A creative approach for subtitling humour: A Case Study of the Political Comedy Veep

Abstract

When subtitling comedies bound to a national identity and targeting a cultural community, translators wonder to what extent humour can be adapted by means of creative translation strategies, as this modality is considered a type of vulnerable translation. The boom of video-on-demand platforms has brought a wide range of subtitled content and the number of users grow constantly, as well as their familiarization with this modality of AVT. This generation of viewers might be receptive to a new trend towards a more creative translation, as they are usually conversant with the original language and do not expect to read a "transcription", but subtitles that solve cultural gaps and ensure their amusement. For the purpose of determining whether a creative subtitling oriented to the target culture may offer satisfactory results, this study will analyse the Spanish subtitled version of Veep, an American satire comedy presenting a great amount of political terminology, cultural references and jokes that may not be understood by the Spanish audience. A categorisation of the types of humour will be carried out to assess the viability of their transfer. Subsequently, creative strategies used by the Spanish translators will be identified, to draw results that may provide a methodology for the translation of cultural and social audiovisual humour.