Humorous Tropes in Multilingual Films

This chapter provides an overview of the role translation plays when acting as a humorous device within the original versions of multilingual films. This humour often emerges from linguistic misunderstandings, whether accidental or intentional or else from bilingual characters, serving as linguistic intermediaries, who contribute to the comedic dynamics through deliberate mistranslations as they are designed for the original script and the performed version. Humour often emerges in diverse forms of ridicule reducing speakers of languages other than English to stereotypical clichés. Films in multiple languages tend to be set in the gruelling settings of war, espionage, or migration where linguistic diversity adds tension to an existing condition of human struggle, or else they act as a trigger for verbal misunderstanding that is likely to activate light-hearted comic confusion (Chiaro, Cross-languaging romance on screen. In Representing translation, ed. Dror Abend-David. New York: John Benjamins, 98–118, 2018). This binary opposition of conflict and confusion is, however, somewhat simplistic, as multilingual interaction is more likely to be fluid in the sense that both notions may well exist in a single filmic product, although within that same product when characters interact, each in their own language, either conflict or confusion is likely to emerge from one single exchange. This chapter mainly focuses on translation performed by fictional interactants, and I use the term ‘translation’ to include the tacit process of decoding and interpretation that occurs in a speaker’s and/or hearer’s mind when they take part in a conversational exchange that embraces more than one language. Such ‘tacit translation’ occurs by default as interactants need to make sense of what they are saying to one another. Focussing on fictional products, a distinction is drawn between accidental and deliberate misunderstanding, although belief is being suspended in such contexts and we are in the realm of the accidental-but-on-purpose. A variety of translation-based misunderstandings are examined as well as the role of bilingual characters who as language go-betweens can create humour through their deliberate mistranslations. There is also a discussion of the notion of mock language, gibberish uttered with the sounds, and a few random words of another language that is often employed for comedic purposes. I discuss some of the ways in which translation within multilingual films either tacitly or overtly plays a significant role in exchanges between characters. While being aware of numerous variables, the scope of this chapter is limited to providing relevant examples that have developed into recurring patterns over time, focusing on humorous tropes within multilingual films.