Doblar o subtitular el humor, esa no es la cuestión.

Abstract

Dubbing and subtitling have been confronted for long. However, this confrontation does not seem to make any sense (if it ever did) in the present scene. Humour is one of the most complex issues translators have to deal with in audiovisual texts, and it has not escaped the debate of whether it is dubbing or subtitling that works better for its transmission. This article takes a descriptive look at the issue by analysing the dubbed and subtitled Spanish versions of an episode from the television series The Simpsons. The main objective is to reckon which target version has been more successful in preserving a higher number of potentially humorous elements. The results lead to the conclusion that, at least in this case, both target versions have managed to preserve a significant and practically analogous amount of the humorous elements present in the source version.