Translating humour in a Singapore young adult fiction: a case study of “The Teenage Textbook”

Abstract

Known for its humour, “The Teenage Textbook” is a best-selling Singapore young adult fiction that has been adapted into multiple forms of media such as film and drama over a span three decades. A translation of the novel into Chinese would not only help it reach out to a wider Chinese audience, it would also expose a foreign audience to Singapore culture and literature.

However, humour translation is not a simple task. This project paper identified some of the methods and literary devices employed by the author to trigger humour. Thereafter, drawing references from translation theories such as Newmark’s Communicative Translation, it discusses the translational challenges that were met in translating humour in the novel, and some of the strategies that were adopted.

Due to differences in culture and timeline, a reader of a translated novel may not be able to appreciate the humour expressed in a text, and a joke may easily fall flat when crossing culture and language. The use of wordplay such as puns and rhymes, which taps on the features of a particular language itself to express humour, adds on to the difficulty.

In light of the many translational challenges, a translator would have to balance between staying faithful to the meaning of the source text, and deviating from it in order to achieve the effect of humour on its audience. He or she would also have to tap on a diverse range of translation strategies to bridge the gap between culture and language.