Triton

Originally Posted by Olga Kagan

Homonyms are different words with different meanings, which accidentally happen to be pronounced identically. Therefore, we don’t expect for words that are homonymous in one language to be translated identically to another one (unless the two languages are very close). For instance, the word night is translated to Russian as noch and knight, as rycar’. Thus, homonymy strongly depends on language-specific properties. As a result, puns that are based on this relation are very difficult to translate

But this does not mean that homonymy is not a cross-linguistic phenomenon. It is found in different languages, but each language has its own set of homonyms and its own jokes based on the inventory. I’d like to devote this post to jokes that are based on homonymy in Russian. The discussion will also make the translation problem obvious.

I will concentrate on a particular group of puns. Certain movies and movie characters constitute sources of inspiration for the creation of jokes. In the former Soviet Union, one such character was Stierlitz, a Soviet agent in Nazi Germany.

Read more: http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/01/28...out-stierlitz/