colloque international / Translating Comics: Between Bubbles, Cultures, and Constraints in East Asia

This conference aims to explore the specific challenges of comic translation, at the intersection of literature, visual semiotics, and culture. What are the difficulties posed by the spatial layout of text? How can humor, puns, cultural references or typographic effects be rendered in another language? What roles do publishing norms or censorship play in different cultural areas?
We will focus on translations from or into Asian languages, with particular attention to comics from the Sinophone, Japanese, and Korean spheres (manhua, manga, manhwa). The adaptation of national or foreign literary works will also be considered a form of translation. We will also consider the editorial dimension of translations: for example, which Japanese works have been translated into Chinese, and which Chinese works into Japanese?

Topics include:

• Translation of the various textual components (dialogue, onomatopoeia, titles…)
• Cultural adaptation and localization strategies
• Editorial and graphic constraints (format, reading direction, lettering…)
• Specific issues in various graphic traditions (manga, manhua, webtoon…)
• Case studies of published or ongoing translations
• The translator’s role in the production chain
• The issue of adaptation
• The editorial selection

comité scientifique
Marie Laureillard (Paris Nanterre), Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm)

comité d'organisation
Wenlan Xiang (Paris Nanterre)

communication language: English

Événement organisé avec la collaboration de l'Association ASIE-SORBONNE. et du GIS ASIE