The translation of idiolects and humor is always a challenge because it requires wit and creativity to maintain the same effect as the original work. A Confederacy of Dunces is a humoristic American novel by John Kennedy Toole, and it is well known for the characters’ different idiolects and the diversity of linguistic registers whose translation is not an easy task. In 2015 it was translated into Catalan for the second time after almost thirty years. In this article we study, firstly, the different
idiolects ...
The translation of idiolects and humor is always a challenge because it requires wit and creativity to maintain the same effect as the original work. A Confederacy of Dunces is a humoristic American novel by John Kennedy Toole, and it is well known for the characters’ different idiolects and the diversity of linguistic registers whose translation is not an easy task. In 2015 it was translated into Catalan for the second time after almost thirty years. In this article we study, firstly, the different
idiolects and registers to state whether humor is created by these or not, and, secondly, we
analyze their translation to see if the effect of these dialects is the same in Catalan than in English and if the result of the translation is realistic. To accomplish such objectives, on the one
hand, we have been researching among written literature about the American humor and the American dialects and, on the other hand, we have compared both translations and we have read
some articles about them. Once the study was done, the conclusion we reached is that humor is generated over all by the plot itself but also by the main character’s idiolect. Regarding the translation, some of the idiolects are well translated because they maintain the same effect as the original, but some others are not so well translated because the criterion followed by the translator is not the best appropriated to keep the original effect and to make them seem
realistic.
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