Comics in translation studies.

An overview and suggestions for research

Federico Zanettin

Comics enjoy a prominent space in the translation world. In Italy as well as in other countries the
majority of comics titles are translations (see e.g. Rota 2003, Kaindl 1999). However, research on
comics translation is not as well represented. As a result of a quite extensive bibliographic research1
I was able to find only a few passing mentions of comics in general books on translation (e.g. Hatim
& Mason 1990, Mounin 1965), a handful of monographic publications, and about 30 articles,
mostly published in the last few years (cf. bibliographic references). A quick review of these works
reveals first of all what could be called a (multi) linguistic if not a (multi) cultural bias: a) most texts
are written in languages other than English, b) even those which are written in English are usually
written by scholars operating in non English speaking countries, and c) English is rarely the target
language in the comics examined. Languages involved include French, Spanish, Italian, German,
Danish, Polish, Finnish, Japanese, Arabic, and Chinese. This may be due to a number of factors,
most conspicuously perhaps to the low status accorded to comics in anglophone cultures, where
they are generally perceived as mass products for poorly educated people or at best for children.
A second consideration concerns the terminology used to refer to comics. In other words, what
exactly is meant by comics? They have been referred to as a publication format, a medium, a
genre and a semiotic system, depending on the approach taken in the analysis. All these labels seem
however to be non-exhaustive.
Many different words are sometimes used to refer to comics in the same as well as in different
languages. For instance, the English words comic strips, cartoons, vignettes, graphic novels
or the funnies, may refer to the format and/or to the medium of transmission (book form,
periodical, illustrations, moving pictures, etc.). Interlingually, the words comics, fumetti,
bande desinne, manga, tebeos, banda desenhada and so on point to different aspects of
comics. The English word comics originates from the strips of mostly humorous relief which
began to be published about a century ago in American newspapers (e.g. in the funnies section of
Sunday newspapers) (see Sabin 1993). The Italian fumetti refers to the speech balloons (as well
as perhaps to the projected lightness of the subjects treated) which were introduced by Italian
publishers with the translation of American comics in the 1930s (see Laura 1997). Bande
desinne refers to a modality of production and consumption, the sequential reading of scrolls of
drawings. Manga is used in the West to refer to Japanesestyle comics (while in Japan the word
may also refer to animated pictures or anime). And so on for Spanish and Portuguese terms.
Each lingua/culture also has its preferred publishing format, i.e. comic book in the USA, album in
France, tonkabon in Japan, etc. (Rota 2004).
Two core characteristics are that comics are (usually) printed paper objects and that it takes at least
two panels for it to be comics. Indeed, McCloud (1993) suggests that meaning in comics is to be
found in the blank spaces between panels. It is the reader who fills in those interstices with
expectations and world knowledge, and makes sense of sometimes seemingly incoherent images
and words.
Comics are not a medium in the same sense as print, films, tv, radio etc. are media. Rather, they use
print as a medium, and could better be defined as a type of media discourse, which however cuts
across the borders of media types. The link between cartoons and comics is obvious and is reflected
in the overlap of meaning between the two words. Electronic comics and cartoons, exploiting
features of digital texts such as hypertextuality, scroll-down capability, animation, etc. can also be
found on the WWW (see e.g. www.scottmccloud.com, www.comix.it).
Rather than being a genre comics have genres, much like prose writing. A major distinction is that
1
I used among other sources the TSA/BTS Online database (http://www.stjerome.co.uk/tsaonline/) which contains
more than 6,000 full entries about individual articles, printed volumes, online publications and PhD dissertations,
mostly since 1998.

1
between childrens and adults comics, although more fine-grained categories could also be
identified. Within childrens comics we can for instance distinguish between educational comics
and leisure comics, including the funny animals genre which made the fortune of Walt Disney.
Within adult comics we can distinguish among a variety of fictional genres, such as adventure,
humour, horror, romance, science fiction, sex/eros/pornography, serious fiction, etc. and we also
find a variety of non-fictional genres, such as essayism, (auto)biography, journalism, etc. In Europe
and especially in the USA, where children and male teenagers seem to be the preferred target
audience, some of these genres are more widespread or known than others. However, in Japan
which has the largest comic books market in the world (about of all printed materials in the
country are comics, for a business volume about 50 times as large as that of the USA, the second
largest market)2 comics cater for all ages and tastes, the target audience is equally split between
males and females and a much greater variety of genres can be found, both fictional and non
fictional.
Comics could be viewed as a semiotic system. Various definitions and conceptual representations of
translation from the point of view of semiotics have been proposed, starting with Jakobsons (1971)
tripartite distinction between interlinguistic, endolinguistic and intersemiotic translation. On the
basis of Ecos (2001, 2003) more recent and elaborated models (see also Toury 1986, Torop 2002,
2003) we could discern (at least) the following types of inter- and intrasemiotic comics
translation: a) the change of reading direction often involved in Western translations of Japanese
comics, or in Arabic translations of Western comics, the first consequence being the creation of
many left-handed people (see e.g. Jngst 2004); b) the reproduction in black & white of a comic
book in color or viceversa. Figure 1 provides an example of three different Italian translations of a
Flash Gordon story, the first in black and white, the other two colored and otherwise changed
(notice e.g. the length of dialogues).

Figure 1: Flash Gordon (1936)

Types of intersystemic translation are a) interlinguistic translation (what Jakobson terms

translation proper); b) rewriting (consider, for example, the first story with the origins of
Spiderman by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko published in 1962, and the 2000 version by Brian Bendis
and Mark Bagley); and c) intersemiotic translation proper or adaptation (comics to film, novel to
comics, etc., and viceversa).
I would like to suggest that comics translation should be seen ultimately as intercultural translation
between semiotic environments which are culturally determined, along dimensions of space and
time. By semiotic environment I mean a multiplicity and heterogeneity of semiotic systems which
encompasses texts, media and discourses, what Barbieri (1991) has called the languages of
comics, i.e. visual systems (such as illustration, caricature, painting, photography and graphics),
temporality systems (comprising written narratives, poetry and music) and mixed systems of images
and temporality, i.e. cinema and theatre. Perhaps the definition of comics as sequential art by
author and critic Will Eisner (1985) - the ninth art to be precise sounds even better than semiotic
environment, after all.

2
Cf. Schodt 1997:4 and Persson online

2
Being too few to deserve a separate category, articles and other works on comics translation
included in Translation Studies Abstracts & The Bibliography of Translation Studies have been
classified3 as relevant to one or more of the following categories: Literary translation, Translation
policies, Audiovisual and multimedia translation, Translation and cultural identity, Intercultural
studies, Contrastive and comparative studies and Translation theory.
Generally speaking, we can distinguish between linguistic and semiotic oriented approaches. A
number of studies, especially earlier ones, use comics mostly as a source of examples to discuss the
translation of puns, proper names, onomatopoeias, citations, allusions and other features of
language which are often found in comics but are not specific to them. Humorous and childrens
comics are generally the genres investigated, seemingly with a predilection for translations of
Astrix stories from French.
While in linguistic oriented approaches the focus is on the verbal component, with hardly any
reference to features which are specific to the semiotic environment, more semiotic-oriented
approaches take into consideration the relationship between symbolic and iconic components, i.e.
between written text and pictures. This relationship can be seen as one of dependency, with an
emphasis on technical constraints. For instance, space limitations of balloons can be compared to
time limitations of film subtitles or synchronization problems in dubbing. However, the relationship
between visual and written elements can also be seen as one of complementarity, whereas the
interplay between images, verbal signs, as well as art form specific grammatical devices such
as frame transitions, motion lines, lettering, pictograms and visual metaphors contribute to creating
meaning and developing narratives.
One example which illustrates the interplay between words and images comes from Watchmen, a
graphic novel written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons. The first chapter of the story
begins with two detectives investigating the violent death of some Edward Blake, who has been
killed by being thrown out of a window from a tall building. The detectives are on the crime scene
and are discussing what course to give to the investigations. The reconstruction of the events in the
dialogues between the two investigators is accompanied by a visual flashback which shows the fight
and the fall or the victim. This second narrative track is seen as under a purple filter, its panels
alternating with those of the main narrative track which happens in real time. In page 4, among a
number of intra and intertextual references, both verbal and visual, which would be too long to
comment on here, we follow the fall of Edward Blake from ouside the window and down to the
street below. The point of view is that of a fixed camera, and starting from the middle of the top row
in the page, we see the body disappearing from sight. In the first frame of the second row we can
read a comment made by one of the detectives, who is suggesting not to publicize too much the
investigation. The sentence in the balloon, Well, what say we let this one drop out of sight? thus
acts also as a verbal commentary to the sequence shown in purple. In fact, this one may be taken
to refer both to the investigation and to the body falling down the building. If a target language, like
Italian, lacks a straightforward equivalent for the metaphorical expression to fall out of sight, it
becomes difficult to keep the visual reference.
It is sometimes assumed that written text inside speech balloons and boxes is the only component of
comics which may change in translation, but this is not the case, since visual components may be
translated as well. A systematic attempt to account for features of translated comics vis--vis the
originals has been put forward by Kaindl (1999), who proposes a translation-relevant anatomy of
comics, that is, a taxonomy of aspects of comics which may be modified during the translation
process. These include typographical signs (font type and size, layout, format), pictorial signs
(colors, action lines, vignettes, perspective), and linguistic signs (titles, inscriptions, dialogues,
onomatopoeias, narration). Each of these aspects may be subjected to strategies of change such as
replacement (the standard option for linguistic signs), deletion, addition etc.

3
By myself and other editors and contributors to the jounal and online database.

3
Within an approach which considers all the different semiotic components of comics, various
models could be tested and applied to comics translation, both from the point of view of translation
criticism (with a view to evaluating and expressing judgments on individual translations) and from a
more descriptive stance, looking at how cultural, literary and linguistic norms influence the
translation of individual works, authors, series and genres. Toury (1980) draws a distinction
between preliminary norms, which have to do with translation policies and decisions about what
get and what gets not translated, and operational norms, which "direct actual decisions made
during the translation process" (Toury 1980: 54). Among preliminary norms, censorship and self-
censorship play often a very important role. For example, during the Fascist regime American
comics were banned in Italy, Disney comics later than all others because of Mussolinis liking for
them (De Giacomo 1995).
Zitawi (2004) analyzes the potential of Arabic translations of Disney comics as face-threatening
acts in a sizable corpus of originals and translations. Disney comics contain features such as written
and visual references to sensitive subjects like romance and sex, God and magic, Christian and
Jewish imagery, as well as human nakedness, characters represented as pigs, and stereotypical
depictions of Arabs as untrustworthy and evil people which are perceived as offensive to religious
and ethical values, linguistic practices and cultural identities. Zitawi describes the different policies
and norms operating in Egypt and in the Arabic peninsula. Publishers in Qwait and Dubai have
adopted a strict set of internal guidelines to prevent censorship from the ministerial body which has
to approve all published material. These may result in avoiding the publication of whole stories
initially considered, or in marked modifications to both visual and written components. For
instance, in a Donald Duck story the content of an entire page is changed, so that instead of reading
from love letters Donald Duck reads about an imaginary adventure in Africa. Images can also be
retouched or replaced, for instance the top part of Santa Klaus hat is removed in a Christmas scene,
as is Uncle Scrooges top hat in another (the top hat is associated in the Arab world to Jewish
imagery). A panel showing a kiss between Clarabelle Cow and a monkey has been replaced by one
created ad hoc by merging images taken from different panels and involving no kiss. Potentially
offensive features undergo in other case a process of mitigation. For example semi-naked bodies are
coated in black and evil-looking Scheiks are verbally identified and referred to as Indian Marajas. In
Egyptian translations such features are instead often reproduced without noticeable alterations.
As Zitawi points out, censorship regulations in the Arab peninsula have much in common with the
still active Comics Code Authority guidelines followed by publishers in the USA since the 1950s,
the main difference being that the latter code is self-imposed and not adhered to by all publishers
and for all publications, thus functioning as a form of rating.
Self-censorship on part of the publishers may indeed be a powerful factor in enacting translation
policies in many different target cultures. For instance, in one Scandinavian translation of the The
Adventures of Tin Tin, a panel with the image of a rhinoceros exploding to pieces was deleted. The
Hebrew translation of Maus, the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman which
narrates the story of his parents survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America,
portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, was never published because it was felt that the
depiction of the character of a kap in Auschwitz, who was based on a real person, might have been
perceived as offensive by his living relatives, even though Spiegelman had offered to mitigate the
face-threatening potential of the episode by adding a few panels to the Israeli edition to provide
further contextualization (Spiegelman 1994). More recently, Spiegelmans story (In the shade of no
towers, 2004) recounting the New York in the days after the terrorists attacks of September 11
2001, had wider circulation in its European translations than in the USA. The perceived potential
threat to the then very strong nationalist feelings of the general reading public resulted in its
publication for a minor imprint rather than in the New Yorker magazine of which Spiegelman used
to be a regular collaborator.
Operational, that is, textual norms, may differ in different countries and change over time. For
example, when in the late 1980s Japanese comics started to be translated first in the USA and then

4
in Europe, the pages were reproduced as mirror images in order to change the reading direction
from right to left to left to right, i.e. according to Western conventions. Publishers seemed to think
that a change in reading habits would not have been received well by the audience, even if reversing
the comics books implied additional costs. After a few years Japanese comics retaining the original
reading direction started to appear, and within 15 years the norm, at least in countries like Germany
and Italy seems to have shifted to reproduction of this original feature. In the USA publishers have
begun printing some Japanese comics in the original right to left reading direction only more
recently (see http://www.viz.com/about/faq/#09), a fact which suggests that domestication rather
than foreignization strategies prevail in that culture.
Looking at translated comics from the point of view of the target culture may lead to comparisons
of features of translated and original comics in the same language, such as onomatopoeic
inscriptions or it may lead to contrastive and comparative studies of different translations of the
same source text for different audiences, either in different or in the same target language. A large
part of all comics published are in fact reprints or retranslations. Consider, for instance, two
different Italian translations of Charlier and Girauds Blueberry, the first published in the 1970s and
directed to children, the second published in the 1990s and directed to an adult readership (more
like the original French readership). At a first inspection it is apparent the difference in colors and
text length between the two. In the 1970s Italian edition half-colors and shades (which can be found
both in the French original and 1990s Italian edition) have been shifted to brighter and more
uniform ones, while dialogues are much simpler in terms of lexis and syntactical complexity as well
as much shorter.
One last observation I would like to make is that comics translation is a process which bears
distinctive analogies with that of software localization. For once, comics are often collective
enterprises and translated comics even more so. Two examples: In the American translations of
popular Italian series like Dylan Dog and Martin Mystre, translation, dialogue adaptation, editing,
additional cover art, lettering and retouching are all credited to different people as distinct
components of the overall translation process. Two main phases, internationalization and
localization proper are usually involved. In the first phase the product is prepared at the source end.
In the case of Dylan Dog, first the Italian publisher (Sergio Bonelli Editore) chose the most suitable
episodes for the international market. Some pages where also partially redrawn and some
intertextual references changed. The literary agent for Bonelli then provided the American
publisher, Dark Horse, with a first English translation. The stories were finally localized at the
target end, by editing the dialogues, lettering, retouching inscriptions and drawings and adding new
covers by well known American comics artists (see DArcangelo & Zanettin 2004 for more details).
Most Disney comics could also be described as the product of an internationalization/localization
process. Disney comic books are marginal products in the USA, and they are mostly produced in
Europe, in particular in Italy which accounts for about 70% of all Disney comics production
(Castelli 1999). Some of them are only created for international distribution, and target culture
publishers are provided with English translations, which thus operates as a lingua franca. For
example, Zitawi (2004: 306) discusses a panel from the Donald Duck story Jelly troubles. The
story was first published in Sweden in 1997, written by a Finnish author (Per Erik Hedman) and
drawn by a Spanish draughtsman (Francisco Rodriguez Peinado). The Arabic translation of 1997 as
well as the American edition of 1998 are based on dialogues written by an American writer (Gary
Gabner) (INDUCKS online).4 The jungle story with Clarabelle Cow was produced in Denmark by a
team of international authors and first published in Germany (INDUCKS online).
As a way of concluding, I hope to have shown that there is still much room for research on comics
translation. While I do not see a need for a comics-specific theory of translation, I think that the

4 Story no. D 95027 - Jelly troubles. Idea: Per Erik Hedman , Storyboard: Per Erik Hedman , Art: Francisco
Rodriguez Peinado. Published on 1997-01-24. [Gary Gabner wrote the American dialogue used by Egmont and
Gladstone accordingly].

5
study of translated comics may provide useful insights into an understanding of translation as a
complex process of intercultural communication, involving quite a few people and much more than
simply the replacement of written text in speech balloons.

References
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Castelli, Alfredo (1999) America on my mind. Italian Comics and the Industry of
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http://www.bvzm.com/english/eng_set.html
D'Arcangelo, Adele & Federico Zanettin (2004) Dylan Dog Goes to the Usa: A North-
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De Giacomo, Francesco (1995) Quando il duce salv Topolino, If. Immagini e fumetti, 4,
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 Toury, Gideon (1986) "Translation". In: Sebeok, Thomas (ed.), Encyclopedic Dictionary of
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