Смешно ли?

[alexpgp]

Первый талиб, второму: "Аллах ахбар!"
Ответ: "Воистине ахбар!"

I get it, and I don't. (Uninspired) translation follows:

First Talib to second: "Allah is Great!"
The response: "Truly Great!"

What I understand is this: the response is patterned after "Воистине воскресе!" ("Truly risen!"), the traditional reply to the Easter greeting "Христос, воскресе!" ("Christ is risen!").

What I don't get is: why would anyone consider this funny? Is it the sudden "gear shift" from a well-known Muslim expression template to a Christian one?

Cheers...

Comments

[avva.livejournal.com]

It's the sudden acquisition of meaning that "akhbar" is going through that's funny.

"Allah akhbar" is a phrase in which Allah is meaningful and "akhbar" is meaningless to a typical Russian native speaker, but they recognize it to be a standard Islamic slogan; when you continue with "Âîèñòèíó àõáàð!", you pretend that "akhbar" as is transparent to you as "voskres" is in the familiar Christian phrase, and that creates the comical effect.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what I'd come up with (it was the only reasonable explanation).

This joke makes no sense to typical Americans (based on a rather small statistical sample). A fine example of a story that loses "everything" in the translation, I think.

Cheers...