‘Farewell Red Balloon’ – visual analysis of illustrations inspired by a children’s book

Abstract

This paper deals with illustrations created as sequels to a children’s book. The visual analysis is conducted in the framework of translation and adaptation studies and attempts to find a place for sequels in this framework. It has been claimed that sequels cannot be grouped together with translations and adaptations because there is a difference between never wanting a story to end and wanting to retell the same story. However, sequels share with adaptations and translations major features, mainly the balance between repetition and change and the possibility of reinterpreting the source text. With this in mind, we investigate a 2014 exhibition of illustrations titled ‘Farewell Red Balloon’. Each of them adds a successive scene to the Hebrew children’s classic A Tale of Five Balloons. The wide range of sequels in continuation of one source text provides an opportunity to deal with questions such as: How do the sequels relate to the source text? What additional intertextual relations do they establish? Do the setting, genre and target audience remain the same, or change? Similar questions are raised when dealing with translations and adaptations. In the present context, they apply to sequels which employ one mode, the visual.

View correction statement:

Correction

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the artists for granting us the permission to include their illustrations in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

[1] See e.g. Van Den Broeck (1986) for generic shifts in translation; Cattrysse (2001) for intertextual relations with sources other than the original work; Weissbrod and Kohn (2015) for intertextual relations with the translator’s own works.

[2] Such activities can be found for example at: https://www.huggies.co.il/fun/indoor-activities/5-bloons http://sharvit.cet.ac.il/SharvitEditor/page/ShowPage.asp?nPageID=1373082 http://aflalo77.blogspot.co.il/2015/02/blog-post_59.html

(accessed 25 April 2018).

[3] Other successful books by Roth include Ha-Bayit Shel Ya’el (Yael’s House) (1977) and Tiras Kham (Hot Corn) (1978).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ayelet Kohn

Ayelet Kohn is a Senior Lecturer at The David Yellin College of Education, Jerusalem, and a former Chair of the Department of Photographic Communication in Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem. Her main area of research is the mutual relations between images and written texts in their sociological context. Her work looks into political graffiti, tourism posters, iconic photography, visual propaganda in social media, talkbacks and short documentary reportages. She has published in Visual Communication; Computers in Human Behavior; Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture; Convergence and more.

Rachel Weissbrod

Rachel Weissbrod is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel. Her areas of research include theory of translation, literary translation into Hebrew, film and TV translation and the interrelation between translation and other forms of transfer. She has published in Target; The Translator; Meta; Babel; Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance; Translation Studies and more. Her book Not by Word Alone, Fundamental Issues in Translation (in Hebrew) was published by The Open University of Israel in 2007.