Multilingual humour in a polyglot multicultural author: the case of Fouad Laroui

• Published in: European journal of humour research 2019, Vol.7 (1), p.71-90
• Main Authors: Vezzaro, Cristina, Lievois, Katrien
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Applied Linguistics; Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology; Descriptive linguistics; dutch; fouad laroui; french; humour; irony; italian; Language and Literature Studies; multilingualism; Pragmatics; Social Sciences; Sociolinguistics; Theoretical Linguistics; transculturality; translation; Translation Studies
• ISSN: 2307-700X; 2307-700X
• DOI: 10.7592/EJHR2019.7.1.vezzaro

This paper focuses primarily on the Dutch and Italian translations of Fouad Laroui’s works,in which the two central features of his writing, i.e. humour and multilingualism, are strictlyrelated. Laroui is a transcultural author fluent in French, English, Dutch, dialectal Arabicand classical Arabic, and his works reflect the different layers of experiences and languageshe has gathered during his life. Humour, on the other hand, is a way for him to present, in anaxiological opposition, different viewpoints that mostly cross cultures, nationalities andsocial hierarchies. Our analysis of Le Jour où Malika ne s’est pas mariée and Une annéechez les Français has allowed us to pinpoint the interaction between the two main features ofhis writing and examine the creation of puns by means of different languages or loanwords.We have then analysed the various strategies adopted by translators and commented theirdifferent solutions. Our analysis has allowed us to identify three different ways in which athird language (L3) in the source text – often connected to humour – is rendered in the targettext, i.e. (1) taken as it is, (2) distorted or adapted to the target language and (3) kept with anintertextual or paratextual element or replaced altogether.