Transcreating humour for (re)dubbing into Arabic:
Transcreating humour for (re)dubbing into Arabic:

creativity, register variations and meaning making between overt and covert dichotomies

Summary/Abstract: The transfer of humorous elements in audio-visual texts is a challenging task as verbalexpressions heavily rely on witty wordplay and are visually bound. To overcome such achallenge, the translator has to have two particular skills: creativity and a thoroughunderstanding of the context and/or intended meanings. This paper aims at investigating therealisation of humour in dubbing animation vis-à-vis register variation and creativity bycomparing the Egyptian dub with the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) re-dub of Disney’sMonster’s Inc. Drawing on House’s (2015) translation quality assessment model, the dataanalysis reveals that resorting to colloquialism as a covert translation strategy provided afunctionally adequate, nuanced leeway for the translator to capture the essence situationalhumour of the source text by relying on the on-screen visuals. Therefore, the translator quasiassumesthe role of an author to communicate interpersonal meanings as effectively andhumorously as possible. Meanwhile, resorting to the standard variation as an overt translationstrategy significantly deflated and sacrificed verbal humour due to the translator’s literal styleand Al-Jazeera’s ideological orientation that shuns functional equivalence for the sake oflinguistic homogenisation.

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