Lost in Laughter: Linguistic and Cultural Challenges in Subtitling Urdu Humour for English Audiences

Abstract

Humour is deeply embedded in linguistic structures and cultural references; therefore, it is difficult to translate humour across languages. But when it comes to translating humour in subtitling, the task is more challenging because of spatial and time constraints of subtitling. This study explores the task of translating humour in subtitles from Urdu to English in the context of Pakistani comedy serials. Through a qualitative analysis of a comedy serial Chaudhry and Sons, this study explores the linguistic and cultural gaps between both the languages and investigates the role of language and cultural factors that affect translation of humour. By analyzing the humorous dialogues from the drama and its English subtitles, the finding shows that various forms of humour are lost in the English subtitles because of the lack of linguistic elements (i.e., wordplays, puns and idioms, etc.) and cultural references (i.e. social norms, etc.). This necessitates the need for creative and context-sensitive translation strategies to preserve the linguistic and cultural elements in subtitling to maintain the comic impact for the target audience.