ACCURACY AND ACCEPTABILITY OF VERBAL HUMOR SUBTITLING TECHNIQUES IN THE ENGLISH SUBTITLE OF STAND-UP COMEDY SPECIAL MENS REA BY PANDJI PRAGIWAKSONO ON NETFLIX

Pradna Aulia. English for Business and Professional Communication Study Program. Accuracy and Acceptability of Verbal Humor Subtitling Techniques in the English Subtitle of Stand-Up Comedy Special Mens Rea by Pandji Pragiwaksono.

Verbal humor is one of the most challenging elements to translate because it contains linguistic, cultural, and comedic aspects that should be preserved in the target language. This study aims to identify the types of verbal humor based on Long and Graesser (1988), identify the subtitling techniques based on Gottlieb (1992), and determine the accuracy and acceptability levels of the translation based on Nababan et al. (2012). This research employs a descriptive qualitative method with the English subtitle of the stand-up comedy special Mens Rea by Pandji Pragiwaksono on Netflix as the data source. A total of 160 verbal humor data were analyzed through content analysis and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with raters. The findings reveal eight types of verbal humor, namely Social Satire, Nonsense, Hostile, Philosophical, Sexual, Sick, Demeaning to Women, and Demeaning to Men, with Social Satire as the most dominant type. The subtitling techniques identified are Transfer, Paraphrase, Condensation, and Expansion, with Transfer being the most frequently applied technique. The assessment of translation quality shows that the accuracy aspect achieved an average score of 2.26, categorized as Less Accurate, while the acceptability aspect achieved an average score of 1.46, categorized as Unacceptable. These findings indicate that the English subtitles generally preserve the basic meaning of humor but fail to maintain the comedic effect, cultural nuances, and naturalness of the source language.

Keywords: translation acceptability, translation accuracy, verbal humor, subtitling, Mens Rea.