CHALLENGES IN TRANSLATING CULTURE-BOUND HUMOUR IN ENGLISH SITCOMS INTO UZBEK

Аннотация

This study investigates the challenges of translating culture-bound humour in English sitcoms into Uzbek, focusing on the linguistic, cultural, and pragmatic factors that influence humour transfer. Sitcom humour often relies on wordplay, idiomatic expressions, cultural references, and socio-political contexts specific to English-speaking audiences. When translated into Uzbek, such humour may lose its intended effect due to differences in cultural background, comedic traditions, and audience expectations. The research examines subtitling and dubbing practices, identifying strategies such as adaptation, substitution, explicitation, and omission used to preserve comedic impact. Special attention is given to culturally loaded jokes, puns, and intertextual references that resist direct translation. By drawing on translation theory and audiovisual translation studies, the paper highlights the role of translator creativity and cultural competence in ensuring humour accessibility. The findings contribute to improving cross-cultural humour translation and enhancing audience engagement with foreign media. Keywords: Culture-bound humour, sitcom translation, audiovisual translation, adaptation strategies, Uzbek translation, cross-cultural communication. Humour in English-language sitcoms represents one of the most challenging areas of audiovisual translation because it operates simultaneously on linguistic, cultural, and pragmatic levels, requiring translators to capture not only the meaning but also the timing, tone, and cultural resonance of the joke. Culture-bound humour, in particular, depends heavily on shared background knowledge, socio-political contexts, and everyday practices familiar to the source audience but potentially unfamiliar to target viewers. In English sitcoms such as Friends, The Office, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, much of the humour draws on popular culture, celebrity references, American holidays, and social stereotypes that resonate strongly with domestic audiences. For Uzbek viewers, these elements often lose their immediate meaning because the socio-cultural frameworks differ substantially. As Chiaro (2010) observes, culture- bound humour relies on “a repertoire of shared knowledge and codes” (p. 15), meaning that without adaptation or explanation, many jokes risk failing to elicit the intended response. For instance, a joke about “Black Friday shopping” makes instant sense to American audiences who understand the post-Thanksgiving retail rush, but this concept is absent in Uzbekistan, where Thanksgiving is not celebrated. To preserve the comedic effect, a translator might adapt the reference to something more culturally familiar, such as crowds at a Navruz fair, thereby maintaining the humorous exaggeration of chaotic public gatherings. This illustrates that translation in this domain is not merely a lexical exercise but a process of cultural negotiation and creative decision-making. Linguistic humour, especially puns, wordplay, and idiomatic expressions, presents another persistent barrier. Puns are notoriously difficult to translate because they rely on phonological, morphological, or semantic ambiguities unique to the source 106 language. Delabastita (1996) famously described puns as “the untranslatable in translation” (p. 128), not because they cannot be rendered at all, but because the exact interplay of sound and meaning often cannot be replicated. In The Office, the recurring joke “That’s what she said” exploits double entendre to create sexual innuendo in otherwise mundane statements. A literal Uzbek translation (Bu u aytgan gap edi) removes the ambiguity and destroys the humorous undertone. A skilled translator must instead find a culturally equivalent quip that conveys suggestiveness without violating broadcast norms in Uzbekistan, perhaps replacing it with an Uzbek phrase that signals the same kind of cheeky inference. Similarly, idioms pose challenges when they are deeply tied to cultural imagery. The English “kick the bucket” can be translated literally (chelakni tepmoq), but the result would be incomprehensible unless replaced with the Uzbek equivalent “olamdan o‘tmoq” (to pass away). The difficulty lies in balancing preservation of idiomatic colour with ensuring comprehension and humour for the target audience. This balance is even more delicate when dealing with colloquial slang, which evolves rapidly in English-speaking youth culture. Terms such as “cringe,” “ghosting,” or “burn” may require creative equivalents in Uzbek that capture the tone and social connotation without sounding forced or outdated. Cultural references are another major obstacle in translating sitcom humour because they rely on shared knowledge of historical events, media products, political figures, and everyday institutions. In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, references to “Saturday Night Live” sketches or “Oscars after-parties” are instantly recognisable to American audiences but opaque to many Uzbek viewers. Translator