A Discourse Analysis of the Translation of Humor From English to Arabic in American Sitcoms

This paper describes the translatability of humor from English into Arabic. The study aims to evaluate the translation of verbally expressed humor—specifically universal, cultural, and linguistic humor—from English into Arabic in subtitling, with a particular focus on sitcoms, which serve as a rich source of humor. The research adopts a descriptive qualitative methodology, utilizing a comparative analysis of the script of Halloween (Season 1, Episode 6) from the American sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine (ST) and its Arabic subtitle translation (TT). Translation quality is assessed using House's (1997) model of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA). The analysis consists of three parts. First, it examines the ST and TT in terms of register and genre to identify covert errors. Second, it analyzes the translation of humor to identify overt errors. Third, it explores the application of covert and overt translation strategies. The findings reveal significant mismatches in the Arabic subtitle translation at the levels of field, tenor, and mode. These mismatches include lexical issues, such as translating informal terms into formal equivalents; cultural discrepancies, such as the literal translation of culture-specific references; and linguistic issues, such as the loss of humor and character dynamics. Moreover, the study identifies 22 overt errors, categorized as Not Translated, Slight Change in Meaning, Significant Change in Meaning, and Creative Translation. The results indicate that translators predominantly employed overt translation when rendering cultural and linguistic humor while covert translation was primarily used for universal humor. These findings have pedagogical implications for professional Arab subtitlers and translation students

American English · Arabic · Biology · Linguistics · Sociology · Humor Studies and Applications · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology · Subtitles and Audiovisual Media