Enjeux de la traduction des jeux de mots

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the possibilities of translating wordplays which most of the time represent a challenge for translators, even the most experienced. In fact, because of their structural ambiguity, the transfer of these language phenomena from one language to another may prove more difficult than one might think. This paper is based on a French example of wordplay extracted from newspaper titles, more specifically the newspaper “Le Canard enchaîné”, and from advertisements. The wordplay examples are attentively analyzed in order to determine whether they can be handled by the translator.