Le Chat en Italie: un laboratoire de traduction

Abstract

Wordplay in French involves many aspect of the language (homophony, polysemy, concatenation, composition of portemanteau words), which make it hard to translate into other languages. Moreover, the constraints imposed by the context become even more decisive if this is determined by the picture of a comic strip. The translation of wordplay (puns, riddles, jokes ?!) in comic strips thus highlights the question of freedom and creativity in translation. This paper questions and puts to the test the three main constraints imposed in the genre of illustrated humour: a pragmatic constraint (producing laughter), a cultural constraint (establishing allusion) and an iconic constraint (respecting and involving the picture). It presents freedom in translation in terms of a cline, which can be measured and described. On this continuum, what is the point at which a translation becomes a transposition?