Challenges regarding the translation of the satiric text: some examples from Karl Kraus's Third Walpurgis Night

Abstract

Kraus’s last long text, Dritte Walpurgisnacht (Third Walpurgis Night) was the satirist’s reaction to Hitler’s seizure of power. It offers the translator a great variety of problems because the author makes an exuberant use of quotations, puns, alliterations, neologisms and variations of sentences, proverbs, maxims and commonplaces. This paper presents some of these problems, discussing possibilities for their resolution, as well as defines a theoretical approach.