Past Approaches

When it comes to older approaches to comic translation, perhaps one of the most infamous translation approaches to not just comics, but to any works having more than one mode of meaning incorporated within them or additional non-verbal modes, has been the constrained approach. The

constrained translation approach sees anything other than the verbal as a hindrance to the translation process; in a way, it mirrors early approaches to multimodality, wherein a verbal/non-verbal binary was established, with the verbal being frequently seen as superior (as described in subchapter 1.3. of this thesis). The idea of constrained translation was presented in an article co-written by Roberto Mayoral, Dorothy Kelly and Natividad Gallardo’s titled “The Concept of Constrained Translation.

Non-Linguistic Perspectives of Translation”. Published in 1988, the article deals with the translation of works that are made up of more than one communication channel.

As explained in the abstract, Mayoral et al. (1988) see constrained translation as occurring when: “translation is required not only of written texts alone, but of texts in association with other communication media (image, music, oral sources, etc.), the translator’s task is complicated and at the same time constrained by the latter” (p. 356). The term “constrained translation” in itself is taken from Christopher Titford’s paper on translating subtitles, published in 1982, where he defines constrained translation as: “derive[d] essentially from the constraints imposed on the translator by the medium itself” (Titford, 1982, qtd. in Diaz Cintas, 2004, p. 55). Mayoral et al. (1988) expand this concept on the basis of Eugene Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence, and use terminology connected to it, such as “noise” and “redundancy” (p. 357). It can be noted that Mayoral et al.

discuss many different kinds of constraints, which are internal and external and that arise from a number of circumstances. Two circumstances that Mayoral et al. (1988) establish are of greatest importance; these are circumstances which “remove the condition of freedom which allows us, in isolated written prose, to approach the highest degree of dynamic equivalence in our translated text”

(p. 363). They are respectively: “the existence of various systems of communication” and “the adaptation of the message to the norms of oral language” (Mayoral et al., 1988, p. 363) In other words, anything aside from the linguistic, and anything beyond the written/printed form is seen as a challenge, or an obstacle, for the translator. While Mayoral et al. (1988) do discuss synchrony and the importance of communication channels being in concordance so as not to disrupt the overall meaning of the text (p. 363), the emphasis on opposition rather than symbiosis creates the implication that anything other than the verbal is imposing and causes disruption.

Although Mayoral et al., like Titford, discussed constrained translation from the point of view of Audiovisual Translation (AVT), other scholars have approached the idea of constrained translation from the point of view of the comic medium, seeing the pictures, word balloons and any surrounding para-text as constraints which impose limitations upon translation. An example of this can be found in Maria Crun and Cay Dollerup’s article on loss and gain in comic translation, where they define constrained translation in the context of the comic medium:

We here define constrained translations as translations that are, for practical or commercial reasons, spatially limited, such as, for instance, advertisements with brief and catchy slogans, cartoons, comics and subtitles. In this article, we shall focus on translations of

comics. They are limited spatially in that translations must fit into balloons or panels, and in that they have a specific objective. (Grun and Dollerup, 2003, p. 185)

Much like Mayoral et al., Grun and Dollerup recognize the co-existence of modes within comics and their importance in the creation of coherent meaning; in their conclusion, they point out that a successful comic translation is one that took into account not only all semiotic channels within the comic but also the general idea, which in turn contributes to creating a positive reception from the audience (p. 200).

As such, it can be seen that older sources devoted to constrained translation very much perceive holistically both the source and target texts, or the source and target imagetexts. The importance of the modes working together is not undermined; however, it is pushed aside in favor of meticulously analyzing each and every mode separately. Citing Zanettin (2011), when applying the idea of constraint to comics translation, the consequence is often as follows: “words are seen as subordinated to the images, and the non-verbal components of comics are discussed only in so far as they represent visual constraints for the translator of the verbal components” (p. 39). While there are of course benefits to e.g. examining how puns work in comics, or the translation of onomatopoeia, the focus on minor aspects has distracted from perceiving comics as whole works within translation discourse. After all, “comics are primarily visual texts, and meaning derives from the interaction between images and written language, both within and across panels and pages”

(Zanettin, 2011, p. 39). And with the rise of the Internet and the general growing predominance of the visual, the question of perceiving works holistically has become more important, especially with the appearance of webcomics.

Therefore, although the constrained approach was one of the first coherent approaches towards translating works in the comic medium, it is one that is inadequate and outdated in its perception of comic translation, especially in contemporary times where digital programming allows for easier manipulation and problem solving that go hand-in-hand with comic translation, e.g. adjusting word balloon size or reworking page formatting (Kaindl, 2010, p. 37). However, it is important to note that the constrained approach has been beneficial for comic translation, and it still can be; it can serve as a research angle to explore how different modes work together and impact each other. In fact, amidst criticism, Zanettin (2011) does point out that: “constrained translation approaches stress the semiotic dimension and the interdependence of words and images in comics (. . .)” (p. 39). An example of this is Wieczorek’s (2019) article on proper name translation in Transformers comics, where he points out that the limited space in printed comics usually does not allow for the inclusion of footnotes or additional explanation (p. 353). Indeed, Grun and Dollerup’s (2003) study based on constrained translation proves this, as they use constrained translation to demonstrate adequate translation strategies and draw conclusions as to how dialogue, character names and onomatopoeia is interrelated with the action taking place in the panels.

For instance, they discuss something as simple but impactful as changing the names of the two main characters in the famous syndicated strip Calvin and Hobbes (1985), which follows the adventures of Calvin, a boy in elementary school and his stuff tiger, Hobbes. In the Danish translation of the comic, both names are changed into Danish to reflect the appearance of the main characters: Calvin is translated as “Steen”, which is a popular Danish boy name, and Hobbes is translated as “Stoffer”, which is a word play on the Danish word “textile” (Grun & Dollerup, 2003, p. 188). A similar strategy was applied to the early Polish translations between 1994 and 1995 of Watterson’s work- the titular characters were translated as “Kelvin” (“Kelvin”) and “Celsjusz”

(“Celsius”), an allusion to both the temperatures, and the scientists that discovered the (Borodo, 2016, pp. 71-72).³⁵ Thus, both Polish and Danish translators and editors settled on a domesticating strategy that was parallel to the visual information encoded in each strip of Calvin and Hobbes, thus making it more appealing to the target readership-children. However, this simultaneously made the comic devoid of any philosophical connotations as was originally intended by the author, Bill Watterson- after all, John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes are known philosophers (Grun & Dollerup, 2003, p. 187). Grun and Dollerup also discuss in detail the Danish translations of select Donald Duck^© comics, noting e.g. dialogue and panel inconsistencies due to domesticating strategies such as the inclusion of informal Dutch, but also point out clever solutions so that the pace and plot is kept across the comic pages (pp. 195-197).

One of the reasons as to why such multimodal works as comics and their further iterations (such as webcomics) have not been perceived in translation as heterogeneous is due to the sparse existence of translation theory fully dedicated to multimodal works. In fact, even base/traditional translation theory is often not able to cover all aspects of multi-faceted works. This is unsurprising;

Carol O’Sullivan (2013) points out that other modes have been mostly ignored in translation theory, as, “translation, whose theory remained until recently almost exclusively word and script-based, is generally conceived as the rendering of written text into written text” (p. 2). Here O’Sullivan makes a valid point, as much of translation theory has only notionally accounted for other semiotic modes, seeing many texts as largely monomodal with occasional additions in the form of e.g. pictures.

Naturally, some translation theory does indeed account for the presence of other, visual modes next to textual modes, but as O’Sullivan (2013) notes while citing Reiss’s text-types, “This revisiting of her [Reiss’] approach speaks to the difficulty of incorporating multimodality into theories of translation which had until then been exclusively text-based” (p. 5). Reiss’ text-types are also mentioned by Celotti (2008), who credits her multi-medial categorization for including comics, but also notes that such categorization still drew attention to how additional modes constrained the translation process (p. 33). O’Sullivan (2013, p. 6) also mentions Snell-Hornby’s (2009) categorization, noting that in the context of translation studies, it’s important to differentiate

35 In 2004 a new translation by Piotr Cholewa came out which preserved the proper names features in the original comic (Borodo, 2016, p. 72).

between media, modes, and sign systems; she differentiates four categories, one of which is the multisemiotic category that includes comics (p. 44).³⁶ O’Sullivan (2013) positively evaluates Snell-Hornby’s categories, which can be seen as divergent and permeable, but she still decides to stick to the all-encompassing term multimodality to avoid needless confusion and division, something that Snell-Hornby’s categorization may bring about.

As can be seen, much of early translation theory, while understanding the need to perceive multimodal works as a whole, was unsure of how to approach the translation of such works from a practical point of view. In many ways it continues to be unsure; the easiest thing to be done was to divide the modes, and give priority to the mode that seemingly contained the most information, or perhaps had the biggest priority- in many cases, this was the verbal aspect. Examples of this were seen in e.g. Grun and Dollerup’s (2003) study, which focused on how the dialogue and character names were adapted and domesticated in select comics without greater adherence to the visual aspect: a notable example is how the earlier Danish translations of the Donald Duck^© comics were domesticated in their dialogue to such an extent that they could have thought to be originally Danish (p. 197). Among other things, swear words were omitted and Danish neologisms were used, with little regard to the illustrations and overall pacing of the comics (Grun & Dollerup, 2003, p. 197).

Based on such examples, it is clear that the linguistic/verbal mode is not the only thing that needs to be taken into consideration when translating multimodal works. Moreover, works should not be considered along such a strict division. Regardless, this tends to be an aspect ignored in comics translation, as Klaus Kaindl shows in his article on the translation of humor in comics; making recourse to the famous French comic series Astrix and Obelix, Kaindl (2004) shows where the text had been carelessly translated without regard for the surrounding imagery, thus impacting the humor in the comic, or omitting it at times altogether (pp. 177-178; pp. 180-182).