Funny foreigners: sometimes not so funny and not so foreign

Abstract

The basic aim of this chapter is to survey the main contributions to the topic of audiovisual humour translation (AVHT) for the case of scripted multilingualism (authors like Delabastita 2002, Dore 2019, Bleichenbacher 2009), as well as to create awareness of its rich range of variables. This is done by selecting relevant ideas from scholars and representative selected samples from the audiovisual sources themselves, with analysis and commentary. Two factors stand out in the analysis of funniness and foreign languages: comprehensibility and strangeness or otherness. From this perspective gibberish is analysed in relation to non-native language use. Superiority theory and stereotypes are also focused on, as well as L3 as a form of wordplay and character portrayal. Two lists of variables are presented, one for humour translation (based on Zabalbeascoa 2005 and 2012) and one for language variation in AVT (based on Corrius and Zabalbeascoa 2011). Eight examples are analysed in depth. Mismatching is proposed as a label for a character’s traits that are inconsistent with expectations about that character. The conclusions include the observation that research into AVT of multilingual humour can make an important contribution to many other issues in translation studies, and not only translation studies but also humour studies, multilingual communication, multimodality, and film studies and discourse analysis. Finally, there is a point on how multilingualism, or more specifically L3, can include all sorts of language variation, not only foreign languages.