Verbal Humor in the English Hotel Transylvania Movie and Its Bahasa Indonesia Subtitling Text

Abstract

The aims of this research are to classify the types of verbal humor in the English Hotel  Transylvania  and  its  Bahasa  Indonesia  subtitling  text,  to  describe  subtitling strategies  employed  in  translating  the  verbal  humor,  and  to  describe  the  degree  of meaning equivalence from the result of strategies employed. This research employs a qualitative method since it provides descriptions of translation phenomena in Hotel Transylvania movie. The data of this research were taken from words, phrases, and sentences, that containing verbal humor, which exist in the form of expressions or sentences. The data were categorized based on some theories. The first is verbal humor theory proposed by Spanakaki (2007) and the second is subtitling strategies theory proposed by Gottlieb (2001). To achieve data trustworthiness, the data sheets are repeatedly checked by the researcher and some peers and the results were discussed with the consultants and the respondents. They are collected manually from English text as the phonic channel and Bahasa Indonesia text as the graphic channel of the original DVD of Hotel  Transylvania  movie.  The  researcher  as  the  main  instrument  in  this  research manually collected and analyzed the data from the movie. The results of this research show three important findings. First, the types of verbal humor found in the Hotel Transylvania movie text. Those are wordplay, allusion, and verbal irony. Verbal irony is the most frequent occurrence of verbal humor. It can be concluded that verbal irony is the most amusing verbal humor in Hotel Transylvania movie. Paronymy becomes the most frequent wordplay found in the data of this research because paronymy is the easiest verbal humor that can be understood by the viewers. One of the possible reasons why paronymy becomes the most frequent type of wordplay in Hotel Transylvania movie is that  it  plays  with  two  or  more  words  that  are  almost  similar,  but  there  are  slight differences in both spelling and sound. Second, the translator applies seven subtitling strategies in translating the verbal humor in which transfer becomes the most frequently used strategy. It is because the translation of verbal humor in Hotel Transylvania movie still focuses with transfer of meaning of the humor, not on how to make the verbal humor in the target text. Third, from 67 data, 40 data  of verbal humor  in this research  is considered as fully equivalent; 19 data are considered as partly equivalent; and there is no data considered as no meaning.

Keywords: types of verbal humor, Hotel Transylvania movie, subtitling strategies, the degree of meaning equivalence