L’euro, le brut et le marchand: Translation of Puns in French and Spanish in Economics and Business

Abstract

The problem of translating puns represents one of the current main issues in translation studies, as it requires reflection, among other aspects, on the issues of linguistic correspondence and textual equivalence. Under the assumption made by Roman Jakobson that there is a difference between objective language and metalanguage, we will focus on one of the latter’s translation problems: the translation of puns as an example of the intensive use of lexicon. This technique is often used by economists, journalists, and other people involved in the popularisation of science in order to facilitate the understanding and transmission of a complex concept in the simplest possible way. In this paper, we carry out a case study in which we analyse, from the point of view of general translation studies, the functions and effects of puns in economic discourse, as well as the most appropriate translation techniques.