Applying Juliane House’s Translation Quality Assessment Model (1997) on a Humorous Text: A Case Study of 'The Simpsons'

Translation quality assessment is an area of increased interest by all elements involved in the process and result of translation. However, the vague nature of the concept of quality and the subjectivity involved in the process of its measurement mean that specific tools are required to assess it. In this respect, Juliane House’s 1997 model of translation quality assessment offers a systematic approach to evaluate translated texts. As other empirical studies have already applied House’s model on more standard texts to assess its suitability, the aim of this paper was to determine to what extent House’s model was able to deal with the particular features of humorous texts. Hence, the case study selected was the script of an episode of US-American TV series The Simpsons translated from English into Spanish. The results of this analysis show that, in spite of the model’s limitations, its functional-pragmatic approach and concept of equivalence utilized is useful in assessing the quality of this type of texts.