Translating into speech bubbles

Written by Jean Paul C.

Implicit issues

There is more to translating than meets the eye when it comes to comic strips. How can sounds or puns be translated without losing their meaning? How to make sure that the text fits into the bubble? Such questions naturally come to a translator’s mind. One particular dilemma is whether to simplify the content in the bubbles and keep a clear-cut picture or stick to the original text and hence enlarge the bubbles, thus hiding a greater part of the image. The following extracts from both the English and French versions of the famous comic strip Garfield gives an overview of what can be done in this matter.

Possible difficulties arising

Translation of puns

Puns can be difficult to translate as each language is different and a literal translation will simply make the funny side of the original text disappear. In addition, cultural differences between countries result in different views of what is considered funny and what is not, depending on the country. The main challenge in this regard is to be able to keep the pun in the translated version or at least find something equivalent. In other words, the author’s wish to introduce a pun should be taken into consideration and it would be better to keep with the overall tone of the publication. The important thing is to respect the choices made by the author with respect to the mood he created. In the following extracts from The Adventures of Tintin, a French spoonerism from the Thom(p)son brothers – on the right – have thus been replaced by an inversion of the words in the English version – on the left, as you can see below. Due to the distinctiveness of each language, French spoonerisms are actually hard to transpose into English since the humorous side may be lost.

 

Translation of sounds and onomatopoeia

What about the equivalence of sounds? How can an exclamation be translated into another language while remaining credible? The answers to these questions imply cultural knowledge. It means that you should know how a native speaker would react in a given scenario, for instance, when a person is hit and feels some pain, the ensuing yelp sounds differ from one country to another – While in France someone would say “aïe !” in such a situation, the German equivalent would be “aua!” and the English version would spell “ouch!”. As regards noises, sounds also differ from country to country, as shown in the following pictures from Asterix & Obelix, namely a depiction of Obelix hitting a Roman soldier on the left and its German equivalent on the right.

Interestingly, some words referring to concrete notions are often used as sounds in the field of comic strips. For instance, when a character is sighing, “sigh…” is generally written in the speech bubble above the character. In other cases, there is a specific word corresponding to a particular sound. Here are some examples of what could be used in different languages to describe different sounds. The first picture – on the left – thus gives a translation of the sound made by a person eating and enjoying their meal. In the second picture – in the middle, you can find the different ways of snoring in seven countries. The third one provides ten different versions of the sound made by water splashing, depending on the country.

Translation of the title

Finally, although translating comic book titles may look simple at first sight, the task can be more difficult than expected. The title is in some ways the “façade” of the publication, that is, the first thing that the reader can see. The translated title should thus be engaging while matching the original title to a certain extent. In some cases, the title can simply be a transposition of the original title when it refers to the main topic on which the publication focuses. However, the translator can choose to modify it partly or totally – a comparison of French and English covers from both The Adventures of Tintin and Lucky Luke is shown as an example below.

Possible reasons for changing a title include cultural reasons among others – for instance, the subject is a country-specific issue that would possibly not be striking for the reader. The translator may also wish to focus on a particular aspect of the content that he considers significant enough to be mentioned in the title. This could be done by adding an adjective that does not appear in the original title. In contrast, he may wish to have a shorter title and remove elements that are not needed in the target language and may just encumber the title.

Main sources:

https://graphique.hypotheses.org/223
http://neuviemeart.citebd.org/spip.php?rubrique121
https://docplayer.fr/8889961-La-traduction-des-onomatopees-dans-la-bande-dessinee.html

http://lescahiersducomicstrip.blogspot.com/2013/09/critique-105-garfield-tome-1.html