BLENDING AS A MEANS OF TRANSLATING WORDPLAY IN AN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE SITCOM

Abstract

The article discusses the problem of translation of English-language blends in comedy shows, based on the analysis of the American sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”. The authors reach the conclusion that the optimal way to translate such lexical units is to form Ukrainian-language overlap blends. On the one hand, the claim is supported by an extensive overview of the literature devoted to blending and translation of wordplay. On the other hand, it is supported by the findings of a survey undertaken by the author with 30 native Ukrainian speakers. The survey enabled the authors to compare the participants’ evaluations in terms of wit and humor of the translation available online to that provided by the authors (the latter involving overlap blends). The article contains an original translation of 10 fragments from the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”, which contain blends both in the source and the target language. The findings presented in this article fill a gap in the theory of translation by providing a clearer understanding of the problems inherent in rendering blends into a target language. The proposed method may also support the growing trend among Ukrainians to consume Ukrainian rather than Russian translations of contemporary sitcoms.