A model for Hebrew translation of British humor: Amplification and overstatement

The influence of translational norms on the translation of humor manifested in prose fiction has not been a focus of much research. This paper will try to establish the existence of an institutionalized strategy of amplification, presumably born out of a wish to bridge the cultural gap reflected in two different national traditions of literary humor. The effect of amplification, as it is implemented in the various Hebrew translations of Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers and Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, is analyzed on the basis of Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo 2001, 2002). The use of amplification as a model for the translation of humor from the beginning of the 20th century, and its diminishing currency from the 1980s onwards are also discussed.