ABSTRACT
The Internet affects the translation of humour not only in formal ways, for example faster dissemination, but also by influencing its content. This influence is particularly palpable in languages that recycle – adapt and translate – texts from mostly English-language jokelore and meme pools. This chapter gives an overview of humorous memes created in response to doping scandals by comparing two corpora comprising two international doping cases (Lance Armstrong in 2012 and cross-country skiers in February 2019), and compares them from a global and local perspective in order to pinpoint repeating patterns and differences, and to clarify the processes – affecting form and content – of the dissemination of humour. The two cases will serve as an example of the process of cultural translation and express the tension of the local and the global. The analysis is informed by Limor Shifman’s approach to memes and Sara Cannizzaro’s (2016) cultural-semiotic translation theory based on the works of Juri Lotman, who claimed that information can be seen as continuous semiotic “invasions” into structures in the “other territory” (Lotman 1992), which result in creative adaptation. The chapter draws conclusions about the adaptation mechanisms of semiotic units – memes – in the online environment, using the two doping scandals as cases in point.
