Sarcasm in the TV-series “Friends” and its translation into Russian and German

The paper describes the analyzing of types of sarcasm expression in the American TV-series “Friends” and its translation into Russian and German. The authors present the results of literature review to specify the terms “irony”, “sarcasm” as well as “translation method” and “translation strategy”. The aim of the paper was to conduct a comparative analysis of sarcasm translation into Russian and German, and to identify main translation strategies. The material for the study was 288 unities of film text (including translations), analysis of which established that hyperbole, rethorical questions, explicit contradictions, less frequently – word-play, polysemy, word repetition, comparisons and alogisms are the primary means of expressing sarcasm in “Friends” series. Minor differences were found in analyzed languages. By adapting film texts into Russian and German, strategies such as repetition, substitution and omission were identified. A number of challenges were found when conveying sarcasm into another language, which highlights the importance of choosing an appropriate strategy for translating sarcasm. However, based on research results, the authors concluded that generally sarcastic phenomena do not pose difficulties in recognition and finding suitable replacement in translation. As a rule, translators manage to preserve comic expressions effectively.

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