Translating wordplay

In this posting, I want to talk about the issue of translating wordplay, which is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing translators. My doctoral research on different, successive retranslations into English of Verne's Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingts Jours (Around the World in Eighty Days) (1873), offered several interesting examples of how different translators faced up to - or shied away from - the challenge presented by Verne's use of a pun which depends, for its humorous effect, on the specific linguistic resources of the French language, and is thus impossible to transmit intact into English. On the other hand, creative TL equivalents have been found to Verne's pun. Let us examine some of the approaches of the Verne translators, to rendering this notoriously difficult piece of wordplay.

Chapter 34 of 80 Jours contains a wordplay which, because of the material differences between the French and English languages, is impossible to reproduce literally in English while simultaneously achieving the same comic effect. Puns in general are notoriously difficult to translate, and highlight the unique effects of individual languages. On the other hand, the varying solutions which translators propose in order to render ST wordplay is revelatory of translatorial creativity, i.e. the ‘causa efficiens’.

Verne made this wordplay one of the central features of Chapter 34, in that it provided him with his chapter title: Qui procure à Passepartout l’occasion de faire un jeu de mots atroce, mais peut-être inédit. (Which affords Passepartout the opportunity to make an atrocious, though perhaps hitherto unheard of, play on words). (my translation).

This chapter title has been rendered by Glencross, in his 2004 retranslation of '80 Days', as Which provides Passepartout with the opportunity to make an appalling but perhaps original play on words. This continues Glencross’s lexically non-imitative but semantically faithful translation approach, but the issue of interest here is the pun itself. In the story, Fogg strikes Inspector Fix, with both fists, in retaliation for his having unjustly arrested him and thus jeopardized his prospects of winning the wager. At this point, Passepartout approvingly remarks: «Pardieu ! voilà ce qu’on peut appeler une belle application de poings d’Angleterre !» (Verne, 1997 : 276). In his endnote, Glencross explains that Verne has employed here ‘a play on the two homophones point (here designating a type of lace’ and poing (fist). The two meanings collapsed into the pun are, then, ‘a pretty piece of embroidery’ and ‘a well-thrown punch’. It is obviously impossible to replicate in English this wordplay, with its linking of two very different activities, lace-making and boxing’. (Verne, 2004: 248).

Glencross translates the above ST segment as: ‘Good heavens! That’s what I’d call a striking example of the benefits of an English education’, which is recognizable as a TL pun to the TL reader, and at this point of the TT, the reader is referred to the relevant endnote, which makes it clear that the ST pun is different, and which then explicates the original pun and explains why it could not be literally reproduced in the TT while still maintaining similar effect on the TT reader. This endnote therefore illustrates the translator’s semantic fidelity to the ST, the importance he attaches to explicitation, and his care to secure some type of equivalent effect where complete ST accuracy is not possible. Glencross thus makes his translatorial dilemma clear. Imitation of this pun is not possible, owing to the material cause of incompatible SL and TL resources. He therefore brings the ‘efficient cause’ of agency into play, by resourcefully creating an alternative TL wordplay, in an attempt to create analogous humorous impact (equivalent effect) through a TT solution which is necessarily non- imitative of ST meaning as well as ST form.

This chapter title has been translated by Butcher (1995/1999) as ‘Which Provides Passepartout With the Opportunity To Make an Atrocious Pun, Possibly Never Heard Before.' Here is the segment in question, viz. Verne's original, together with Butcher's translation, in a coupled pair:

« Bien tapé! !» s’écria Passepartout, qui, se permettant un atroce jeu de mots bien digne d’un Français, ajouta : «Pardieu ! voilà ce qu’on peut appeler une belle application de poings d’Angleterre !» / ‘Well hit!’ exclaimed Passepartout. Indulging in an atrocious pun, as only a Frenchman can, he added, ‘Pardieu! That is what you might call a fine English punch and judy!’

Both Butcher and Glencross, in different, individually chosen ways, create an alternative TL wordplay. They provide a necessarily non-imitative TL equivalent pun which secures comparable humorous effect. Lexical imitation in tandem with equivalent humorous effect is, in this case, impossible, owing to the causa materialis of SL/TL difference. Surprisingly, Butcher does not comment on his approach to translating this Verne pun in his Endnotes.

Butcher’s solution to this ST/SL verbal badinage, presenting as it does a significant translational conundrum, is arguably ‘closer’ to ST form in its representation of the term ‘punch’ which connotes semantically with the ST ‘poings’. Here, a word-for-word, lexically imitative rendering and a translation which secures equivalent effect through a humorous duality of meaning, are mutually exclusive, owing to the material cause of SL/TL contrasting lexical possibilities. Over the years, certain translators of TM have rendered this pun in a variety of ways, while others have chosen to avoid the challenge, thus omitting it. This has also meant their having to alter the chapter title as Verne’s chapter heading specifically refers to the wordplay about to occur.

Frederick Walter, a United States contemporary translator of Verne novels (though not of ATWED) has commented on this particular pun (personal communication, 2007): “To me, its (ATWED’s) biggest challenge for the translator is the all-but-impossible pun in Chapter 34”. In this connection, Walter comments in further personal correspondence (2007) that a translator should “strive for reasonable English equivalents’ of Verne’s stylistic traits, including his humour and figurative language. Verne often uses slang and idiomatic usages, sometimes toying with them for comic or ironic effect. It’s important to approximate that effect in the translation – which means that a given rendering may seem far from literal, simply because it’s working to parallel a joke, metaphor, colloquialism, turn of phrase, etc.”. Walter therefore seems to approve of norms of using non-imitative TL expression in order to secure equivalent effect, such as ST humour or ST metaphorical usage.

The ‘notoriously difficult’ (Walter, 2007: personal communication) ST pun is rendered by Webber, in his own distinctive manner, in his 1966 abridged translation of 80 Days:

«Pardieu ! voilà ce qu’on peut appeler une belle application de poings d’Angleterre !» / ‘What a beauty!’ cried Passepartout and added, making for the door, ‘One might say that the Fogg has cleared a way.’ The individual choice of TL expression in this Webber segment shows the primacy of the efficient cause of translatorial agency in this shift. However, though Webber has attempted to match the humour of the ST wordplay, other humorous elements of the replaced segment are omitted (‘bien digne d’un Français’; ‘un atroce jeu de mots’). Thus, through omitting the last-mentioned ST phrase, the result is that Webber’s TT does not explicitly draw attention to the pun, but allows it to occur spontaneously and speak for itself, as it were.

In spite of the general creativity of their translation, Robert Baldick and his wife and co-translator Jacqueline Harrison-Baldick, in their 1968 rendering of Verne's novel, do not provide a TL equivalent wordplay of their own imagining for the ST pun in Chapter 34 of ATWED; in this instance, surprisingly, they seem to have 'declined a creative opportunity', to borrow Malmkjaer’s (2008) phrase. Instead, they transfer the SL pun unchanged to the TT, with a footnote explaining the SL duality of meaning; this means that they provide a ‘descriptive equivalent’ or ‘functional equivalent’, to use Newmark’s (1988) terms. Newmark notes that this is technically the most accurate means of translating a SC-bound term (or, as here, a SL effect). Perhaps norms of accuracy superseded a desire to be imaginative, in this decision by the Baldicks.

Let me now move back in time, to Stephen W. White's 1874 highly accurate and imitative retranslation of this Verne novel. Did White's generally faithful approach to translating Verne, include a creative rendering of the famous ST pun? Here is the coupled pair in question, including the TT segment offered by White:

«Bien tapé !» s’écria Passepartout, qui, se permettant un atroce jeu de mots, bien digne d’un Français, ajouta : «Pardieu ! voilà ce qu’on peut appeler une belle application de poings d’Angleterre !» / “Well hit!” cried Passepartout, who, allowing himself an atrocious flow of words, quite worthy of a Frenchman, added: “Zounds! this is what might be called a fine application of English fists!” White does not attempt to provide an equivalent TL wordplay, so that ST humour is not fully reproduced. On the other hand, Butcher, through a non-imitative rendering, ‘punch and judy’, in contrast to White’s almost word-for-word translation of the ST pun, succeeds in transmitting Passepartout’s wit. The material cause of SL/TL difference in lexical resources means that a non-imitative, creative rendering is the only means of achieving equivalent humorous effect in the translation of Verne’s pun. Butcher thus also demonstrates his creativity and ingenuity in this shift. He is thus able to render ‘jeu de mots’ as ‘pun’, whereas White ‘under-translates’ it as ‘flow of words’.

To summarise this brief history of the translation of Verne's pun, we seem to find that more recent retranslators have been more inclined to offer a creative TL equivalent wordplay, while earlier translators, such as White, Towle, Desages, and even the Baldicks, have declined the creative opportunity of devising a TL original pun, though in many other ways, all of these people are resourceful, creative translators.

I wonder what these wordplay translational data might tell us about changing norms of translation over the years, from 1873 (the first Towle rendering of 80 Days) up to 2004 (the most recent complete retranslation by Michael Glencross). Why is that earlier translators shied away from rendering the pun creatively? Why, in contrast, have more recent retranslators been more proactive and creative in offering their own attempts at equivalent humorous, polysemous effect in the TL?

Does this change indicate that norms of translation have, perhaps, become more prescriptive of an approach in which all possible ST elements are rendered by some means or another, rather than continuing with a Victorian tolerance towards omission of certain ST components? Is it because earlier translators were under greater time pressure to deliver their translations to publishers? Were earlier translators less creative, less courageous perhaps, than contemporary ones? Did earlier translators feel they had less creative licence, liberty, authority, to depart from the ST? But the latter hardly applied to the likes of Towle and Desages, who used much non-imitative, florid, Dickensian, Victorian English, with regular embellishments and omissions, together with personal interpretations of parts of the ST.

No doubt there are multiple possible causal explanations. Dr Brett Epstein of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, in her blog on Translation Studies, has an interesting posting on wordplay to which I would now refer readers of this posting.

How might you, Reader, have translated this wordplay? Or do you have examples of other wordplay translations?