Translating humorous literature from Vietnamese into Italian language:
Translating humorous literature from Vietnamese into Italian language:

an empirical study of humour reception

Summary/Abstract: The empirical study presented in this article aims to determine some of the linguistic andcultural elements that can influence the humour reception and to verify the applicability of theGeneral Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) to humorous literary translation. 60 Vietnamese and60 Italian participants had to read and rate the level of humorousness of excerpts taken fromthe Vietnamese novel Số Đỏ (Vũ Trọng Phụng, 1936) and its correspondent Italian translation(Il gioco indiscreto di Xuan, 2012). By comparing their feedback, it was possible to observe thatone is more likely to appreciate humour when one is not part of the categories subject toridicule/irony/satire; and that a direct contact with the original language and culture constitutesan important role in humour understanding and appreciating. Also, a comparison between therating that the Italian participants assigned to the official Italian translation and an alternativeversion allowed us to analyze the role of Language Knowledge Resource (GTVH). According tothe Italian participants, although the two versions of the translation, which share the first fivelevels of Knowledge Resources, were remarkably similar (as predicted by the GTVH), they weredissimilar in terms of humour and in readers' preferences. I therefore argue that, although theGTVH is a useful tool for analyzing and verifying the similarity between the source and targettext, it has proved to be impractical and not always reliable if we want to use it as a parameterof the translation of literary humorous texts.

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