Translating humour in the age of OTT platforms: from translation to anticipatory writing?

This article examines humour translation through selected passages from Alain Chabat's live-action film Mission Cléopâtre (2002) and his Netflix animated series Le Combat des chefs (The Big Fight, 2025). French dialogue is compared with documented English and German subtitling and dubbing solutions, with comic-book translations providing a further intertextual reference. The analysis distinguishes verbal puns from visual anchoring and cultural allusion, and the retention of a reference from its likely recognisability. Re-examined scenes from the series reveal sharply different choices across audiovisual modes: a French constitutional reference survives in German dubbing but not in English dubbing, whereas newly coined names circulate through inventive digital and media-related substitutions. The earlier film illuminates the role of historically established franchise names, gesture and culture-specific humour. Such textual contrasts are compatible with the prospect of translation influencing comedy writing from the outset, but they cannot demonstrate authorial intention, audience response or an OTT-specific causal effect. Anticipatory writing remains an exploratory hypothesis rather than a demonstrated production practice.