Fake Translations as Bilingual Humour

[Alexandre Enkerli]

Nice!

Reminds me of well-known skits by Quebec humour group Rock et Belles
Oreilles (RBO). It was based on an actual news show with Quebec Sign
Language (LSQ) interpretation, done by a priest on a community tv
station. In this case, though, the funny part is in the fake LSQ which
gives  much subtext and uses a lot of puns. It's in Quebec French and
uses a lot of cultural references which wouldn't be understood outside
of Quebec.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbuVdWf0FoI

--
Alex
http://enkerli.com/



On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 06:12, eghoffma at umich.edu
<ehoffmanndilloway at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a good fake translation:
> It's a fake voice interpretation of British Sign Language, which is
> hilarious and nicely illustrates the fact that even sign forms
> motivated by iconic resemblance are not transparent if you don't know
> that language. I use this in class all the time.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvul3DC4l4E
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 5:30 AM, galey modan <gmodan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just a quick note about the Wayne's world Cantonese-with-English-subtitles
>> theme. I always interpreted it, not as a reference to Cantonese being a
>> 'compact' language, but rather as a play on old Chinese films with English
>> subtitles where people speak for minutes with only a few subtitles, giving
>> the idea that only a small portion of what's being said is actually being
>> translated.
>>
>> Galey Modan
>>
>> 2010/7/10 Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Does anyone know of interesting examples of language-related humour in
>>> the form of fake translations?
>>> Seems like we visited a similar topic at some point in the past. These
>>> queries often lead to interesting results, including for learning and
>>> teaching.
>>>
>>> Was just having fun with some fake translations, over Twitter. Did it
>>> for the fun of it, using pseudo-random phrases to translate "status
>>> quo ante bellum," the result of the Anglo-American War of 1812-15. It
>>> then got me thinking about how revealing these fake translations can
>>> be. In a way, it's impossible to make them both funny and culturally
>>> neutral. There could be a Jakobson angle to all this.
>>>
>>> In some contexts, fake translations constitute a form of
>>> exoteric-esoteric humour (as Bill Hansen called it). Exoteric-esoteric
>>> verbal art seems especially useful when looking at the negotiation of
>>> linguistic identity in contact situations. In other cases, it just
>>> reveals stereotypes about a language. As an example of such
>>> stereotypes, there's an example about Cantonese in Wayne's World
>>> (1992). In that movie, the subtitles for a few syllables of alleged
>>> Cantonese are rendered as several sentences in English, going with the
>>> idea that very complex thoughts can be expressed in Cantonese with
>>> just a few monosyllabic words.
>>> You can watch that fake translation unfolding at about 1:30 in the
>>> following clip:
>>> http://movieclips.com/watch/waynes-world-1992/wayne-speaks-cantonese/
>>> (I think I actually mentioned this one in the past. Not that I'm a fan
>>> of that movie but this joke did remain on my mind.)
>>>
>>> In Quebec, there was a series of jokes (some bordering on ethnic
>>> slurs) which were based on fake translations which were in fact
>>> humorous renditions of Québécois dialect. For instance,
>>> "mother-in-law" in Algonquin was allegedly pronounced as «elakawatch»
>>> which is Québécois for "she's there, watching." Part of the fun, in
>>> those, is that Québécois itself is treated as an "obscure language,"
>>> by its native speakers. Given relationships Québécois have been having
>>> with other Francophones, it's possibly not that trivial a form of
>>> self-deprecating humour.
>>>
>>> Of course, similar forms of humour can become political issues. Here's
>>> a (politically "conservative") reaction to a case involving
>>> (politically "liberal") Rosie O'Donnell faking an unnamed East Asian
>>> language with a series of utterances sounding like "ching chong":
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qINiw6ub5U
>>>
>>> Bilingual humour is much broader than just fake translations. For
>>> instance, it includes some apparently benign wordplay which is only
>>> understood by bilinguals. An Acadian example: "Where do lobsters buy
>>> their clothes? Homard-ware." («Homard» is French for "lobster" and
>>> "homard-ware" sounds like "Home Hardware," the name of a chain of
>>> hardware stores.) Not that revealing of important cultural issues, in
>>> my mind. But it could go with issues surrounding bilingualism in
>>> Acadian communities.
>>>
>>> Seems to me, a collection of fake translations would be quite
>>> interesting. We've often discussed lists of relevant movie and pop
>>> cultural references, around here. In this case, it could make for
>>> useful material on our site...
>>>
>>> Does anyone have some to share?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Alex
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Alexandre Enkerli
>>> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
>>> Concordia University
>>> http://enkerli.com/
>>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
> Assistant Professor of Anthropology
> Oberlin College
>