Exploring the Links Between Comics Translation and AVT

Abstract

For a very young but steadily developing subfield of Translation Studies such as the translation of comics it seems only natural to look to other research areas within the discipline for inspiration and research methods. This is also one of the aims of the present article, which will attempt to point to certain similarities between comics translation and the subdiscipline of Translation Studies known as AVT (Audiovisual Translation) and the field of subtitling in particular. Both films and comic books are multimodal texts based on the interplay between the verbal and the visual. What is more, both films and comic books are primarily based on dialogue, which is nevertheless transcribed and communicated in writing in both subtitled films and translated comics. Text will, in both cases, usually appear in clearly specified areas, that is at the bottom of the screen (with some exceptions) in subtitled films, and in speech balloons (with some exceptions) in the case of comics. Furthermore, text may be condensed due to the existence of spatial and technical constraints, such as the limited number of characters that may appear at the bottom of the screen or the size of speech balloons and the type of the lettering employed in the case of comics. It is particularly the latter aspect, that is textual condensation related to both spatial constraints and the multimodal character of comics, that the article will focus on, investigating the first Polish translations of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips created by the American cartoonist Bill Watterson.

A social semiotic multimodal analysis of ateji translation in manga

“…Research on manga and comic translation has been conducted from different perspectives, such as globalisation (Jüngst 2008(Jüngst /2014Giovanni 2008Giovanni /2014, localisation (Zanettin 2008(Zanettin /20142014), multimodal perspectives (Borodo 2015;Kaindl 2004), social semiotic multimodal perspectives (Huang and Archer 2014;Armour and Takeyama 2015), audio-visual perspectives (Borodo 2016) and censorship (Zanettin 2018). Some scholars who uphold the importance of manga's multimodal nature and the interaction between modes have applied a general multimodal perspective or a social semiotic multimodal perspective with a combination of different theories.…”

Translating Yemeni cartoons into English: A Systemic Functional Linguistics approach

“…The studies included in the issue focus on some theoretical aspects of translation such as the concept of 'faithfulness' or 'fidelity' in translated comics (Abril 2016;Assis 2016). Other studies tackled some technical aspects of translating comics such as the link between comics translating and subtitling (Borodo 2016), and the use of translation annotations to investigate the practice of scanlation (i.e., scanning, translating, and editing comics from one language into another) and its specificities (Fabbretti 2016). One article expands on the pedagogical value of the translation of comics in teaching economic and financial texts (Falco 2016).…”

La traducción del cómic Margalida Jofre a la lengua de signos española

“…No en vano, "these two modes constantly interact, at times overlapping in what they communicate and sometimes diverting from each other in the meanings they express" (Borodo, 2015: 23). Por este motivo, consideramos que la traducción del cómic y su análisis deben realizarse "desde una perspectiva comunicológica y no meramente lingüística" (Brandimonte, 2012: 151), entendiendo la naturaleza multimodal de estos textos y cómo la interacción entre ambos códigos semióticos puede ser aprovechada para enriquecer a la propia traducción (Zanettin, 2008;Borodo, 2015Borodo, , 2016Rodríguez Rodríguez, 2019).…”

“…Esa multimodalidad ha suscitado en los últimos años propuestas de análisis similares a los realizados desde la traducción audiovisual, como Borodo (2016), quien emplea las técnicas de subtitulación al análisis de la traducción de cómics. No debemos olvidar que "[e]l lenguaje del cómic comparte numerosas similitudes con los textos audiovisuales, lo cual implica que las estrategias y mecanismos de traducción aplicadas se asemejan en buena medida también" (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 2019: 14).…”