(Inter)cultural Humour: A Research on Dutch/American and Iranian culture in Humorous Fragments in Funny in Farsi

Abstract

In this thesis I will focus on the translation solutions of the humorous passages in the novel Funny in Farsi. In her article “Tekstanalyse en de moeilijkheidsgraad van een vertaling” Christiane Nord makes a distinction between four levels on which translation problems may occur: the pragmatic level, the socio-cultural level, the linguistic level and the source text specific level. Translation problems regarding humour fall under the category of source text specific problems, because the textual elements that have to be rendered are specific to that particular text. I have analysed four humorous passages and have come up with different possible solutions for each passage. In the conclusion, I explain why I have chosen for a certain solution. Patrick Zabalbeascoa has created a model for structuring joke-types according to binary branching. The distinction between unrestricted, international humour and restricted humour is one of the parameters that he introduces in his paper and I will use for this thesis. Zabalbeascoa combines Salvatore Attardo’s Knowledge Resources in the binary tree. I will use Zabalbeascoa’s and Attardo’s theory to analyse my translation solutions. I have analysed humorous passages of Funny in Farsi written by Firoozeh Dumas. Dumas, maiden name Jazayeri, moved to America when she was seven years old. Dumas said she wanted to write about her Iranian family and reach an international audience. Before I outline the theories of Zabalbeascoa and Attardo, I will focus on immigrant genre the writer Firoozeh Dumas and on the book. The final part of the thesis consists of the annotated translated and bibliography.