Translating the Untranslatable: into the Uncharted Territory of Stand-up Comedy Translation from English to Italian

Stand-up comedy is a unique comedic style that is strictly related to the context in which it is delivered. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the major difficulties one can face when translating stand-up comedy monologues from English to Italian, using examples from popular Netflix specials. Being heavily reliant on the live performance and culturally specific, language-bound content, stand-up comedy humour can be more difficult to translate than any other comedic form. This thesis attempts to present the genre of stand-up comedy and examine the challenges of maintaining the comedic effect of the original monologues while avoiding potential humour loss in the translation process.