A Study of English-Indonesian Translation of Humor in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck Comics from a Pragmatic Perspective

Abstract

This descriptive qualitative study was aimed to describe the English-Indonesian translation of humor in the Donald Duck comics. As humor can be created from the flouting of Grice’s Cooperative Maxims, this study was intended to investigate the Grice’s maxim violation pattern of the English humorous texts in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck comics and in their Indonesian translation.

This study used a Holistic Criticism method, in which the investigation of the objective factor used pragmatic approach. The Holistic Criticism method covered objective, genetic, and affective factors. Investigation of the genetic factor was intended to find out the translation techniques used by the translator in translating the humorous texts and the reasons underlying his decisions. The investigation of the objective factor was intended to analyse the original English humorous texts and their Indonesian translation using the Grice’s Cooperative Maxims and Searle’s Speech Act Theory. This was intended to find out how Grice’s Maxims were flouted in the creation of humor and its translation, and the shift in the violation pattern. In addition, this was also intended to find out how the pragmatic force equivalence of the translation was as seen from the implicatures of the original and translated texts. The investigation of the affective factor was intended to find out how the target readers and parents as well as language experts responded to the translation of the humorous texts. To achieve the objectives, analysis of the texts, analysis of the form filled and interview with the Senior Editor of the publisher, analysis of rating with rating scale by language experts as well as by target readers and parents were done.

Findings of the genetic, objective, and affective factors gave a holistic picture that the translator used 17 translation techniques, mainly the discursive creation, reduction, generalisation, established equivalence, and linguistic compression techniques, for 12 underlying reasons, most of which were for prioritizing clarity of meaning (71.04 %), for decency, and for maintaining humour. With the use of such techniques, the translator has successfully translated most (99.37%) of the humorous texts with clear and comprehensible texts for the target readers and with a language highly appreciated (99.68%) by parents as good/suitable for children/teenagers, although not highly rated (66.87%) as accurate by the expert group. The use of the different techniques, especially discursive creation, reduction, generalization, and linguistic compression has also caused shifting in the maxim violation pattern (34.71%), resulting in reduced or lost humor. This was further confirmed by the rating given by the language experts, which averagely rated part of the humorous texts (27.08%) as having reduced or lost humor in their translations. Despite the reduced/lost humour, the translator has apparently been successful in maintaining the plots of the stories, as proven by the major (96.67%) equivalence of the pragmatic force. It was also found out that there was parallel pattern of speech type usage; in both languages, expressive implicatures and

explicatures were the most dominant, followed by representative, directive, commissive, and declarative implicatures and explicatures.

An interesting finding revealed that in the rating of clarity of meaning and language suitability for children/teenagers, there was high agreement among the raters in the target reader group and in the parent group. However, in the rating of humour there was higher disagreement. This showed the relativity and subjectivity of humour, which may be related to various variables.

The findings showed that the translators’ objectives to prioritize clarity of meaning, maintain decency, and maintain humour had been achieved, although the target readers’ and parents’ appreciation of the humour was lower than that of the clarity of meaning/suitability of the language.

The findings also implied that to maintain the humour existing in the source language text (ST), a translator should pay attention to the maxim violation pattern and make efforts to maintain it in the target language text (TT). Care should be taken in the use of the discursive creation, reduction, generalization, and linguistic compression techniques.

With the findings on the disparity of rating of humour, there is a need to undertake a further study on the appreciation of humour in Walt Disney’s Donald Duck comics in relation to different variables such as age, socio-economic background, American-Indonesian inter- cultural background knowledge and experience, residence (urban vs rural) and familiarity with the comics and their characters.