Satirical Humor Translation in YouTube Automatic Indonesian Subtitles

Abstract

This study investigates the translation of satirical humor in YouTube’s automatic Indonesian subtitles of a stand-up comedy performance by Armando Anto. Using a qualitative descriptive case study, the research compares the English source text with the automatically generated Indonesian subtitles. Eleven satirical segments were identified and analyzed to examine meaning shifts, humor preservation, and the contribution of multimodal elements such as music, gestures, and facial expressions. The findings show that the subtitles generally preserve the literal meaning of the source text but frequently weaken or fail to convey the humorous effect. Irony, wordplay, and culturally embedded satire are often reduced, while humor conveyed through musical and visual elements is largely absent from the subtitles. In addition, several automatic speech recognition (ASR) errors negatively affect humor comprehension. This study concludes that YouTube’s automatic subtitles function more effectively as lexical translations than as translations of multimodal comedy performances. The findings highlight the challenges of translating satirical humor through automatic subtitle systems and the importance of multimodal features in humor translation.