Translatin Puns from English to Bulgarian: Some Problems

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Translating Puns from English into Bulgarian: Some Problems.

Date Posted/ Submitted: 01.03.2019

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I declare that the work I have submitted for assessment is my own, except where appropriately referenced and acknowledged. It has not been used for any other assessment. I am aware of the University’s policies on plagiarism and academic misconduct.

When a translator is faced with an obstacle while translating, they would try to use one or more of the tools presented in the translation theories, be it consciously or unconsciously. No matter how experienced or how knowledgeable a translator is there is always a chance that they might come across something they find hard to translate. A pun is a type of joke that exploits the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings. Therefore translating them from one language to another is very problematic simply because of the difference in languages whether because of the difference in grammar, lexicology or even the culture. The present paper aims to point out some of these problems and how one could get over them.
The notion of untranslatability has been a subject for intense arguments among translators and translation theorists for a very long time. There are numerous theories on the topic developed by different scholars such as Sapir and Whorf, W. Benjamin, Chomsky and many more. Sapir divided texts into linguistic and non-linguistic. According to him, one language can describe only one culture; one cannot express one’s culture with other language than one’s native tongue. Thus, only non-linguistic texts can be translated, whereas linguistic texts should be rendered untranslatable. Whorf expanded this theory by explaining that that the language one speaks has a strong influence on the way one thinks, which can be directly correlated to the way one views the world. Therefore instant word-to-word translation is impossible; however some thoughts in the source language can be expressed in the target language. Benjamin opposed that theory by stating that all languages are connected which to him is not a matter of likeness or identities of origin but in "intentionality"
“languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express” (Benjamin 1996: 17).
Chomsky furthered that theory relying on his knowledge of grammar. According to him since phrases are conceived as structures in one’s mind, then it is possible for all languages to