Keeping the reader laughing: translating puns and wordplay
Translating humour is a delicate art. A tightrope walk on the thin line between capturing the essence of the source language and drawing on idiomatic turns of phrase or references in the target language. Rachel Ward’s session invited participants to join her on that wobbly high wire.
Rachel, a literary and creative translator working from German and French into English, opened the session with a promise: to explore how translators can keep readers laughing in the same places as the original audience, or at least somewhere nearby. Easier said than done.
The format was refreshingly participative. After a brief introduction to what puns are and how they work – their mechanisms, rhythms and pitfalls – we broke into small groups to tackle the tricky business of transposing jokes from German into English. Rachel’s examples, drawn from children’s fiction and crime novels she had translated herself – Zippel: The Little Keyhole Ghost and Hotel Cartagena – offered glimpses into the daily challenges of a literary translator’s life.
Although some of the handout content might have worked better with fewer details and projected on slides, the group discussions gave the session a workshop feel. The room buzzed with quiet laughter and the occasional groan as we tested punchlines that fell flat, or came up with unexpectedly delightful twists.
As German isn’t one of my languages, I struggled to grasp some of the original meanings, but Rachel provided glosses in English for each one, and we were soon scratching our heads to come up with funny nicknames for a teacher called “Mr Ampemeier”. Some of the amusing pitches made included “Mr Amplifier”, “Mr Campfire”, and “Mr Pants-on-fire”.
Another puzzle involved finding a way to express the idea that a person was tough. The German source text contained a nod to the action film Die Hard featuring Bruce Willis and his lean, muscular appearance. This sparked debate on how faithful we should stay to the original, then took us on an amusing detour via breakfast and a euphemism involving sausages. Not for the prudish.
Overall, the session provided a candid glimpse into the translator’s internal back-and-forth: that familiar shuffle between fidelity and flourish. Rachel didn’t present her own solutions as gospel but rather as one plausible route among many. The group discussions circled the usual conundrums: when does a joke merit a full makeover, and when should we simply accept that it won’t work in the target language? And, for the daring, is there ever a case for slipping in a joke of our own when the source remains stubbornly humour-free?
By the end of the hour, we had tested our wits, rolled our eyes at bad puns and come away with a renewed appreciation for just how slippery humour can be across languages. Rachel closed with a useful list of resources for further reading, but the most valuable takeaway was experiential: laughter, like language itself, doesn’t always travel neatly – and that’s precisely what makes translating it such a fascinating exercise.
This METM25 presentation was chronicled by Ruth Simpson.
Featured photo by METM25 photographer Julian Mayers.