”One Sordid Fortnight with the Short-Skirted Sorceress”: Equivalence in the translation of tongue twisters in BoJack Horseman

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to study the translation strategies used in translation of tongue twisters. Tongue twisters are words, phrases or sentences that are purposefully created to be difficult to say. I use passages from the television series BoJack Horseman to examine the translation of tongue twisters. The examination is guided by Eugene Nida’s theory of equivalence.

The topic of this study, tongue twisters, are words, phrases or sentences that utilize the limitations of the human mouth to create difficult utterances. A single tongue twister is commonly constructed by concentrating on one speech sound and alternating between it and other speech sounds. This repetitive nature of tongue twisters can be compared to the same sound patterning tools that are utilized in poetry. In this thesis, due to the small amount of research done on tongue twisters, I examine the sound patterning tools as poetic characteristics.

The theoretical framework for this thesis is the equivalence theory by Eugene Nida. Nida’s ideas are functionalist translation theories, which means that translations should focus on the function and purpose of the text, even if that means deviating from the source texts form and meaning. A translation is successful to Nida if the target text causes a similar response in the audience as the source does in its audience. Nida called the prioritized equivalence of function ‘dynamic equivalence’.

I studied tongue twisters from the television series BoJack Horseman. The series uses tongue twisters every few episodes as a comedic device by communicating simple thoughts as tongue twisters. There are 31 tongue twisters in the series’ five and a half seasons that had been aired when the material was chosen. I listed the tongue twisters and transcribed their translations. I analyzed them using Nida’s dynamic equivalence and categorized the tongue twisters by the translations’ utilized poetic characteristics. To assist the categorization, I evaluated the tongue twisters and created the main categories for successful, partly successful, and unsuccessful translations utilizing Nida’s idea of successful translations.

The results show that the successful translations either utilize the same poetic characteristics as the source text or replace them with other characteristics. The successful translations managed to communicate the messages behind the tongue twisters without many changes. Partly successful translations include the translations that utilized the same poetic characteristics but only in parts of the translations. The messages suffered in some occasions, leading to the categorization of partly successful. In the unsuccessful translations, the translations were omitted altogether, which caused problems in the communication of the message.

This thesis only examines the translation in one television series, which limits the generalizability of this study’s data to some degree. On the other hand, the material of the thesis is found over multiple seasons and different episodes, which means that the data is diverse regarding the number of translators. I hope that this thesis could inspire future studies on the translation of tongue twisters, which could benefit from this study’s data.