Joke Translation and Carols

Joke Translation
One of the things we do to entertain ourselves on the pizza evenings is to tell one another jokes. However, I am increasingly finding that many English jokes are untranslatable into French. This is not because the French lack a particular style of humour that is peculiarly British. Indeed many class ironic humour as English and enjoy it. The reason is always to do with language and sometimes the problem is not very obvious.

Perhaps the simplest problem is where there is a play on words. An example is the joke where two doctors discussing a new nurse say she is hopeless because she gets things the wrong way round. One says he ordered a patient to be given two aspirin ten hours and she gave him 10 aspirin every two hours and nearly killed him. The other says he ordered an enema for a patient every 24 hours and he nearly exploded under the 24 enemas. So far, no problem (except for the patients!). The doctors suddenly hear an agonised scream coming from a ward, and here comes the translation problem. One doctor says: “Oh my God! I asked that nurse to prick a patient's boil”. I defy anyone to translate that punchline so that the joke stands.

Here is a much more subtle example. It's one of a series about blonds who, stereotypically, have no brains. Someone says to a blond: “Look at that dog with one eye”. So the blond covers one eye with her hand and says:”Where?” The translation problem lies with the preposition “with”. You can't really translate the first “with” by “avec” and so the joke loses it's point. Conceivably, adding “seulement” after the first “with” might do it but it's doubtful if the French would express themselves that way. They would most likely use “borgne” or “qui n'a qu'un seul oeil”; either way, the joke loses its point. I think prepositions are often the most difficult words in translations between languages.

More Translation Difficulties
Daniel has written a sketch for the Rue des Granges festival next summer and wants it translated into English. The theme of the festival is light. However, he warned me this evening that there are many plays on words in the script.

One such is on the word “ampoule”, which means both a light bulb and a blister in French. A similar double-entendre in English is not going to be easy to find. Another is the word “feu”, meaning fire or deceased, Again I can see real difficulties in translating that. It may be possible to find an analogy in English that would work but one that has to do with light...........? We shall see.

Christmas Carols
Friend Jo had the idea of singing Christmas carols, in English, French and Provencal, outside the Bar du Pont, the local old people's home and maybe one or two places more. It seemed like a good idea with people from the pizza evening and other friends and acquaintances all joining in. It has since become clear though that this an English, or certainly not a French, thing to do. One by one the French contingent have all excused themselves; they are happy to come along but not to sing. It never occurred to Jo (or to me) that singing carols in the street at Christmas might be an English peculiarity. Anyway, we have decided not to push against the tide and so have postponed the idea for a year or maybe forever. The reaction of the French surprised me because it was not so long ago that we all happily crooned away to French songs of the 1950s/60s in the Bar du Pont on one of our pizza evenings, as I described in a previous post. However, there seems to be a distinction between doing that inside the Bar and, more publicly, outside the Bar. Strange but true.