I’m wondering how these are dealt with. I imagine the translator has to come up with his/her own version of these, that work in the language being used for the translation. But this would seem to be a new creative work by the translator and not a mere translation.
A couple of examples I saw recently brought this to mind. In a Spanish version of Dilbert, he brings Dogbert disguised as a person into a restaurant that doesn’t allow dogs. But when it’s time to order, Dogbert orders “un gato” (a cat), which Dilbert hastily corrects to “un pato” (a duck). I couldn’t think of an English equivalent that works here, and it must have said something else, and the translator had to come up with the gato/pato similarity on their own.
In one of the books in the Tintin series, a character speaks with the Scottish dialect found in Burns’ poetry. Since this series was originally written in French, no such dialect existed in that language. Presumably the author used some dialect of French, and the translator decided to use the Scottish in making the translation. But again, this would seem to make the translator more of a creative force than one might suppose.
(While on the latter work, I notice that Wiki lists an entire series of names for the two detectives in various languages, most with no connection to the original but sharing the characteristic of being pronounced similarly to each other.)
Yes, generally you can’t translate exactly, so you pick the more important elements and go with those, or else you go with some kind of analogy in the target language.
In the case of a character in Tintin speaking in Lowlands Scottish English, the original was probably speaing in some equally distinct dialect of French. A similar example is with characters in a Japanese anime speaking in an Osakan dialect when most characters speak in a Tokyo dialect. American English dubs of these often translate the Osakan dialect as a Southern U.S. dialect.
Translation is an art form in and of itself, and in order for it to be performed well, the translator must a) have an above-average facility in the use of both the original and target languages; and b) have an innate understanding of the medium, message, and target audience. In other words, to translate poetry, one must be a poet. To translate comedy, one must understand what makes the original material funny and be able to convey, if not the original joke, a substitute that makes a comparable point.
Right along the same lines as Tintin, I have a copy of The Complete Guide to Asterix, which, among many other topics, touches on translation-related issues. It’s easy to see from the outset why this is so important – the comic strip, which has been translated from the original French into more than 25 languages (including Latin) teems with puns and wordplay. Most of the characters’ names are puns. In order to capture the charm of the material, the translator must have a skill in punnery that at the very least approaches the genius of Goscinny and Uderzo, the masterminds behind the strip. Fortunately, the English-language team was up to the challenge. The village chief, for example, known in French as Abraracourcix (a pun that means “to hit violently”) is called Vitalstatistix (“vital statistics”). The tonedeaf bard, *Assurancetourix *(“fully comprehensive auto insurance”) becomes Cacofonix. It’s not the same joke, but it hits the mark.
In some of the more scholarly translations of foreign works, there will be footnotes for puns explaining what the original was. I’ve seen this for the plays of Aristophanes (comedies, so there’s plenty of wordplay in the originals), and also in a volume of translated Chinese plays. The translated-from-the-Chinese example that sticks in my mind was a pun on “queu” as meaning both “a braided pigtail” and “a line of people waiting for something”. In the original Chinese it had been a pun on “hair” and some word having to do with waiting – I don’t speak Chinese so I don’t remember exactly what it was. I thought it was pretty clever of the translator to come up with an English pun that also involved the concepts of waiting and a reference to the speaker’s hair.
I’m not finding it with a quick Google, but there at least used to be a website discussing different international versions of the Harry Potter books. It was mostly changes in regionalisms and slang made between the UK/US versions, but included some information on how puns and wordplay were translated for non-English editions. For instance, in the second book it’s significant that the phrase “I AM LORD VOLDEMORT” is an anagram of Voldemort’s full birth name. To make this work in other languages, translators had to come up with different middle names for Voldemort.
I’m sure there are many cases where wordplay is just ignored and the translation preserves only the primary meaning of the line. When I lived in Japan several English-speaking Japanese people told me that jokes in Hollywood movies were often omitted in the Japanese subtitles.
As for accents/dialect, as Giles says the translator usually tries to preserve the idea of “this character speaks with a noticeable accent” but using accents that will be familiar to the intended audience. I’ve read or seen performances of a number of translations of the Aristophanes play Lysistrata, and the Spartan accent has been portrayed in several different ways. It’s significant to the plot that the Spartans are the enemies of the Athenians. The Athenians are depicted as having standard American or English accents, depending on where the show is being staged. Throughout the Cold War era the Spartans were often portrayed as having Russian accents. A year or so ago I saw a college production where the Spartans were depicted as Arabs. (Not very convincing Arabic accents on the part of the young performers, but that was obviously what they were going for.) Other American productions give the Spartans Southern accents. I’m told that in British productions the Spartans are sometimes given Scottish accents.
I’m not sure if this was the same Harry Potter page I was thinking of before, but "Harry Potter in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese & Mongolian Translation" looks at how the books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese, and addresses how wordplay and puns have been dealt with in the different translations.