When humour and culture clash: Subtitling in Spanish Affair

Abstract

The translation of humour presents one of the most difficult and attractive challenges for translators. This is, in large part, due to the diversity of elements that can converge with a single function, to get a smile from the audience. Regarding audiovisual products, despite the concurrence of multiple codes, which may, in the first instance, be of assistance, this is not always the case when ideological and cultural elements come into play. This work aims to study the translation of humour in the film Spanish affair (Martínez Lázaro 2014), a comedy based on the culture clash between communities. From the analysis of the subtitling, we intend to contribute to the debate about the translatability of humour, paying special attention to those cases in which the cultural component is determining or, at least, extremely meaningful.