The comic has long reached a status that goes beyond mere entertainment. They began as comics and comics for children, but today the discipline is considered a form of artistic creation made and right, a type of literature —“graphic novel”, it is sometimes called— where text and image are intimately linked and cohesive.
And since the comic has its own language, his own discourse and his own norms (there is nothing more to delve into the Marvel universe), it is vital that the translator Respect and have deep knowledge in the matter, because only then will you be able to carry out a translation and quality adaptation.
As in all literary texts, the ultimate goal of the Western Comic and Manga translator will be as follows: Translate what was said into the new language without changing the original intention of the author, although at the same time you have to adjust the new text to the target culture.
Two limiting elements in the translation and interpretation of comics.
First of all, let’s start at the beginning: What is a comic? A comic is a visual story whose chronology appears divided into spaces and boxes called vignettes (‘panels’, in English).
In the comics, the textual content of the dialogues and actions is located in the sandwiches, balloons and boxes. This fact produces that, precisely, the space available to a translator is always limited in advance.
As a consequence of this limitation, the translator must ensure that the translated text of each sandwich has, more or less, the same length as the original text. Although when this is not possible, strategies can always be used that help us adjust the extension.
On the other hand, in the translation of comics there is always an added difficulty: the dialogues are closely linked to visual content. Both texts and drawings constitute an inseparable unit.
Translation of comics into Spanish: an adventure full of singularities.
As you possibly already know, comics maintain many of the peculiarities of spoken and colloquial language. For example: it is common for them to use exclamatory and interrogative sentences, interjections, hesitations, contractions, idioms and even ill-fated words..
In addition, as comics often play with humorous situations, it is common for jokes to appear in the texts, double meanings, colloquialisms and ironies..
Another issue that should be taken into account is that footnotes or clarifications are rarely used. And if they are used, which is strange, they should always be very brief and concise. In other words: all the information must be well contained in the vignettes, sandwiches and boxes.
All these factors make comic book translation an extremely complicated and demanding task.
Onomatopoeia and cultural norms
If you are familiar with reading comics, whether they are manga or superhero stories from the Marvel Universe, you will know that onomatopoeias are a fairly common resource. The problem, however, is found in that the graphic representation of certain sounds may vary according to the language and the culture.
Let’s look at an example of this: Spanish The dog’s bark is written “wow”, while in English It’s “woof”. And the same happens with the rooster: in Spanish the usual thing is to represent the sound of the rooster with a «quiquiriquí», but in English it is «cock-a-doodle-do». I miss it as much as funny, right?
Likewise, as always happens in this discipline, and especially when we talk about literary texts, cultural aspects usually generate uncomfortable headaches in the professional translator.
To get around them effectively we recommend a very useful trick: pay attention, before starting the translation work, on what type of comic we are going to work with. Are we facing a graphic novel that contains political and social criticism? Is it a teenage love story? Is it an informative comic aimed at children and young people? Is it a comic or a humorous cartoon?
This step, a priori quite simple, will prevent the future appearance of many translation problems and interpretation. It is this type of analysis that will make a difference and where it will be possible to see if the translation has been carried out by a professional with experience.
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