jacques tardi « The Comics Journal

In the second part of a three-part conversation on comics translation, our intrepid panelists discuss “faithfulness,” the temptation to improve upon the source text, sound effects, accents, working with word balloons and much more.

Translation Roundtable (Part One of Three)

Posted by Kristy Valenti on June 2nd, 2010 at 12:01 AM

This roundtable was inspired by Matt Thorn’s essay “On Translation.” Anjali Singh (translator of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis 2), Helge Dascher (translator of Michel Rabagliati’s Paul books), Camellia Nieh (translator of Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito) and Kim Thompson (my boss, who is currently translating Jacques Tardi books) graciously agreed to take part in this discussion; it turns out they were just as curious as I was to learn about what strategies their peers employ to tackle questions of faithfulness to the text, the challenges specific to working with the medium of comics, censorship, authorial and editorial give-and-take, etc. The following conversation, conducted April 18, 2010, goes a long way to explaining the brass tacks of something that, when done well, is fairly transparent to the reader. — Kristy Valenti

Participants: Anjali Singh, Kim Thompson, Camellia Nieh and Helge Dascher; Moderator: Kristy Valenti; Transcription: (The Amazing) Jenna Allen