On the translation of linguistic humour on the example of the Polish translations of Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

Abstract

Translation of linguistic humour is one of the most difficult tasks in translators‘ practice. The differences between languages open make it impossible to use the same mechanism in order to achieve a comical effect in translation. In order to create linguistic jokes in the literary texts, linguistic games are open used. One of linguistic games appearing in Milne‘s works are semantic games. These are based on synonyms and homonyms, some of them have a form of polyptoton. In the Polish translation of Milne‘s works three strategies were applied while translating semantic linguistic games. The most appropriate of them is recreating the original game in the language of the translation. Another solution is replacing the semantic game with a linguistic game of a different kind. In the translation of some of the games based on homonyms the sense of the original text had to be altered. Finally, some of the linguistic games were omitted in translation. This strategy should be recognized as inappropriate, because it makes the original text lose its comical character in translation.