper insight into the selected problems of humour translation and, as very little has been written about the translation of the expedients of humour so far, it could serve as inspiration for further research in this area.

 

References

Primary Sources

1. Jerome, Jerome Klapka. Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog. Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1946.
2. Джером, Джером К. Троє в одному човні (як не рахувати собаки); Оповідання/З англ. пер. Юрій Лісняк, Ростислав Доценко. – К.: Вид-во Соломії Павличко “Основи”, 2003. – 370 с.

 

Secondary Sources

1. Alvarez, Antonia. “On Translating Metaphor.” Meta 38.3 (1993): 479 – 90. Erudit. 5 March 2010 <http://www.erudit.org>.
2. Cuddon, J. A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms. London: Penguin Books, 1979.
3. “Henzl Vladimír.” Obec překladatelů. 2008. Obec překladatelů. 5 April 2010 <http://www.obecprekladatelu.cz/H/HenzlVladimir.htm>.
4. Koponen, Maarit. “Wordplay in Donald Duck comics and Their Finnish Translations.” Pro Gradu Thesis. U of Helsinki, 2004 <http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/hum/engla/pg/koponen/wordplay.pdf>.
5. Korhonen, Elina. “Translation Strategies for Wordplay in The Simpsons.” Pro Gradu Thesis. U of Helsinki, 2008 <http://www.snpp.com/other/papers/ek.paper.pdf>. Levý, Jiří. Umění překladu. Praha: Panorama, 1983.
6. Mateo, Marta. “The Translation of Irony.” Meta 40.1 (1995): 171 – 8. Erudit. 28 Jan. 2010 <http://www.erudit.org>.
7. McArthur, Tom, ed. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
8. Menacere, Mohammed. “Arabic Metaphor and Idiom in Translation.” Meta 37.3 (1992): 567 – 72. Erudit. 5 March 2010 <http://www.erudit.org>.
9. Montgomery, Martin et al. Ways of Reading. London: Routledge, 1992.
10. Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1988.
11. Newmark, Peter. Paragraphs on Translation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1993.
12. Nicholas, Jeremy, ed. Idle Thoughts on Jerome K Jerome. Great Barfield: The Jerome K Jerome Society, 2009.
13. “Novák Jiří Zdeněk.” Obec překladatelů. 2008. Obec překladatelů. 5 April 2010 <http://www.obecprekladatelu.cz/N/NovakJiriZdenek.htm>.
14. Poláčková, Milena. “On Some Problems of Humour in Language (With Regard to Translation from English to Ukrainian).” Philologica Pragensia 33 (1990): 80 – 93.
15. Richards, I.A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971.
16. Ross, Alison. The Language of Humour. London: Routledge, 1998.
17. Stříbrný, Zdeněk. Dějiny anglické literatury II. Praha: Academia, 1987.
18. Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London: Longman, 1995.
19. Vlašín, Štěpán. Slovník literární teorie. Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1984.
20. Yule, George. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.
21. Zemanová, Markéta. “The Literary Study of Humour in the Novel Three Men in a Boat”. MA thesis. Masaryk U, 2000.
22. Žáček, Milan. Email to the author. 21 April 2010.
23. Websites consulted
24. Bibliografie A. Tichého. 2005. Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky FF MU v Brně. 10 April 2010 <http://www.phil.muni.cz/angl/bib/search.php>.
25. The Huntley and Palmers Collection. 2003. Reading Borough Council. 5 March 2010 <http://www.huntleyandpalmers.org.uk/>.
26. Арнольд І.В. Лексикологія сучасної англійської мови. - М.: Видавництво літератури на іноземних мовах, 1959. - 351 с.
27. Бабенко, Л.Г. Філологічний аналіз тексту. Основи теорії, принципи й аспекти аналізу [текст] / Л.Г Бабенко. - Єкатеринбург, 2004.
28. Бойко, В.А. Істина в просторі художнього тексту [текст] / В.А. Бойко, О.Г. Постнов - Критика і семіотика. Вип.9. - Новосибірськ - Москва, 2006.
29. Влахов С. Неперекладне в перекладі. - М.: Вища Школа, 1986. -416с.
30. Федоров А.В. Основи загальної теорії перекладу. - М.: Вища школа, 1968.-396 с.