¿Se puede hacer el humor en cabina? Pöchhacker, Pavlicek, pedagogía y preguntas

Abstract

In 2002 Pavlicek and Pöchhacker published a pivotal study at least for two main reasons: the originality of the subject matter, humour and simultaneous interpreting, and the soundness of the data, gathered through quantitative research. Besides, provided that the working languages of their proposal were German and English, the scientific interest of their study is clearly highlighted. Metaphorically speaking, their paper stressed that while humour is a recurring theme in translation research, the same cannot be said about interpreting. The results, after a survey distributed among 50 interpreters from the Eu-ropean Commission and Parliament, state that one language combination is more prone than the other to resort to humour. In retrospect we may attest that, unfortunately and in spite of the soundness of their study, there has hardly been any continuation in their footsteps. Not only that, by taking a brief look at some interpreting handbooks in Eng-lish, we can see that reflections on the topic are few and far between, even contradicting, at times. It is our belief that, in the same manner as linguistics has advanced its under-standing of humour, as proved by the advent of the General Theory of Verbal Humor, and in translation studies musings go beyond literary translation, such as in audiovisual and cartoon translation, interpreting studies must come to its own conclusions, not only about whether we can make humour in the booth, but how.