One of the rewards on offer during my crowdfunding campaign was a lecture on translation donated by my best friend, and Israel's finest translator, Yael Achmon. This was taken by a group of lovely people, and I was fortunate enough that they were happy to have me there.
I love knowing that a thing I did to benefit me and my tiny publishing house caused an event like this, in which a great lecture was given to a rapt audience of super appreciative people.
The topic Yael chose for the lecture was the translation of puns. This is both a sore spot and a delight for translators. It's some of the hardest stuff to get right, but also some of the most satisfying. As the Hebrew translator for all of Rick Riordan's work, Yael has had a LOT of experience translating puns.
She broke the process down in a way that even I - someone who's been translating for over 25 years - found useful.
First, you have to recognize the thing you're seeing IS a pun, that there's more to the statement being made than the very surface level. Then you have to break it down to its components, and then rebuild it using either a straight translation of those components or - when that doesn't work - components that are similar enough to work in the context of the book.
The translator's goal, as Yael mentioned in the lecture, is to give the reader an experience as close, in all possible ways, to the that of readers in the original language. And sometimes, that means you have to invent a pun just as terrible as the one in the original language.
This lecture was a delight, and I am so happy I played a part in making it happen.
