Comedy in Brooklyn nine-nine: an analysis of the translation strategies of puns in the subtitles from English to Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) is extremely relevant in our current society due to the widespread quantity of movies, TV series and audiovisual materials produced every year. In this field, subtitling is especially relevant because it provides access to the various meanings in one specific language to populations worldwide. As comedy and culture are intertwined, comedic discourse is a major challenge for translators. Thus, this research aims to investigate the strategies used to translate puns in the seventh season of the sitcom Brooklyn nine-nine. The research question is: “In what ways are the translation strategies of puns in the subtitles of the seventh season of the sitcom Brooklyn nine-nine from AE (American English) to BP (Brazilian Portuguese) effective or not?”. To answer this question, we developed the following objectives: (i) to identify the puns in season seven of the sitcom Brooklyn nine-nine; (ii) to categorize the translation strategies used in these puns; (iii) to evaluate the result of the use of these strategies with regard to effectively conveying the multiple meanings and humor in these puns from AE into BP. We resort to the theorists Cintas and Remael (2014) and Delabastita (1989) to discuss AVT and subtitling. We refer to Gan (2015), Delabastita (1994), Cruse (2010), Khanfar (2013) and Attardo (2008) to elaborate on the issue of humor, wordplay and puns. At last, we rely on Delabastita (1994) for translation strategies, as well as some self-made categories in regards to the level of effectiveness in transmitting the humor in the BP translations. Results show that the translation strategies used were pun to pun, pun to non-pun, direct copy and pun to zero. Pun to pun and pun to non-pun were the two most common strategies and the pun to pun strategy was the only one effective in completely preserving humor in the translation.