Don’t Dampen the Laughter: Difficulties in Translating Comedies

Abstract

The presence of humor in audiovisual text as it is by the dialectal variants, the cultural references etc., implies a
challenge for the translator, and we need to admit, it is not an easy challenge. As long as more elements are characterized
culturally, more it becomes almost impossible for the translator to recreate the same comic effects on the original film, as the
new spectator of the metatext who may not share the cultural environment and the cultural baggage of the prototext. This article
will analyse problems encountered in the translation of Italian comedies into the Albanian language. We will see concretely how
the dialectal variants, the referents of language, the different registers of speech used to create various shades of humor in
audiovisual texts are difficult for the translator as a mediator between two cultures.