TRANSLATING HUMOR: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIES FOR RENDERING JOKES AND PUNS FROM ENGLISH INTO RUSSIAN IN TV SERIES “BLACK BOOKS”

ABSTRACT

This article examines translation strategies applied to two types of verbal humor such as puns and culturally-specific jokes from English into Russian, using the British sitcom “Black Books” as a case study. Drawing on Attardo’s general theory of verbal humor and Delabastita’s typology of pun translation strategies, the research analyzes two humorous instances. The findings revealed systematic patterns: hybrid wordplay-cultural jokes achieve partial translatability; formal linguistic puns prove structurally untranslatable. It was found that translation strategy effectiveness varies according to the cognitive and linguistic mechanisms generating the humor.

Keywords: humor translation; puns; jokes; Black Books; translation strategies.

INTRODUCTION

The translation of humor challenges even experienced professionals. Cultural specificity and pragmatic ambiguity create obstacles that technical texts rarely present. What makes an audience laugh in one language frequently fails to produce any response when rendered directly into another.

The British television series “Black Books” (2000–2004), created by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan, is a bright example of this challenge. The sitcom follows Bernard Black, a misanthropic bookshop owner, his assistant Manny, and their friend Fran. Its humor draws on verbal wordplay, cultural satire, and absurdist dialogue creating rich material for investigating how different humor types survive English-Russian translation.

This study aims to identify, categorize, and evaluate translation strategies applied to puns and cultural jokes. The analysis draws on Attardo’s general theory of verbal humor, Delabastita’s typology, and established frameworks of translation equivalence.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Defining humor: the general theory of verbal humor

Attardo’s general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) identifies six hierarchical knowledge resources. Language occupies the lowest level: lexical choices, phonological patterns, and syntactic structures. Narrative strategy refers to generic joke form. Target denotes the joke’s butt. Situation describes setting and characters. Logical mechanism comprises the cognitive operation reconciling incongruous scripts. Script opposition stands at the highest level.

This hierarchy has direct implications for translatability. Higher-level elements (script opposition, logical mechanism) are conceptual and more likely to survive translation. Lower-level elements (language),object of this study, are embedded in source language formal structures and maximally resistant to transfer.

A taxonomy of humor: puns and verbal jokes

Delabastita defines the pun as an exploitation of structural language features to produce confrontation of two linguistic structures with similar forms and different meanings. Translatability is consequently very low.

Verbal jokes consist of a setup establishing one script and a punchline forcing shift to an incompatible script. Translatability depends on whether script opposition relies on language-specific or conceptual elements.

Delabastita’s typology of pun translation strategies

The translator may render a source pun as a target pun (Pun → Pun). Alternatively, the pun becomes a non-pun, a literal, non-ambiguous phrase (Pun → Non-pun). The pun may be omitted entirely (Pun → Zero). This typology makes explicit what the Knowledge Resources hierarchy implies: puns exhibit the lowest translatability and demand the most creative strategic responses.

ANALYSIS OF HUMOR TRANSLATION STRATEGIES IN “BLACK BOOKS”

The corpus consists of two humorous instances from “Black Books”, organized into puns/wordplay and verbal jokes statements. Russian translations come from unofficial fan subtitle versions. The series was never officially translated. Translations examined represent amateur subtitling groups whose versions circulate on download sites and torrent trackers. Each example is presented with original dialogue, Russian translation, strategy identification, and evaluation of whether comedic effect is preserved, weakened, or lost.

Translation case studies

Example 1: The bookshop name (pun/cultural joke)

The bookshop name “Black Books” operates on two levels: as the shop owned by Bernard Black and the idiom “to be in someone’s black books” meaning to be out of favor, in disgrace.

The fan translation renders the name as «Книжный магазин Блэка» (Black’s bookshop). This falls under Pun → Non-pun. The translator restructured the entire name to serve a different communicative function.

The translation succeeds in its primary task. Russian audiences understand the shop belongs to a character named “Black” (transliterated as “Блэк”). However, the connotative and comic function is lost. There is no Russian idiom combining blackness, books, and disgrace. The fact that the shop’s name encodes Bernard’s hostile relationship remains invisible to Russian viewers.

Example 2: “999 rhymes with crime” (cultural joke/pun)

In S01E06 “He’s Leaving Home”, 00:09:10, Bernard reads a poster and then adds: “Help fight crime, dial 999. Is it 999 because it rhymes with crime?” [3] The mechanism is pun-like: Bernard exploits the accidental rhyme between “nine” and “crime” and also functions as cultural joke: the number 999 is the UK emergency number

Two Russian translations:

Newstudio: «Помоги преступника поймать, набери 999. 999 — это чтобы рифмовалось с ‘поймать’?» [4]

Ozz.tv: «Чтобы бандита обезвредить, звони 999. Номер взяли специально в рифму к слову ‘обезвредить’?» [5]

Both follow dynamic equivalence, replacing the source pun with a different target pun exploiting different linguistic materials while fulfilling the same comic function. Newstudio uses “поймать” (to catch) to rhyme with “девять” (nine). Ozz uses “обезвредить” (to neutralize) instead. Both translations preserve 999 rather than adapting to the Russian emergency number (112). The audience is expected either to know 999 is the UK number or infer it from context.

Newstudio’s “поймать” creates rhyme through the shared “-ать” infinitive ending. Semantic connection is strong: “catch a criminal” is thematically appropriate. However, the translation loses the original’s “crime/nine” perfect monosyllabic rhyme.

Ozz.tv’s “обезвредить” produces a more effective result. The rhyme is more phonetically striking because the longer, more complex word creates greater incongruity with simple “девять.”

Comparative evaluation of strategy effectiveness

The translation of “Black Books” as «Книжный магазин Блэка» represents structural untranslatability: failure imposed by irreconcilable differences between linguistic systems. The pun operates through a language-specific idiom with no Russian equivalent. This establishes a lower bound.

The translation of “999 rhymes with crime” represents partial translatability achieved through creative equivalence, constrained by cultural specificity. Wordplay can be reconstructed through equivalence, but the cultural reference imposes an audience-knowledge constraint no strategy can fully overcome. This establishes an intermediate band.

Classification according to Attardo’s Knowledge Resources supports these findings. Hybrid wordplay-cultural humor is partially translatable. Formal linguistic humor is structurally untranslatable when necessary linguistic materials are absent from the target language.

CONCLUSION

This study analyzed translation strategies for puns, culturally-specific jokes from English into Russian from TV series “Black Books”. Employing Attardo’s general theory of verbal humor and Delabastita’s typology, the analysis of fan-produced translations revealed systematic patterns in how different humor mechanisms survive cross-linguistic transfer. The “Black Books” translators achieved mixed results: Hybrid humor was partially preserved. Formal linguistic humor was largely lost. These mixed results are testimony to the genuine difficulty of the task: to maximize what survives the crossing, accept unavoidable losses, and ensure what remains is sufficient to make the audience laugh.

References:

1. Attardo S. Translation and Humour: An Approach Based on the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) // The Translator. 2002. Vol. 8, No. 2. P. 173–194.
2. Delabastita D. Traductio: Essays on Punning and Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1997.
3. Black Books: Season 1, Episode 6 [Electronic resource] // VK Video. URL: https://vkvideo.ru/video-2488159_166828439 (accessed: June 20, 2026).
4. Black Books: Season 1, Episode 6 [Electronic resource] // VK Video. URL: https://vkvideo.ru/video-108693066_171402988 (accessed: June 20, 2026).
5. Black Books: Season 1, Episode 6 [Electronic resource] // VK Video. URL: https://vkvideo.ru/video-234262892_456267490 (accessed: June 10, 2026).