The best advice is simply: don’t!
I remember the first time I brought my French boyfriend, Laurent, home for the holidays. Although he made efforts, his English was limited. I was responsible for interpreting much of the small talk. It was no easy task — especially since he liked to tell a lot of jokes.
After being in France for a couple of years, I was at a point where I could actually “get” most French jokes. Also, I was already familiar with my boyfriend’s humor since he had explained his own jokes to me before. But something happened when I translated them for my American family. They made absolutely no sense at all. That’s how I learned that jokes are the hardest thing to translate!
I finally told Laurent to please stop telling jokes, but poor Laurent loved to make people laugh. It was an inherent part of his personality. Despite the fact that my parents already loved him and found him quite entertaining as he was, Laurent wanted desperately to share his unique wit. I wanted to help him.
Humor, however, is not universal. French-style humor, as I had learned, was very different from American-style humor. (Maybe that’s why I never really found my boyfriend’s jokes that funny in the first place.)
In England, for example, constant self-deprecation is the first step to humor. By contrast, the French sense of humor is fueled by ridicule and mockery that is directed toward others. Another frequent form of French humor is to exaggerate a statement to illustrate its falsehood. If you are gullible like me, you may not clue in to the “funny” factor.
