The essays in this collection explore taboo and controversial humour in traditional scripted (sitcoms and other comedy series, animated series) and non-scripted forms (stand-up comedy, factual and reality shows, and advertising) both on cable and network television.  Whilst the focus is predominantly on the US and UK, the contributors also address more general and global issues and different contexts of reception, in an attempt to look at this kind of comedy from different perspectives. Over the last few decades, taboo comedy has become a staple of television programming, thus raising issues concerning its functions and appropriateness, and making it an extremely relevant subject for those interested in how both humour and television work. 

Non-professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT) is a recent discipline. Books and volumes on this subject that combine all the different fields are extremely uncommon and authoritative reference material is scarce and mostly scattered through disparate specialized journals. There are many areas and aspects of NPIT in the media that to date have been under researched or utterly neglected. The aim of this volume is therefore to fill an important gap in the academic market and to provide an overview of diverse aspects of non-professional interpreting and translation in the media. The volume consists of a collection of essays by eminent international scholars and researchers from the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies.

The essays in this collection explore taboo and controversial humour in traditional scripted (sitcoms and other comedy series, animated series) and non-scripted forms (stand-up comedy, factual and reality shows, and advertising) both on cable and network television. Whilst the focus is predominantly on the US and UK, the contributors also address more general and global issues and different contexts of reception, in an attempt to look at this kind of comedy from different perspectives. Over the last few decades, taboo comedy has become a staple of television programming, thus raising issues concerning its functions and appropriateness, and making it an extremely relevant subject for those interested in how both humour and television work.

An increased tolerance for humour addressing sensitive issues (e.g. death, disease and disability) seems to be observed in Anglo-American culture with respect to Italian culture. This begs the question of how this traditionally unsettling, and perhaps more sophisticated, kind of humour travels to a country like Italy, in which contemporary, mainstream comedy privileges feel- good/family-oriented entertainment or, alternatively, the erotic comedy genre, and in which the very mention of death might still trigger superstitious reactions. The present study takes into consideration the processes involved in dubbing dark humour from English into Italian as observed in the English and Italian-language versions of ten British and American dark comedies from the 1940s to the 2000s. The analysis was also concerned with the translation strategies adopted and with possible effects of alteration of the dark humour content as a result of translation. Given its linguistic and cultural take on the subject, the study will be of particular interest to audiovisual translation students and scholars as well as researchers in cultural and humour studies.