What made the Greeks laugh?

[snip] One of the most famous one-liners of the ancient world, with an afterlife that stretches into the twentieth century (it gets retold, with a different cast of characters but the same punchline, both in Freud and in Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea), was a joking insinuation about Augustus’ paternity. Spotting, so the story goes, a man from the provinces who looked much like himself, the Emperor asked if the man’s mother had ever worked in the palace. “No”, came the reply, “but my father did.” Augustus wisely did no more than grin and bear it. ...

The most puzzling aspect of the jokes in the Philogelos is the fact that so many of them still seem vaguely funny. Across two millennia, their hit-rate for raising a smile is better than that of most modern joke books. And unlike the impenetrably obscure cartoons in nineteenth-century editions of Punch, these seem to speak our own comic language. In fact, the stand-up comedian Jim Bowen has recently managed to get a good laugh out of twenty-first-century audiences with a show entirely based on jokes from the Philogelos (including one he claims – a little generously – to be a direct ancestor of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch).

Why do they seem so modern? In the case of Jim Bowen’s performance, careful translation and selection has something to do with it (I doubt that contemporary audiences would split their sides at the one about the crucified athlete who looked as if he was flying instead of running). There is also very little background knowledge required to see the point of these stories, in contrast to the precisely topical references that underlie so many Punch cartoons. Not to mention the fact that some of Bowen's audience are no doubt laughing at the sheer incongruity of listening to a modern comic telling 2,000-year-old gags, good or bad.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5759723.ece

Translating Humor in Dubbing and Subtitling

by Anna Jankowska

For the Monty Python sketch about jokes as military weapons, see The Funniest Joke in the World.

This paper is intended as an attempt to present publications that, to a greater or lesser extent, totally or partially, deal with the dubbing of humor: http://accurapid.com/journal/49humor.htm

Maybe, it should come under "Bridging the Religious Divide," but I find it amusing.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25828692-12377,00.html NORTH Korean women face hard labour if they are caught wearing trousers ... Disciplinary officials from students' bodies and women's organisations stand at street corners during the morning rush hour and lunch breaks, to keep watch for any women violating the pants ban, according to Good Friends.