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June 26, 2025
Challenges of humorous reproduction in subtitling translation
The translator’s work demands a high degree of cultural sensitivity and creativity, in addition to linguistic competence
The role of the translator for subtitles is not — and should not be — just to literally translate their content. It is necessary for them to take into account the cultural aspect, along with the main objective of the work, that is, its original essence transmitted authentically.
If the work is of the humor genre, humorous translation comes into play, an arm of translation that has been studied and explored by researchers in the field, who are still trying to understand its complexity and difficulty.
For Liberatti (2011), humorous translation presents distinct qualitative characteristics in relation to other types of translation, and the complexity in defining the concept of humor can end up discouraging research in this field. In the case of subtitling, humorous translation stems from verbalized humor, since, according to Monteiro (2017), it is in this that wordplay is used, which depends completely on the language used for the production of humor.
In addition to reflecting elements characteristic of a specific culture, a work of humor requires its message to be transmitted simultaneously in two aspects: the semantic content and the comic effect. In this context, the translator’s work proves especially challenging, demanding not only linguistic competence but also a high degree of cultural sensitivity and creativity.
To demonstrate cases of challenges in humorous translation in subtitling, this article will analyze some practical examples. The first three are excerpts from the American sitcom “Friends”, one of the most prestigious comedy series on TV. In summary, “Friends” amusingly portrays the lives, struggles, and adventures of six friends from New York. The transcription and subtitle presented in the tables below were made from the streaming platform Netflix.
| Original Audio (English) | Caption (Brazilian Portuguese) |
|---|---|
| Phoebe: I… I’ve got the pox. Ryan: Chickenpox or smallpox? Phoebe: Chickenpox, which is quite ironic, given that I’m a vegetarian. | Phoebe: I got chickenpox. Ryan: Isn’t it food poisoning? Phoebe: Imagine. Just me who only eats natural food. |
In the first excerpt, the English term pox is analyzed, which is generally preceded by an adjective to refer to some diseases (like smallpox or chickenpox). In isolation, the word pox does not have a precise literal translation into Portuguese.
In this case, when the character says she has pox, Ryan immediately asks if it is chickenpox or smallpox, which can be translated respectively as “catapora” and “varíola”. Since chicken is the word for “frango” in English, the character Phoebe responds to Ryan by making an ironic remark about being a vegetarian and still having caught chickenpox.
As we can see in the right column, the subtitle translator into Portuguese opted for an adaptation, which brought the text as close as possible to the meaning given in the original language. It can be said that, in a way, the comic sense was preserved: by using the term “intoxication” in Ryan’s speech, the translator made room for the mention of natural food in Phoebe’s response, instead of using the fact that she is vegetarian. However, the comic effect is still stronger in the original language.
In another episode, the character Phoebe introduces her new boyfriend, Robert, to her friends Joey, Chandler, and Ross. Robert always appears wearing sports shorts. When he sits on the sofa with his legs open, Robert’s private parts are exposed through the shorts, and Joey, Chandler, and Ross see everything. Robert then gets up from the coffee shop sofa and exits. Phoebe arrives shortly after and sits next to her friends, who are laughing hysterically at the embarrassing situation. Phoebe asks the reason.
| Original Audio (English) | Caption (Brazilian Portuguese) |
|---|---|
| Phoebe: What’s happening? Don’t you like Robert? Why are you chuckling? Ross: Relax. There’s no need to get testy. | Phoebe: What’s going on? You didn’t like Robert? Why are you laughing? Ross: Calm down. You have no reason to be upset. |
The expression get testy can be literally translated as “ficar irritado”. However, here the character Ross uses the words sarcastically, making a pun with the English word “testes”, which means “testicles”, giving the humorous sense to the speech.
In the caption, the translator adapts the expression, directly referencing the male sexual organ in Brazilian slang, but it doesn’t work the same way, neither in meaning nor in the humorous context. This is because the expression “ficar pau” basically sounds strange and is not used by Brazilian speakers. Therefore, in this case, the translation was not successful in transmitting the humorous factor.
One of several appropriate suggestions for this case would be to translate Ross’s speech as: “Calm down. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.” Thus, the message would be fully conveyed, while also maintaining the humorous factor without losing the original context.
In another episode, Phoebe introduces her friend Don to the group, whom she believes to be Monica’s soulmate. Monica and Don end up talking at the coffee shop and realize they have a lot in common. One of the topics of conversation was cheeses, as they both work in the culinary field. Chandler, who is married to Monica, doesn’t like the situation and gets jealous of Don. Upon arriving at her apartment, Monica notices that Chandler is acting strangely and decides to ask if something is wrong.
| Original Audio (English) | Caption (Brazilian Portuguese) |
|---|---|
| Monica: Are you alright? You’ve been acting strangely all afternoon. Chandler: Yes, I’m fine, fine. Not perfect, but quite sufficient. Monica: Goodness, what’s wrong with you? Chandler: My apologies. Did you utter ‘cheese’? | Monica: Are you okay? You’re acting strange. Chandler: Yeah. Great. I’m not perfect. But I’m good enough. Monica: Want a kiss? Chandler: Sorry, did you say ‘cheese’? |
In this case, it is clear that the humor factor is the intentional rhyme between jeez and cheese, the latter being used ironically by the character Chandler as a reference to Don.
In the caption, the translator made an adaptation considered adequate, since Chandler’s speech must maintain the translation of cheese as “queijo” for the scene to make sense due to his jealousy. To achieve this, the translator adapted Monica’s character’s speech by including the word “beijo” so that the rhyme would work, while maintaining the meaning of the dialogue. With this, both the meaning and the humor were successfully preserved in the caption.
Now, analyzing an American commercial from the famous chocolate brand M&M’s, we have a brief conversation between two M&M’s, Yellow and Red. Contextualizing the scene, Yellow is speaking facing a running fan, and the following dialogue occurs (transcribed in the original language):
| Original Audio (English) |
|---|
| Yellow (facing the fan): Crispy M&M’s are back! Red: What are you doing? Yellow: You said to tell our fans Crispy M&M’s are back. Red: Not those fans! Yellow (fanning himself): Did you mean this fan? Red: No! Yellow (pointing to a ceiling fan): What about that one? There’s a fan in the break room. |
Here we find a very big challenge in translating this commercial into Portuguese just by maintaining the humorous sense. In summary, the word “fan” in English can have two meanings: “ventilator” and “fan”. Therefore, Yellow believes he is speaking to all the “fans” (in this case, to a fan) that M&M’s Crispy are back. Then, he also makes reference to a hand fan and a ceiling fan.
If we translated literally, we would have the third line of the dialogue more or less like this: “You said to tell our fans that Crispy M&M’s are back.” In this way, it would make no sense at all in Portuguese for Yellow to say this while facing a fan, fanning himself with a fan, or pointing to a ceiling fan. The commercial would then lose its meaning and humor.
In the translation, carried out by the subtitling startup Skylar, the professional translated the commercial as follows:
| Translation (Brazilian Portuguese) |
|---|
| Yellow (facing the fan): The Crispy M&M’s are back! Red: What are you doing? Yellow: You told me to tell everyone that the Crispy M&M’s are back. Red: Not that wind! Yellow (fanning himself): Then this one? Red: No! Yellow (pointing to a ceiling fan): And that one over there? There’s a fan in the break room. |
In this case, the translation modality used was equivalence, as the translator opted for a very popular idiomatic expression used in Brazilian Portuguese (“falar aos quatro ventos”), which fit correctly into the meaning of the passage in question, maintaining both the meaning and the humor.
From the analyzed examples, and due to the presence of expressions considered complex and that give a humorous effect to a scene, it is possible to perceive that the translation of works of the comic genre must receive special attention, not being a simple task for the translation professional.
In this case, fluency in the source and target languages is not enough. It becomes essential for the audiovisual translator, specifically of the comedy genre, to use their creativity to adapt translations, so that they can convey the message from the source language to the target language, indispensably carrying with them the comic factor.
There are no literal and proper terms for each translation, nor an appropriate modality for translating texts of this genre. Nor are there identical translations, meaning one person does not translate in the same way as another. Everything will depend on the context in which the expression is situated for humorous purposes, and the translator must make decisions and adaptations that fulfill the main objective of the work. The decisions to be made by the translator can stem from their instinct, creativity, and discernment.
In the end, translating well is much more than mastering two languages. The translator needs to have a robust cultural baggage, and constant reading is a fundamental tool for interpreting contexts, proposing creative solutions, and boosting creativity with many references, regardless of the work’s genre. In the case of humorous translation, the more references the translator accumulates, the more they expand their knowledge and, thus, their ability to recreate humor authentically.
This content was produced by:
Leticia Contini
Project manager and translator at Skylar, she has been working in the subtitling industry since 2020. Postgraduate in translation. She is an enthusiast of accessible audiovisual translation and currently works in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
Who wrote this column
Skylar
