Digger (2003-2011)- English-Polish Translation Analysis … …

focus on dynamic equivalence, domestication, and with how it situates itself unmistakably as a translation within the foreign fantasy context. Oittinen (2006) also points out that domestication can occur in a variety of ways and degrees, some of which constitute a natural progression of a translation approach focusing on the recipient (p. 43). In a digital age where the fight for the reader’s attention is becoming more and more vehement, a translator cannot afford to ignore the purpose of the text, nor the needs of a reader. It is here that skopos theory comes into play, as while this translation approach is considered vague and not as empirically productive as others (Chesterman, 2017, p. 70), it provides a valuable perspective on the purpose of a given work. It also serves its purpose as a general, functional theory of translation that provides a sound framework for further translation analysis.

This brief overview of Zamek zadzior (2019) as a translated work provides insight as to how to approach Vernon’s webcomic, Digger (2003-2011), due to its similarity in tone, punctuation, authorial style and characterization. The overview sheds light on possible translational problems, which according to Nord (1997a) are objective problems that can occur in many different kinds of texts, and which the translator will always be challenged by (p. 64). The aforementioned overview also mentions translation difficulties, which are subjective issues linked to a translator’s knowledge or competence (Nord, 1997a, p. 64)- these can also be used as a point of comparison to Vernon’s webcomic. This mostly due to the fact that both Castle Hangnail (2015) and Digger (2003-2011) belong to the fantasy genre; each contain their own sub-canon with unique terms, names and plot devices that while different, are distinct to Vernon’s authorial style. It is interesting here to note that Digger (2003-2011) was recognized as adult literature, which was indicated by the printed volumes winning the Mythopoeic Award in 2013 within the adult literature category. This is in contrast to Castle Hangnail (2015), which was also granted the same award but within the category of children’s literature in 2016. Regardless of target reader differences, Zamek zadzior (2019) will be used as a point of analytic comparison to Digger’s (2003-2011) Polish translation; the solutions employed in the translation of Zamek zadzior (2019) provide a useful contrast, especially when dealing with elements connected to the fantasy genre.

This decision is also motivated by the low number of Vernon’s works translated into Polish- at the time of writing this thesis Zamek zadzior (2019) is the most apt translation that can be used as a point of reference. While CLTS won’t be as applicable to Digger (2003-2011) as it is to Castle Hangnail (2015), some solutions and observations made by academics can be valuable in translating and analyzing given translation problems, and will be included where appropriate.

2005, all six printed volumes by Sofa Wolf press have sold out. As of 2022, the only printed copies available-be they singular volumes or the limited omnibus edition entailing all volumes- can be purchased second hand on auction websites such as Ebay or Abebooks for extortionate prices.

Therefore, both out of practicality and necessity, the translation case study was conducted on the online version of Digger (2003-2011) available in its entirety on Diggercomic.com. The online version lacks page numbers, but is marked by dates, chapter breaks, and of course, a logical story continuation. For reference purposes, a standard page numeration has been introduced, with the first page being established for the purposes of this thesis as “page 1”. The numeration includes mid-chapter page markers as well as pages without any sort of dialogue. One can notice in the website archive that the website had been revamped, with the webcomic being re-uploaded in part and continued between 2007 and 2011. The current online version has 759 pages according to Vernon’s commentary, with 791 in total on the website including blog posts. Out of all these pages, over 300 have been translated by the author of this thesis; translation progress can be noted on the dedicated blog (titled Ela’s Academic Blog under the tag “digger translation”) belonging to the author of this dissertation. Additionally, selected pages from the second half of the webcomic and their proposed translations will be added, bringing the corpus up to around 320 pages. The following case study uses this translated corpus from Ela’s Academic Blog; the proposed Polish translations present in this thesis have been done by this dissertation’s author and can also be found on the aforementioned blog. Examples of linguistic translation are presented in subsequent tables as text: this is done for both practical and copyright reasons.⁶⁰ Even though the case study presents translation progress largely in the form of linguistic translation, the thesis author is fully aware of Digger’s (2003-2011) status as an online imagetext, and thus has made, and continues to make, all decisions with appropriate characteristics in mind, such as:

the multiframe, surrounding paratext, the online environment, and any technological aspects. The translation is still being continued, and hopefully the author of this dissertation will see its completion within the next year.

As can be noted on Ela’s Academic Blog as well as within this case study, translations were carried out page by page. Images are sparsely included due to copyright. Furthermore, speech bubbles have been abbreviated to “SB”, which is followed by the name of the character speaking in brackets, while narrator squares have been abbreviated to “NS”, with the narrator-either Vernon herself or the titular Digger-being indicated in brackets. The occasional onomatopoeia has been marked as “O”. The case study has been divided into six subsections titled: “Proper Names”, “Fantasy Terminology”, “Lore,

60 The tables and case study subchapters feature in-text citations from the online version of Digger (2003-2011).They are cited according to the author name (Vernon) and completion date of the online version (2011), as well as the implemented page numbers for this dissertation (first page online = p. 1),

“Humor and Tone”, “Onomatopoeia”, “Dialect”, and “Concluding Comments”. Each section will present specific examples extracted from the corpus available on Ela's Academic Blog, which will then be analyzed from different points of view, including translation studies, semiotic relations, and queries associated with webcomics themselves.

The aim of this case study was to present a thorough example of a non-enhanced webcomic translation in order to demonstrate the possibilities, potential and difficulties associated with webcomic translation. Likewise, the aim is to present possible translation approaches and strategies when dealing with non-enhanced webcomics, and to shed some light on a process that bases itself on that what it is solely online. During the early stages of the case study, a translation brief was established, naturally based on Nord’s (1997a) understanding of the concept, also known as Übersetzungsauftrag: “<the term> implicitly compares the translator with a barrister who has received the basic information and instructions but is then free (as the responsible expert) to carry out those instructions as they see fit” (p.

30). The translation brief aims to precisely define a potential translation and the conditions it should fulfill, such as its purpose or communicative function. While Nord (1997b) initially means for the translation brief to be used as either a pedagogical tool for the trainer translator (p. 47), or for easing communication between translators and clients (Nord, 1997a, pp. 30-31), the translation brief can be also meant for the translator alone (Nord, 1997a, p. 30) in order to guide and help establish a purpose- a skopos. In fact, Nord (1997a) connects skopos theory with the translation brief, as having a comprehensive brief can help decide the translation skopos. Overall, the brief is meant to specify what translation is needed; it is meant to guide, not explicitly instruct: “the translation brief does not tell the translator how to go about their translating job, what translation strategy to use, or what translation type to choose. These decisions depend entirely on the translator’s responsibility and competence” (p. 30).

It is for this reason that the following translation brief was established for Digger (2003-2011).

Nord’s categorization was used (1997b, pp. 47-48) along with additional categories. The following brief and translation strategy description has been adapted from the thesis author’s initial blog post (Niewiadoma, 2019a), and has been updated and expanded on in table 3. The terminology is derived from functional translation theories that e.g. can be also observed in Nord (1997a; 1997b).

Table 3

Digger Translation Brief

Initiator/Commissioner: Thesis author.

Motivation for translation:

The motivation is three-fold; a) completing a translation study of a classic non-enhanced webcomic so as to gain insight into translating online literature and establishing translation approaches and strategies b) obtaining a corpus for translation analysis c) self-practice as a doctoral project

The target-text addressee(s):

According to Vernon, the source-text addressees were initially fans of her work (Myman, 2021); later on it became a wider audience that read webcomics and enjoyed the fantasy genre. In the case of translation, ideal target-text addressees would be a teenage/young adult Polish audience, should the translation be published (for free or paid) online, or perhaps even as a printed book. Currently, the target-text addressees will be the author’s thesis supervisor and reviewers, as well as any persons accessing the translation blog.

The prospective time and place of text reception:

Time; from now to the near future, no more than a few years in between.

Place; limited to the online environment in the form of the thesis author’s blog, as well as fragments included in the printed thesis.

The medium over which the text will be

transmitted:

The digital/online medium; translation in blog format in text posts without images. In the future, fragments of the translation will be featured in the printed medium- the thesis.

The motive for the production or reception

of the text:

When it comes to the source text, the creation of Digger (2003-2011) by Vernon was at first experimental, and later on was continuously created until 2011 as an expressive literary work. The target-text would have the same motive.

The brief helped in deciding translation strategies and overall requirements so as to ensure the translation was done in a coherent way. As such, the translation strategy focuses on preserving Digger (2003-2011) as (taking Reiss’ text-type categorization into consideration) a predominantly expressive literary work; Digger (2003-2011) is emotive, plot-driven, and is defined by its humor that is both situational and linguistic i.e. wordplay. It is embedded in the fantasy genre which also dictates translation approach- the fantastical world should be preserved. However, it is important to note that the work also includes appellative functions due to Digger (2003-2011) touching upon religious and moral matters (e.g. definitions of good and evil); therefore, it has minor persuasive and pedagogical sub-functions.

Taking all these characteristics into account, including the fact that Digger’s (2003-2011) prime purpose is to a) entertain the reader and b) contribute to the author’s development as a storyteller and illustrator, an appropriate translation strategy would highlight these purposes. Furthermore, a translation would be focused on evoking an equivalent reaction from the target reader; one that is at the very least familiar with reading online works. Much like in the case of Zamek zadzior (2019), Digger (2003-2011) would be best translated according to Nida’s concept of functional equivalence, which is a target-reader oriented approach that aims for a naturalness in the target text- this often involves adapting e.g. culture-specific items from the source text, so that they become familiar to the target reader (Munday, 2016, p. 68). Domestication would also take place in a translation, but not overwhelmingly so-instances of foreignization would occur as well. As a fantasy work, the genre conventions should be preserved, e.g. much like in Zamek zadzior (2019), unusual names would not be domesticated. Such an approach is especially valuable due to the humor interspersed throughout the webcomic, which would sometimes require adapting, and not translating literally, a phrase in the SL into a phrase in the TL, so as to cause the same reaction for a reader and to accommodate imagetext relations. In Digger (2003-2011), as in Zamek zadzior (2019), one way of portraying humor is through unusual and non-grammatical speech patterns; naturally, Polish has a different way of portraying ungrammatical phrasing than English does.

Therefore, it becomes important for Digger’s (2003-2011) translation to have the same effect on Polish recipients as it does on English ones-as a webcomic, and therefore an imagetext which involves paratextual and semiotic relations due to it presiding in an online environment, the TL reader should be able to interact with the work in a way the SL readers would. Nida (1964) aptly summarizes how to produce an equivalent effect in translation with his four requirements: “making sense”, “conveying the spirit and manner of the original”, “having a natural and easy form of expression”, “producing a similar response” (p. 164). While Nida’s maxims are directed at the printed medium, there is no reason for them to not be considered in the case of an online, modern imagetext, similarly to Newmark’s (1981) concept of “communicative translation”, which aim at reproducing an effect on the reader that is as close as possible to the TT reader (p. 39). Newmark’s understanding primarily differentiates itself from Nida’s in how it acknowledges the metaphorical distance between the environment the ST operates in from the TT (Munday, 2016, p. 71). Putting it simply, “as close as possible” is what the case study translation aims for.

Another point of consideration is also Nord’s (1988/2005) text analysis, wherein she divides translation into documentary and instrumental (addressed in subchapter 2.5.3. of this thesis). The most pertinent to the Digger (2003-2011) translation study is the homologous category, whose is to: “achieve

homologous effect to source text” (Nord, 1997a, p. 52). It is often applied to literary texts, and the goal of instrumental homologous translation strives to ascertain a certain status or “degree of originality”

within target culture-specific norms, e.g. a poem is translated into a common TL metre (Nord, 1997a, p.

52). Ergo, in this case study, the translation of Digger (2003-2011) is primarily instrumental and homologous. The translator (the author of this thesis) created a homologous effect, which usually involved changes that placed themselves within Nida’s concept of dynamic equivalence (or Newmark’s communicative translation).

Such an approach is not solely because of the strategic decision to make the text natural, but also due to the niche character of the work; webcomics are independent works that usually aim to appeal small, but dedicated audiences. Therefore, it’s highly unlikely the average Polish recipient would have heard of Ursula Vernon, even though some of her works have been translated into Polish. A degree of adaptation seems to be necessary due to the characteristics present in Digger (2003-2011) that are associated with online comics and the fantasy genre. As Gabilliet (2013) mentions, comics undergo distortion due to their worldwide circulation and multinational reception (pp. 216-222), something that he sees to be expected. The view is not entirely shared by Laura Antola (2019), who says that such a view is not sufficient enough to describe the translation process involved in the adaptation of comics into a new cultural environment (p. 706). Rather, it is a form of communication (Hutcheon, 2006, p. 16; Antola, 2019, pp. 706-707). In the perception of the thesis author, this case study relies more on said communication; one which starts with the nomenclature present in Digger (2003-2011).

3.2.3.a. Proper Names. Proper names are an important indicator of translation strategies and