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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Jehan Zitawi
Comics are one of the oldest and most popular forms of visual arts in the world.
Using both verbal and visual elements to communicate narrative meanings, comics
have considerable power as purveyors of cultural beliefs, norms and value
systems. Comics are read by all sorts of people: children and adults, poor and
rich, male and female, avid readers and those not generally interested in
reading. Statistics and surveys conducted on the readership of comics confirm
their strong appeal, especially among children. In the UK, for instance, the
total market for children’s comics and magazines was estimated in 2001 to be
worth £72.9 million.
Panel 7: The Verbal, the Visual, the Translator
Translating Children's Comics into Arabic: A Struggle with Words and Images
University of Manchester, Great Britain
Children’s comics are a flourishing genre with a growing readership in the Arab
world, and have been one of the main reading materials available to Arab
children since the 1960s. Children’s comics translated into Arabic make an
important contribution to the literary experiences of Arab children.
Deeply embedded in the American/Western tradition, Disney comics, which I will
explore as a genre for my analysis, require considerable effort on the part of
Arab translators. As some of the verbal and pictorial themes in Disney comics
are near-taboo in the Gulf area, the material must be adapted to suit the target
readership. Accordingly, the study examines both the visual and verbal languages
of Disney comics when translated from English into Arabic in the Gulf area. It
demonstrates the sort of adaptation that takes place on both verbal and visual
levels in order to make Disney comics understandable – and palatable – for
Arabic-speaking children.
The study is based on 76 Disney comics translated from English into Arabic and
published by Al Futtaim in Dubai and Al Qabas in Kuwait. Most of these comics
are aimed at the age group of 8-12 year olds.
© IATIS 2003