Fake Translations as Bilingual Humour

[Harold Schiffman]

There are some cartoons that illustrate some of these points on the
"resources" page
of the Consortium for Language Policy and Planning, at:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/clpp/images/cartoons/cartoons.html

A lot of them involve Spanish, but there are others, even Slovak, as well as
many just focusing on English.

One I'd like some reactions to is the one with the representation of Stalin,
saying "You're now mere steps away from Franglais taking its rightful
place in the Nation of Suspect Languages".  I found this cartoon somewhere,
but I don't remember in what context, and what it's supposed to
represent (except
perhaps something about Canada, because it mentions Rene Leveque.)  Any
insights about the history of this would be appreciated!

Thanks

Hal S.

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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/
>



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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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