laugh but it will learnt specific cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal aspects.
29
When there is a few change in linguistic aspect, although it prevents the message, yet it changed the emotional aspect and humor interpersonal dynamics. Thus, a
translator should act as a bridge between source text and target text to produce an equivalent reponse in humor translation.
F. The Theory of Humor
Thomas Hobbes and Henry Bergson are philosopher which inspire the social theory of humor. There are two social theory of humor they are superiority
and incongruity.
30
1. Superiority
Superiority is known as hostility, aggression, disparagement, derision and others. Vandaele mentions that superiority of humor is a humor which frequently
deride to a victim and believe it as a joke in order to show that the victim has lower pride or stay in weak position unfortunate spot. In social connection,
humor superiority creates a gap between human being where there is a social stratification which differ human based on certain levels such as normal and
abnormal category. Then, it is certain that the victim of superiority humor is the weak, do mistake or unfortunate people. For example we are laughing at a friend
who comes late to the class and expelled by the lecture.
2. Incongruity
Incongruity theory tends to focus on cognitive feature and ignores the social aspect of humor. Yet, in general term, there also who argue that incongruity
29
Ibid, p. 151.
30
Ibid, p. 148.
occurs when cognitive regulations are not obeyed. Incongruity also include a concept of “expectation”: the humor of incongruity deride the settled expectation
through cognitive regulation which have been established. Sometimes, in an expectation occurs something surprising beyond our expectation. According to
Deacon who states that “surprise” is including into important component of humor.
31
Then, Ross adds that suprise element is focused in incongruity theory.
32
Follow along the theory of congruity, a surprise delivered in a line named as punch line. Besides expectation and surprise, there also “solution” to overcome a
situation and a message that is difficult to understand. It means that incongruity can be understood by different method. For example the first sentence of
Raymond Chandler in Trouble is My Business. “Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-
aged putty-faced woman” From the example above, Antonopoulou states that the incongruity is
located in “x pounds of woman”. There is cognitive regulation which states that “x pound of” can not be united with countable noun such as woman. From the
example above, readers is invited to make the word woman as an uncountable noun.
According to Ross, there are three elements that frequently appears in incongruity theory, they are:
33
1. The conflict presence between what to expected and what really happened in humor.
31
Ibid
32
Allison Ross, The language of Humor, London: Routledge, 1998 p. 54.
33
Ibid, p. 8.
2. Ambiguity in language that leads to conflict. 3. The punch line is surprising, it means the unexpected interpretation can
solve the conflict.
G. Types of Humor
Before translating a humor the translator should have known the types of humor. Raphaelson-West divided humor into three broad categorizations they are
linguistic humor such as pun, cultural humor such as ethnic humor, and universal such as unexpected.
a. Linguistic Humor
Linguistic humor is a language-based humor. Jabbari and Ravisi define linguistic humor as humor that is mostly related to sounds and spellings of the
words
34
. In this case, we may infer that linguistic humor is created by manipulating the components of language such as spelling, sound and meaning.
This humor type is the most difficult to be translated. A major factor is not only the nature of the joke but the relationship of the languages in question
35
In order to translate this humor it would be necessary to have an idiomatic expression about humor which contained a word which rhymed with a word
which means something about puns or language. Raphaelson-West divided linguistic humor into two, wordplay and pun. Wordplay is the general name for
the various textual phenomena in which structural features of the language are used are exploited in order to bring about a communicatively significant
34
Lutvina, op.cit., p. 2
35
Debra S. Raphaelson-West, “On the Feasibility and Strategies of Translating Humor, Meta: Translator’s Journal 34, no. 1, 1989, p. 5
