# How are puns and wordplay translated?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-puns-and-wordplay-translated/926560>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 27, 2020, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-puns-and-wordplay-translated/926560 "2020-11-27T06:23:23Z")\
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**Author:** ![Smudge777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee59a6/32.png) [@Smudge777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smudge777)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-puns-and-wordplay-translated/926560/1 "2020-11-27T06:23:23Z")

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I was recently watching an episode of Raised By Wolves in which a character tells that good ol’ joke:

When is a door not a door? When it is ajar.

The subtitles read “When it is a jar [ajar]” to make the pun clear in written form. The joke only works in English, so it got me wondering: what is the general practice for translating puns/wordplay like this into other languages?

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