Wordplay issue in audiovisual translation (on the English-language situational comedy “Modern family”)

The article addresses the issue of translating wordplay in situational comedies, which is highly relevant due to the increasing number of humorous audiovisual works and the rising standards for their translation quality. This study is particularly innovative as it focuses on the TV series "Modern Family," which has not previously been subjected to linguistic or translation analysis, especially concerning the specific problem of wordplay. Additionally, this article adopts a comprehensive approach by examining three forms of audiovisual translation for the series: subtitling, dubbing, and voice-over translation - an approach not found in other studies. The primary objective of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of various techniques in translating wordplay across these different forms of audiovisual translation. A range of methods was employed to achieve this research goal, including continuous sampling, linguistic description, semantic (component) analysis, contextual analysis, comparative analysis, and quantitative analysis. The findings from the theoretical research and practical material analysis enabled the authors to develop a practice-oriented classification of techniques for translating wordplay in audiovisual contexts. This classification includes: 1) direct (equivalent) translation, 2) lexical-semantic replacement, 3) analogue translation, and 4) descriptive translation. By evaluating the effectiveness of this classification, we obtained significant results: the most frequently used technique for translating wordplay in "Modern Family" was found to be analogue translation, accounting for over one-third of instances. Furthermore, the highest rates of adequate wordplay translation were recorded in voice-over translation compared to subtitled or dubbed translations.