At the 33rd conference of the Polish Association of Applied Linguistics, held in Katowice on 10–11 April 2026, Anna Majer (University of Silesia in Katowice), together with Piotr Mamet (Independent Researcher), presented a paper entitled Lost in Communication, Lost in Translation: A Case Study of the “Communication Problems” Episode of “Fawlty Towers”.

The study examined how communication breakdowns—central to British humour—pose challenges for audiovisual translation. Focusing on six selected scenes from the episode, the authors analysed how phonetic ambiguity, pragmatic failure, and culture-specific references generate humour, and how these mechanisms are rendered in Polish subtitles and voiceover translation.

The research addressed three key issues: how communication failures function in the original dialogue, how they are transformed in translation, and to what extent the humorous effect is preserved. The findings show that humour in Fawlty Towers, and specifically in the episode Communication Problems, relies heavily on wordplay, misinterpretation, and contextual cues, which are often difficult to reproduce across languages and cultures. As a result, translators must employ compensatory strategies and frequently negotiate between formal fidelity and functional equivalence.

The study highlights the translator’s role as a mediator who actively reconstructs meaning, demonstrating that the effectiveness of translation ultimately depends on preserving the pragmatic impact rather than the linguistic form. Therefore, the translator is not merely a transmitter of content, but a cultural mediator and co-creator of the communicative effect.