Translation of popular fiction

Monday, September 26, 2011

I am a researcher interested in graphic novels but also a translator (French-German-English). My favorite translation job requires a creative mind. It's translation of graphic novels.
A recent job I did was the translation of a German comic into French : « Die Erbse des Zorns » by Ivo Kircheis (see my translation into French here: http://tinyurl.com/poisdelacol-re , and the original German version here: http://www.leblogdelamirabelle.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/2009/11/ivo-DE.jpg )

What’s interesting with popular fiction, and especially graphic novels, is the liberty you have, since you need to adapt the text to another target culture. Graphic novels aren't yet part of the canon, so there is no "officially" accepted version, but plays with variation and taste for experimentation.
While most of the time the translator sticks to the original text, sometimes, with the author’s or editor’s authorization, he/she actually rewrites the text in his/her language. The latter happened with the German version of Donald Duck. The English text written by Carl Barks was only there to « go with » the image and make the message more understandable. Its function was merely to get the action going.
The German translator, Dr. Erika Fuchs enjoyed herself tremendously by introducing German classics into the Disney stories (Goethe, Schiller, Heine etc…), creating a more elaborate form of humor, a European touch and an indirect criticism of the bad reputation of comics, seen as commercial products of little cultural value in German society (http://www.duckipedia.de/index.php5?title=Erika_Fuchs).
Here are some examples you would have a hard time finding in the original text. See: http://tinyurl.com/disneyfuchs
When confronted with the changes, Carl Barks was delighted, although he had no say in it, since authors are often not even mentioned in Disney stories.
If we take the opposite example of Astérix and Obélix, we can notice that after Goscinny's death, dialogues and storyline have become flat, anachronisms aren't a subtle criticism of modern society anymore, but rather a clumsy attempt at getting laughs from the masses (http://lecomptoirdelabd.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/07/25/asterix-une-nouvelle-ere-souvre/)

I believe these topics should be studied from the perspective of an academic who's also a translator.