Translators claim a lot more leeway in the translating of comedy than is usually accorded to the translation of tragedy; accordingly, generalisations about translating comedy are that much more suspect. The problem still comes down, as it always does in any act of cultural transference, to the balance to be struck between source and target, but with some major differences.

In this chapter I want to consider what the Greeks may have understood by the comic in their theatre, and how this has affected translation of plays that were intended to make Athenian audiences laugh. The comic will include the satyr play that was performed alongside tragedy, and old comedy in the earliest translations of Aristophanes. All of these have to have, as do all translations, an element of modernisation, but updating of comedy is a divisive issue and will be considered in the second of these two chapters, alongside Greek New Comedy and the first ever dramatic ‘translations’ we have, namely the New Comedy adaptations from Greek originals into Latin by Plautus and Terence. Hopefully this will give some handles to grip when confronting the final question of when a ‘translation’ is or is not a ‘translation’.

What distinguishes translating Greek comedy from translating tragedy is the manner in which humour travels. Aristophanes' or Menander's themes may be still topical. Their characters may be recognisable types.