Cross-Languaging Romance on Screen

This chapter explores how translation can be used for comic effect. Of course, the comic effect is most readily found in mistranslation, mock- translation, and ineffective translation between characters that are brought together by the lack of a common language. The effect is intensified further when miscommunication occurs between lovers who speak in different languages. Therefore, the chapter examines films in which cross- language, cross- cultural and star- crossed couples fall in love despite a language barrier. The humor is lost, however, when the representation of translation (or, rather, of mistranslation) is based on the assumption of ignorance and a lack of sophistication, or serves to ridicule and to underscore certain cultural stereotypes. The chapter contextualizes the seemingly romantic juxtaposition in which lovers abandon their native languages for the benefit of universal human traits and an international language of love. Several films are examined, taken from different historical periods, and representing various models of “postcarding,” and “translanguaging.” In doing so, the chapter provides an ethical discussion of the translational equivalent of “trouble in paradise”: macaronic Italian, mixing romance languages, linguistic inauthenticity, and linguistic fetishisms which, much like many of the romantic infatuation by which they are contextualized, lead to complicated relationships.