TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE COMEDY TALK SHOWS INTO RUSSIAN AND ITS FEATURES

Abstract

The article addresses the challenges of conveying the genre and linguo-stylistic features of British and American comedy television talk shows when translated into Russian. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that identifying translation mistakes in the translations of English-language comedy talk shows allows us to identify the main groups of possible translation challenges. The findings of the study will make it possible to improve the quality of education in the field of linguis- tics, translation studies and mass media space. Translated and adapted foreign entertainment audiovisual content has always been in demand on the domestic media market. One of the most popular types of audiovisual products is a comedy television talk show. This television genre is multifaceted both from the functional and content point of view. A comedy talk show performs informative, affective-evaluative and recreational functions. Besides, it combines a number of multi-genre segments (host’s monologue, interview, game), all aimed to entertain the viewer. The study material comprised the episodes of English-language comedy talk shows translated by amateur translators via voice-over. The study was aimed to identify possible challenges in translating comedy talk shows and to find ways to eliminate them. The content analysis method, the media-linguistic approach and the classification method were applied in the analysis. The study allowed to identify and examine the most frequent translation challenges such as the relationship between verbal and non-verbal components, the problems of conveying the comic effect, the speech characteristics of the show participants and culturally marked vocabulary, the need to comply with the norms of the chosen form of audiovisual translation. Strategies for dealing with the above challenges were also proposed and illustrated with examples. The results of the study may be used in theory and practice of audiovisual translation, as well as in translation studies and journalism.

Keywords

• audiovisual translation
• comedy talk show
• interview
• voicover
• amateur translation