International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF TRANSLATION OF PUNS IN
ALICE ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Zahra Mohammadisalari
Kerman Institute Of Higher Education
email:[email protected]
Helene Behtaj
Kerman Institute Of Higher Education
Dr.Seyed Nezam-al-din Moinzade
Kerman Institute Of Higher Education
ABSTRACT
As linguistic devices of humor, puns have created lots of difficulties in the translation of literary
texts and many translation scholars have tried to find sets of strategies for rendering puns
successfully from the source text (ST) in to the target text (TT) the application of which has not
been studied in the process of translation of literary texts from English into Persian. To tackle the
problem, the present study attempted to apply Delabatista’s strategies (1996) for translating
puns in the translation of humorous puns from English into Persian in a literary text. In order to
conduct the study, according to the categorization of puns by Delabastita, puns in Alice
Adventures in Wonderland were extracted and analyzed with their three versions based on these
strategies. The results of the research showed that six out eight strategies proposed by
Delabastita were applied by Persian translators and it pun to non-pun was the most frequent
strategy .
KEYWORDS: pun, Translation, Literary text, Wordplay
INTRODUCTION
Pun has been appeared in literature since the time of Homeor (8th century B.C.), Shaw (1905:18)
defines this term as “a play on words; the humorous use of a word emphasizing different
meanings or applications. ” However, it does not seem appropriate to consider puns as merely a
humor device. According to Nash (1985:137), “we take punning for a tawdry and facetious thing,
one of the less profound forms of humor, but that is the prejudice of our time; a pun may be
profoundly serious, or charged with pathos.”
There has been a huge debate between translation scholars on translatability or untranslatability
of the pun. Whether it is possible to transfer the semantic and pragmatic effects of the ST puns,
which are rooted in specific characteristics of the SL and for which no counterparts exists in the
TT, has been a point of argument for many years (Delabastita, 1994).
44
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org There are not many people who have not heard the name of Alice, especially the one in the
Wonderland since the famous book Alice in wonderland by Lewis Carroll has been translated
into more than so languages over the century.
This article brings into focus the translations of this work that have gained a lot of attention in the
source language as well as in the target languages it has been translated into. It will explore Alice
in wonderland and more specifically the wordplay which is abundantly present in Carroll's
literary works. “Carroll plays with language throughout the Alice books many witty word play
that also provide ingenious insights in to the very nature of language, in to how language enables
the creation of wordplay and why it is so difficult to translate wordplay in to other languages”
(Weissbord, 1996,p.219).
This study aims at analyzing the state of wordplay in the Persian literary system by looking at
various translation of the selected children's work from different decades since 1970. It will be
interesting to find the puns in the source text and their extremely different translations in the
target texts, to investigate their frequencies in the translated texts.
Translation of pun is indeed a challenging and highly creative process for translators. Translators
are usually faced with the task of having to translate seemingly untranslatable pun without
reducing the effect. This task challenges translator’s potentiality for making creative solutions
(Ross,2004). As linguistic devices, puns have created lots of difficulties in the translation of
literary texts in a way that some scholars have considered puns to be an untranslatable part of
language (Delabastita, 2007a). Many translation scholars have tried to find sets of strategies for
rendering puns successfully from the source text (ST) into the target text(TT), the application of
which has not been studied well in the process of translation of literary texts from English into
Persian.
As Wohlgemuth (1998) stated:
The majority of translated works available in the market do not enjoy the specific characteristics
that are interesting to children. Their language is not the same as the way children talk and
children cannot connect to the characters as it is expected. Some of them seem unnatural,
unfamiliar, or boring to the readers. As a result, doing research on children literature translation
can help translators and publishers as well as decision makers to improve its quality (p.6).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Subtypes of pun
With respect to this, Gottlieb's and Delabastita's linguistically categorized wordplay could be
taken as the forms of pun. According to them, there are homonymy identical forms but different
words or a word which agrees with another in sound and perhaps in spelling, but differs from it in
signification: a word that is the name of more than one object; e.g. 'two', 'too' and 'to' or the
substantive 'bear' and the verb 'to bear'. Homonymy can be lexical, collocational, and phrasal,
that is consisting of two expressions pronounced the same way. Lexical homonymy creates single
45
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org – word ambiguity concerning its central feature at play. Collocational homonymy applies as a
word – in – context ambiguity whereas phrasal homonymy functions as clausal ambiguity.
The next form in the classification homophony, which indicates two expressions pronounced the
same way, and its central feature is phonemic ambiguity. It refers to a character representing a
sound. A word of the same spelling as another but derived from a different root and having a
different meaning e.g. to wind and the wind; to present and a present or bow (the front part of a
ship), bow (to bend) and bow (a decorative knot).
Another form is paronymy that involves two expressions pronounced and spelt in nearly the
same way and that has phonemic and graphemic similarity (Gottlieb, 1997,p.210; Delabastita,
1996,p.128) having the same or identical sound but differing in orthography and signification;
said of words; as all, awl; ball, bawl; hair, hare (Webster's). This is a second major type of
wordplay. The formal similarity is weaker than in homonymy but still strong enough for the two
words to be related to each other in the mind of the listener or reader (de Vries &Verheij, 1997,
p.76).
The last form is polysemy which refers to different but related senses for one two that happen to
have the same form (to which the name homonym is given). Sense of the same word is seldom
ambiguous in context, but the less specific the context, the greater the possibility of ambiguity.
From a theoretical perspective, the distinction between homonymy and polysemy (the repetition
of the same word in different meaning) is in many cases difficult to make. "there is an extensive
grey area between the concepts of polysemy and homonymy. A word like walk is polysemous
(went walking, went for a walk the dog, meadow walk drive), while a word like bank is
homonymous between at least bank for money and bank of a river. Only if the words concerned
show some semantic overlap will there be a pun, as wordplay, there will be a pun–to–pun
rendering" (de Vreis& Verhij,1997,p. 72).
Along with the forms listed above, the other two literary forms can also be considered as they
have to do with a play on words. One of there is malapropism substitution of "fancy" or
"pompous" words. Often opposite to the intended meanings or meaningless, for a correct word, a
malapropism (from French mal a propos, "ill to purpose") is an incorrect usage of a word,
usually with comic effect. The term malapropism comes from the name of Mrs. Malaprop, a
character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy. The Rivals, whose name was in turn derived
from the existing English word malapropos, meaning 'inappropriately',. Malapropism is
demonstrated in the following examples; "He's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the
Nile (i.e. alligator)."He is the very pineapple of politeness", (i.e. pinnacle)
(www.malapropism.co.uk). The other is simile – a comparison of two unlike things using like or
as – for example: Sue flits through life like a moth in a room of candles compares Sue to a
delicate, fluttering moth which is drawn to fire and raises an image of both delight and
confusion, perhaps also mindlessness and upcoming death or failure. Like a metaphor, a simile
can seem obvious, but it usually tells the hearer something about a character or setting if s/he is
willing to dig a little deeper (leasttern.com).
46
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org In addition to those types above, there is also a type of pun called "naming", especially in the
Hebrew Bible (The Old Testament). Many characters in the Scripture have names reflecting their
character or destiny in Hebrew, which creates a two fold meaning. Such name – giving puns that
'explain' a person's name have an obvious characterizing function, but they can also be used "to
amuse and sustain interest". For instance, Israel means he struggles with God, Jacob means he
grasps the heel (figuratively, he deceives), Isaac means he laughs, Abraham means father of
many. The Hebrew for man (adam) sounds like and may be related to the Hebrew for ground
(adamah); it is also the name Adam. The name of Solomon in Hebrew sounds like and may be
derived from the Hebrew for peace (shalom), his father king David said that Solomon will bring
peace to the nation (NIV Study Bible, 1997,pp. 10, 32, 33, 45, 601). The same thing is also the
case in Alice in Wonderland, where the name of Alice and some other characters in the book
describe their personalities. It is understandably very difficult to translate the wordplay and the
ambiguity between a common noun and a proper noun. On the one hand, they fulfill a significant
characterizing function, which the translator may be keen to reproduce. On the other, the
translator is very much limited by the near – impossibility of changing or replacing the names,
which are so deeply rooted in sacred tradition as to suffer little manipulation. It is quiet common
and reasonable, then, for the translator to use footnotes. This strategy allows the translator to
preserve the established names in the main body of the text, while doing justice to the name's
origin and the meaning in the annotation (de Vries &Verheij, 1997, pp. 84, 87, 88).
The two formally similar linguistic structures may clash associatively by being co – present in
the same portion of a text, which is called vertical wordplay, or they may be in a relation of
contiguity by occurring one after another in the text which is called horizontal wordplay
(Delabastita, 1996,p. 128). In horizontal wordplay the mere nearness of the pun components may
be enough to form a semantic confrontation. Also grammatical and other devices are usually
used to emphasize the pun. In vertical wordplay only one component of the pun is visible while
the other meaning is hidden and materially not in the text; so it has to be incited into semantic
action by contextual constraints. In cases where there is no pun, one looks for contextual clues to
remove 'irrelevant' associations, trying to find single and coherent interpretations. However,
when a vertical pun is the case, there is a double context that excludes this disambiguating
mechanism and requires double reading (Delabastita, 1996, p.129).
Having listed different types or forms of pun, it can be said that: Punning is possible in any
language insofar as it seems to be a universal feature of language to have words with more than
one meaning (polysemy), different words with the same spelling or pronunciation (homographs
and homophones). And words which are synonyms or neat – synonyms while having different
pragmatic meanings and evoking different associations. These features all exemplify the basic
asymmetry between language cannot be and are not expected to provide a separate sign for every
single object or event in the extra – linguistic world, of a language is capable of such one – to –
one correspondence with the world existed, it would be an extremely unwieldy and inefficient
instrument of communication, and an impossible one to learn in the first place, therefore,
language works with a relatively small repertory of signs (e.g. phonemes and words) that can
however be combined in a multitude of ways to reflect the complexity of reality. (Alexieva,
1997, pp. 138 – 139).
47
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org Translatability vs. Untranslatability of Puns
Punning is an ingenious use of homophonic and polysemous phenomena of language with an
intention to achieve special effects. As a rhetorical device with strong expressive power it is
widely employed in all forms of linguistic communication, ranging from daily conversation to
literary works, from advertisements to news reports, and from riddles to jokes. Since puns are
most common in English and Persian, both abundant with monosyllables, a convenient medium
for punning (Newmark, 1988, p.217), it is without doubt that a study on the translation of English
and Persian puns is of great significance and affords much pleasure. However, studies on the
translation of puns are quite scarce.
Newmark (1988, p.217) outlines some general principles for the translation of different types of
puns. For example, puns based on Graeco-Latinisms with near-equivalents in SL and TL are the
easiest to be translated, especially when they only embody a contrast between the words literal
and figurative meanings. ―If the purpose of the pun is merely to raise laughter, it can sometimes
be compensated by another pun on a word with a different but associated meaning (ibid.). Puns in
poems have to be sacrificed owing to the conflict between double meanings and the metrical
requirement. Puns with more emphasis on the sense rather than the witticism, e.g. a slip of the
tongue or spoonerism, have to be explicated in both senses in the TL. These principles, though
brief and sketchy, could be of some practical help to translators when dealing with puns.
However, it is believed by Newmark that “the translation of puns is of marginal importance”.
Among the few scholars committed to the study of puns and their translation, Delabastita (1996)
undoubtedly holds a prominent place. He proposes nine strategies for the translation of puns and
recognizes that the significance of puns lies in their intention, i.e. they are meaningful only when
intended to be so (pp. 131-132). But the different strategies proposed for the translation of puns
are more product-focused than process-oriented.
Crisafulli (1996) also discusses the conditions for the adoption of compensation in pun
translation. But instead of providing a systematic account of pun translation, his purpose is
mainly to justify Cary‘s avoidance policy when translating Dante‘s puns in the Divine Comedy,
giving consideration to the translator‘s ideology. Comparing sporadic studies of the translation
of puns, the voice on the untranslatability of puns seems to be much louder, which could mainly
be accounted for by the following reasons. “Firstly, the status of puns is never a secure one. Over
the centuries, puns have been struggling between acceptability and rejection, nonsense and point,
decency and obscenity” (Redfern, 1984, p. 1). The use of puns flourished in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries when ―direct and formal combats of wit were a favorite pastime of the
courtly and accomplished (Coleridge, 1969, p.250). The high esteem of puns is fully
demonstrated through their prevalence in various plays by Shakespeare, who employs puns to
add vividness to his characters and build up dramatic effects. According to Manhood (1957,
p.164), the average number of puns in a Shakespearean play is seventy-eight. But the status of
puns was somewhat lowered in the eighteenth century when the style of writing in England was
characterized by plainness. The nineteenth century saw a revival of puns by humorous writers,
most noticeably Lewis Carroll, whose famous novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fascinates
children and adults worldwide through its witty language, even today. However, despite
Coleridge‘s efforts to justify Shakespeare‘s puns through psychological analysis, and Byron‘s
48
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org attempts to revive Shakespearean wordplay (p.11), puns continued to enjoy a low status in the
nineteenth-century. Iran, on the other hand, does not boast renowned punsters like Shakespeare
and Carroll, and Persian puns are traditionally hidden in poems and two-part allegorical sayings.
As a result, there is even less attention focused on Persian puns than on English ones. Puns in
modern times are often applied in advertisements and news headlines to attract the precious
attention of potential customers or readers, instead of being seriously researched. Therefore, the
scattered studies on puns, either English or Persian, and their underlying mechanisms, have never
entered the mainstream of academia.
Secondly, the translation of puns has always been a hard nut to crack, because the double
meanings of puns are always the combined effect of phonological and semantic features,
which can hardly be kept when transplanted into another language, especially those
belonging to different families. The voices advocating the untranslatability of puns are not
weak in the field of translation studies (Redfern, 1984, p.2).
Although Jakobson (1959), a strong supporter of universalism, claims that all cognitive
experience can be conveyed in any existing language, and when there was a deficiency
―terminology may be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan-translations, neologisms or
semantic shifts, and finally, by circumlocutions, he has to admit that poetry, over which the pun
reigns, ―by definition is untranslatable (p. 238). Catford holds a more rational view of
translatability, which seems to be “a cline rather than a clear-cut dichotomy” (1965, p.93).
However, when classifying the limits of translatability into linguistic and cultural ones, he also
conveniently puts puns under the former category: “Linguistic untranslatability occurs typically
in cases where an ambiguity peculiar to the SL text is a functionally relevant feature—e.g. in SL
puns” (1965,p. 94). Reiss also states that “In translation, puns and other kinds of play with
language will have to be ignored to a great extent so as to keep the content invariant” (2000,
p.169). Egan (1994 as cited in Veisbergs 1997, p.163) is more pronounced when expressing his
view on the translation of puns: “being practically untranslatable puns effectively scotch the myth
of universality”. Such attitudes imply that there is no need to undertake thorough research into
the translation of puns and that any attempt to translate puns is doomed to failure.
Strategies for Translating Puns
Several scholars have suggested strategies for rendering puns .For instance, Newmark (1988)
,who has considered the translation of puns to be of a marginal importance has stated four
solution for translating puns:
1. If a pun is just mentioned to make the reader laugh, it can be compensated by another pun with
a different but related meaning.
2. In poetry puns are usually omitted due to the difficulty of their transfer.
3. When two senses of a pun are important, they can be translated by reproducing the senses in an
incongruous way.
4. When puns are stated to show a language or slip of tongue and when sense is more important
than the laughter, both senses must be translated and explained.
49
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org According to Delabastita, there are three possibilities where pun translation potential to be
recreated in other languages such as:
1. Between historically related languages, especially wordplay based on sound
similarity, for example, between Dutch and English.
2. Since it is rooted in extra lingual reality, wordplay based on polysemy can be
reduplicated with little loss even between historically unrelated languages.
3. Inter lingual borrowings common to both the target language and source language.
In this case, it does not matter which type of wordplay it is, for example those European language
that borrow Latin prefixes or suffixes. These are usually used as brand names or international
marketing strategy (1996, pp. 135 – 136). There might be some constraints due to the type of text
or discourse as well as formal, semantic and pragmatic constraints. For this reason, Delabastita
suggests that “it is likely to make a difference whether one is dealing with wordplay in a written
discourse as opposed to a conference speech to be interpreted simultaneously, or in non –
fictional prose compared with fiction, or in drama to be read vs. subtitled”(1997,p. 10). One
remaining fact he suggests is that “the technical difficulties are such that translators often have to
go out of their usual way to tackle the puns in a manner which they themselves, their patrons or
employers, and their prospective audiences will think is appropriate. It is well known that
translators always have to make decisions or choices weighing 'loss' against 'gain' and pondering
the pros and cons of some 'sacrifice' or other” (1997, p. 11). “The study of wordplay takes one to
the heart of the study of communication” (1997, p. 9). This claim exemplifies how the pun relates
meaning to form, intention to understanding, semantics to pragmatics, langue to parole, rhetoric
control to inept or purposeless expression, and cuts across virtually all genre or text type
distinctions. Yet, pun study has not drawn the attention it deserves by either professionals or
language experts. As translation studies are quite new compared to other disciplines anyway, it is
needless to say that there is not much work done in the field of pun translation.
It is hardly surprising that any systematic attention to wordplay and ambiguity in the theoretical
reflection about translation has also been of fairly recent date. This is not to deny the truism that
the notion of the pun's untranslatability has been around for a long time. Only recently have
various trends and schools of thought such as post – structuralism – mentioned above –,
psychoanalysis,
Marxism
and
pragmatics
dealt
with
this
issue
(p.9)
Especially in Persian, one can hardly find literature or articles on the issue. As much as every
translator has her/his own strategy in translating a written or oral text, which is mostly constituted
through experience, specific strategies might be determined for pun translation as a special
literary form. Below are some general applications rather than 'strategies' since in most cases the
translator choose the best possibility rather than choosing one of the listed strategies.
1. Pun – to – pun translation. When there is the same punning word, words or phrase found in the
target language, this strategy is possible but it is the least frequent despite obviously being the
most desirable. The translated pun in target language may be more or less different from the
original pun in terms of formal structure, semantic structure, or textual function (Delabastita,
1996, p. 134).
50
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org 2. Pun – to – Related Rhetorical Device. This strategy aims to reproduce the effect of the source –
text pun by replacing it with some word – play related rhetorical device. e.g. repetition,
alliteration, rhyme, referential vagueness, irony, paradox, etc.(P.200).
3. Situational pun. In order to make a pun more obvious to the reader "they add another
dimension to the verbal pun", which means within the content of the story the translator adds
word pictures or a descriptive phrase to help give a better understanding of the pun (p,216). A
pun may also be adapted to the local setting to maintain the effect of it (Gottlieb, 1997, p.210).
4. Literal meaning, of both of the meanings cannot be translated, the translator may choose the
literal meaning and disregard the second meaning, and thus lose the pun. In this case, the pun is
rendered verbatim. In doing so, the translator simply keeps the pun as it is and assumes that the
reader will grasp it some how. This type of translation for surface meaning, causing 'loss' of
connotation and associations vital to the wordplay, occurs relatively often (Von Flotow, 1997, p.
51).
5. Footnote. One possibility is to add footnotes to explain the pun or to give the reader an idea of
the original pun intended (1997, p. 55).
6. Compensation. If a pun is unable to be translated, a translator will sometimes insert puns of
her/his own or try to gain pun by the use of another word or word phrase. As long as the
"information content" (Lefevere, 1992, p. 52) or the overall picture being drawn stays the same, it
is possible to use this strategy. In this case, totally new textual material is added to produce some
kind of wordplay, and it has no apparent precedent or justification in the source text except as a
compensatory device (Delabastita, 1996, p. 134).
7. Manipulative translation. For the sake of giving the story a different understanding than what
the author has originally intended, the translator may ignore the pun and just translate the
appropriate meaning according to her/his preference in the story, no matter if the pun is
translatable or not (Lefevere, 1992, p.55).
8. Non – translation. In the occasion where the option 'l' is not possible at all, this might be the
preference of the translator. The target language to be translated into must have the same word or
phrase that has the same two meanings as the original text. If there is not one on the target
language, then the pun is rendered by a non – punning phrase which has rescue both senses of it
but in a non – punning conjunction, or select one of the senses at the cost of suppressing the
other. Yet the pun may irreparably be lost of both components of the pun are translated beyond
recognition.
9. Pun – to – zero. In this preference, the translator simply omits the part where the pun takes
place.
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International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
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Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Are the suggested strategies of Delabastita applied in the process of translating English puns
into Persian in literary text?
2. If the strategies are applied, which one of them has been more frequently used?
METHODOLOGY
Corpus
To investigate the extent the translators have used the strategies proposed by Delabastita, a book
titled “Alice Adventures in Wonderland” written by Lewis Carroll (2003) in English was chosen
by the researcher. The materials used in this study can be divided into two groups:
1) An English full text children story of 150 pages, 653852 words published in 2003.
2) Three Persian translations of the source text by 1) ZooyaPirzad published in 2001,
Tehran: Markaz. 2) Mohammad TaghiBahrami published in 1998, Tehran: Nil. 3)
Hassan Honarmandi published in 1972, Tehran.
Instruments
For the purpose of analyzing the meaning and pronunciations of ST puns the study used Oxford
English Dictionary Second Edition and for analyzing TT versions Moein Persian Dictionary
(1997) was used.
Data Collection
The researcher analyzed different models, approaches as well as quotes and suggestions by the
scholars in the field of children’s literature translation and pun translation in order to come up
with a model for the translation of pun. The unit of investigation in this study was text. The first
step in data collection was to recognize and find puns in English text and its translations. As a
result, through such comparative reading of the source text and its translations, strategies utilized
by translators were discovered.
Procedure
Firstly, the researcher tried to recognize the puns in the source text to find their equivalents in the
target texts. Then each translation version is compared and contrasted based on Delabastita’s
(2008a) strategies for rendering puns to see if they have been applied. After specifying the
strategies applied by each translator, two tables are drawn which include the following data: the
number of times that each type of pun has been occurred and the number of times each strategy
has been applied.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Pun stated in the book Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland were extracted from the Stand
juxtaposed with explanation of their senses together with their types. Then, these materials were
accompanied by three TT versions of the ST puns, which were presented in a random order. The
applicability of Delabastita’s strategies for rendering puns was decided for each translation and if
applied, the strategy was identified .The number of each category of pun occurred in the ST, the
52
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org number of strategies applied, and the type of Persian puns used was provided in tables and finally
the results of the analysis were presented.
Discussing the results in terms of first and second research question
The first question of the present study deals with the applicability of Delabastita’s (2007a)
strategies. The study has found 40 instances of punning in the ST therefore witnessing 120
translations. All the translators had applied one of the Delabastita’s (2007a) strategies except in
some instances. Thus , regarding the first question of the present research, the findings shows that
the suggested strategies of Delabastita a are applied in the process of translation of ST puns.
Table 1 indicates the frequency of the strategy in analyzed data:
Table 1: Frequency of Delabastita’s strategies
No.
No.
1
No.
2
Frequency
Total
No.
3
20
No.
4
75
7
No.
5
6
1
120
No.
7
0
0
No.
8
1
No.
9
5
4
The second question of the study deals with the most frequent strategy applied by Persian
translators. The data gathered shows that the most frequent strategy which is used by the
translators, is the second strategy named pun o non-pun strategy with frequency of 55%. The
figure 1 shows this frequency based on percentage.
70$
62.5$
60$
50$
40$
30$
16.66$
Pu
n
$p
un
$
$te
ch
pu
ni
qu
n$
to
e$
$i d
en
5fi
ed
$
3.33$
rid
to
n$
pu
4.16$
to
$p
un
n$
pu
T$
no
n$
$ to
$T
$ze
ro
$
un
$p
Pu
n
$ to
$R
RD
$
n$
$to
pu
Pu
n
on
$n
$ to
Pu
n
st
$ to
$P
un
$tr
an
sl a
5o
n$
0$
0.83$
0$
$
0$
ed
i
1.66$
ze
ro
$
5.83$
10$
to
20$
Figure 1: the frequency of Delabastita’s strategies based on the percentage
The results of the analysis indicates conclusions related to research questions of the study:
53
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org The results has shown that 75 puns are translated based on pun to non-pun strategy, 20 puns
based on pun to pun strategy, 7 puns based on pun to RRD strategy, 5 puns based on Editorial
Technique, 1 pun based on zero to pun strategy, 1 pun based on pun to zero strategy and 4 puns
were not identified during translation and it indicates that the second strategy, translating pun to
non-pun, proposed by Delabastita (2007a) received the most frequency among 120 examples of
Persian translation.The employment of this strategies by Persian translators indicates that these
strategies are both acceptable and applicable in translation of ST puns into Persian.
Figure 2: Frequency of Delabastita's strategies for translating puns
The data gathered shows that 13 puns are vertical and 22puns are horizontal. The analysis
revealed that vertical puns have been translated into Persian mostly by second strategy, pun to
non-pun, while the horizontal puns have applied pun to pun strategy. This might be the result of
difference between structures of puns in Persian and English.
CONCLUSION
As it was mentioned before, the present study was investigated to answer to two different
questions. Firstly, the puns in the source text were investigated and extracted, and then a model
of translation of puns consisted of eight strategies based on Delabastita was selected to fulfill the
study.
In order to conducting this study “Alice Adventures in Wonderland”, one of the fantasy novels
for children and its three Persian translations were chosen. The researcher find 120 puns based on
definitions of puns discussed in previous chapters. From all 120 puns 75 puns are translated
based on pun to non-pun strategy, 20 puns based on pun to pun strategy, 7 puns based on pun to
RRD strategy, 5 puns based on Editorial Technique, 1 pun based on zero to pun strategy, 1 pun
54
International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 7 (1), September 2014; 44-­‐55 Mohammadisalari, Z., et al EISSN: 2289-­‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-­‐3245 www.ijllalw.org based on pun to zero strategy and 4 puns were not identified during translation and it indicates
that the second strategy, translating pun to non-pun, proposed by Delabastita (2007a) received the
most frequency among 120 examples of Persian translation.
Limitations of the study
“Many translators miss the instance of punning in the ST due to their linguistic and cultural
complexities; many translators find puns where punning has not been intended. It is the difficulty
of identifying the ST puns impossible” (Lefever, 2007). The fact that many act as an obstacle on
the researcher in the process of his analysis.
In addition, the corpus used for the present study is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which
although replete with instances of punning (Liskova, 2007), the book Alice Adventures in
Wonderland may not include all categories of puns stated by Delabastita (1987).
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