Translatability of Linguicomedy
a Contrastive Sketch: English, German, Romanian (ii)
The Comic of De- or Recomposing Idiomatic Meaning
Conf.univ.dr. Gina M ?CIUC?
Universitatea ,,?tefan cel Mare”, Suceava
Intentional decomposition of idiomatic meaning more often than not aims at achieving comic effects. The technique at work here is the superimposition of non-idiomatic meaning on the idiomatic one, which in turn triggers off the reaction phase of the listener /reader confronted this time with the real intentions of the speaker/writer. In other words 'the moment of truth' is also the one which helps reinforce the perlocutionary act.
Such is the case with the following brilliant address:
?It was a formal banquet, and the hands of the clock crept round towards midnight as celebrity after celebrity sought to be entertaining.
“Mr. Blank will now give us his address, which will, I am sure , be a pleasure for all of us,” said the toast-master.
Mr. Blank rose with his watch in his hand, held it up and said pointedly: “My address is 29 Clifton Street, New York City. I wish you all a very hearty good-night” – And departed to catch his train?
The imposing array of meanings of the verb give is single-handed warded off by the nominal constituent address with its two senses: " 1. details of where a person may be found and where letters, etc. may be delivered [...] 2. Speech or talk (to an audience)" (OALDCE: 11)
The reading of the function verb phrase employed above give a/one's address "address an audience" which most certainly prevails during the first phase obviously matches the second meaning of the noun address. Superimposition of this idiomatic sense on the non-idiomatic one – give (“hand over, […] as a present or gift”) + address (s. reading above), cf. Also Romanian (a da + adresa) – takes effect at the exact moment when Mr. Blank submits to the audience his home address in place of the speech which everybody expected him to deliver.
In this particular humorous sample the emotional pressure takes rather a long time to build up, since the linguicomedy is being felicitously added to by situational comic effects.
For instance, a detail which no doubt will arrest the reader’s/listener’s attention is the fact that Mr. Blank rose holding his watch up. This is as much as saying that on no account would he presume upon the patience of his fellow-men in the audience, and the latter is indeed apt to interpret it as such in keeping with the at the time prevailing idiomatic meaning. The “ulterior” motive of his behaviour is revealed only as late as the final remark: “And departed to catch his train.”
Our most honourable intentions of rendering the humorous sample analysed above into German have been nipped in the bud for the straightforward reason that there is no German noun covering both readings as is the case with the English address. Two different nouns can be relied on instead to complete the task: Anschrift or Adresse for the former reading and Anrede or Ansprache for the latter one. The same holds true for Romanian, as indicated by the bracketed rendition given above of the meanings covered by the noun address.
Another case in point illustrates the following sample:
“X: D?-mi un telefon maine pe la 7.
Y:Nu-?i dau, c? nu am decat unul singur, ?i dac? ?i-l dau r?man f?r?.”
Featuring here is again nominal polysemy. In the function verb phrase a da un telefon (“a telefona”) the noun telefon is taken to mean “apel telefonic”. The superimposition of the non-idiomatic reading obtains in this particular case in a rather dissimilar manner from the previous one. The key-lexeme here is the verb am employed in its primary relational meaning “posed” which automatically rules out the reading of the noun telefon in the function verb phrase under discussion. In other words, it is the semantics of am that overrides the idiomatic meaning “a face un apel telefonic” subsequently steering the reader/listener away from it towards one which is more likely to chime in with the relational use of the aforementioned verb.
A reconciliation between the verbal and nominal meanings analysed above could also be attempted by employing the word telefon in one of its secondary readings, namely “num?rul pe care ?l poart? telefonul unui abonat” (cf. DULR:996). The scenario would then be taken to imply that Y cannot call X simply because he hasn’t got X’s number. However, this last reading is in turn ruled out by the sequence decat unul singur.
That brings us to the primary sense of the noun telefon, i.e. “aparat prin intermediul c?ruia se realizeaz? apelurile/convorbirile telefonice”, which is perfectly compatible with the primary reading of the verb a da: “a transfera un bun ?n posesia altei persoane”.
Indeed, the entire subsequent co-text invites us to construe the word group a da un telefon as a free combination.
Superimposition of the non-idiomatic sense on the idiomatic one is unfortunately disallowed by both Germanic languages at issue.
German employs Telefon, Apparat or Fernsprecher in the meaning corresponding to the primary reading of the Romanian telefon and Fernruf or Telefonanruf for the secondary one (“apel telefonic”). As for the function verb phrase a da un telefon, the most appropriate German equivalents are multi-word verbs such as anklingeln, anlaeuten, anrufen, antelefonieren.
At first blush more accommodating, English employs frequently for this last meaning function verb phrase like give a call, give a ring, give a buzz, give a tinkle, even give a bell, but not *give a phone – the only rendition apt to link the idiomatic reading to the non-idiomatic one. Since the semantics of the noun phone – colloquial abridged form of telephone – is restricted to the primary reading of the Romanian telefon (“[U] means, system of transmitting the human voice by electric current, through wires […]; [C] apparatus (with receiver and mouthpiece) for this purpose”, OALDCE:888), give a phone only admits of a non-idiomatic interpretation.
The linguicomedy samples discussed above are only two of the many we took great pains to anatomize in our doctoral thesis. Since we could never even dream of running through the whole lot of them in such a short span of time as devoted by this conference to each contributor, you will kindly have to make do with the conclusions thereto.
The examination of the aforesaid data highlighted an unambiguous tendency in non- and idiomatic meanings to interfere with each other, whether deliberately or not. Linguistic factors such as variations in the context distribution pattern and the flouting of the universal logic, as well as semasiological categories like polysemy have been found to be of the essence in giving rise to the phenomenon which arrested our attention .The process usually progresses in either of the following two directions: from decomposing the idiomatic meaning towards recomposing the non-idiomatic one or the other way round, i.e. from decomposing the latter towards recomposing the former.
The effects of the interference at issue range from ambiguity through a smack of ridicule ? when decomposition is unintentional ? to the most sophisticated linguistic humour ? when decomposition is premeditated. Their intensity seems to vary not so much in terms of direction of meaning interference as with respect to a different type of interference, namely that of the interlocutor’s expectations with the real intentions of the speaker/writer.
Our analysis yielded five major subtypes of voluntary linguicomedy, with the example discussed above falling under the first one. This particular subtype draws mainly on the polysemy of the verbal constituent. As already intimated, the function verbs employed here are mostly verbs of which the semantics is to a much lesser extent intruded upon by idiomatic meanings, hence marginal ones.
Since our approach was a contrastive one, the final conclusions would only naturally relate to the rendering into another language of linguicomedy samples. Unfortunately the translatability of interference effects-generated linguistic humour has been found to be minimum at best in most cases. (Naturally, we confine our remarks to the interference effects described above.)
To our mind, it is the intricate pattern of the semantic variables involved that accounts for this rather disheartening conclusion.. More often than not even the most dauntless translator can hardly be expected to do the job without dramatically ‘reshaping’ the situational and linguistic context, sometimes beyond recognition. Still, most important of all, the task of translating linguicomedy is one that the ‘thinking machines’ called computers find it impossible to carry out as yet, and, we are happy to say, one which only the “thinking reed” called man feels up to.
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