Retranslation and multimodality: introduction

This special issue was born out of – what we saw as – a missing link in studies on retranslation and multimodality. The growing number of works on retranslation coming from increasingly diverse cultural and linguistic contexts have long surpassed the so-called retranslation hypothesis (Berman 1990) that was, and perhaps still remains, one of the main points of departure for research on retranslation. In parallel with the diversification of linguistic and cultural contexts, studies on retranslation have also covered different text types, historical periods and individual retranslators, offering detailed analyses of a variety of motives and modes of retranslation. As well as individual articles on retranslation published in a range of journals, a number of special issues (Bensimon and Coupaye 1990; Milton and Catherine Torres 2003; Alvstad and Assis Rosa 2015; Dore 2018; Van Poucke and Sanz Gallego 2019), monographs (Deane-Cox 2014; O’Driscoll 2011) and edited books (Kahn and Seth 2010; Monti and Schnyder 2011; Cadera and Walsh 2017; Berk Albachten and Tahir Gürçağlar 2019a, 2019b) have contributed to the expansion of the field. However, despite a handful of exceptions (Haug 2019; Eker-Roditakis 2019; Dore 2018), to date, research on retranslation has largely neglected multimodal texts.

Multimodality in translation studies and retranslation

Especially since the early 2000s, translation scholars have devoted increasing attention to the theoretical and methodological challenges posed by fields characterised by the circulation of texts created in different modes and media (in addition to or other than the written word and the printed book). These include, among others, audiovisual translation (dubbing, subtitling, voiceover, as well as fansubbing and fandubbing), opera and song translation, and game and comic translation. As noted by Kaindl (2013), it has become clear that ‘multimodality is the norm, and not an exception’. Kaindl also argues, however, that the pervasiveness of multimodality in the field of translation requires the development of appropriate tools and concepts in translation studies, a field which has so far been marked by language-oriented methods and terminology (ibid.).

The term multimodality is also crucial to the aims of this special issue. Our goal, from the start, was to extend to contributors an invitation to expand the field of retranslation to its multimodal dimension. Although Roman Jakobson’s ([1959] 2000) category of ‘intersemiotic translation’ has been around for a long time and has been used productively in various forms of translation research, today the term falls short of describing the increasingly complex and rich texts that have become a part of the translation landscape. Jakobson’s well-known tripartite categorisation of translation as interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic carries a linguistic bias, evident from the way all three categories take as their starting point the interpretation of the ‘verbal sign’ (Jakobson [1959] 2000, 114). His conceptualisation of semiotics was largely based on Charles Peirce’s work, but unlike Peirce, who did not restrict his theory to language, Jakobson focused firmly on linguistic signs (Marais 2018, 15). Aligning it with his notions of interlingual and intralingual translation, Jakobson defined intersemiotic translation as ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems’ (Jakobson [1959] 2000, 114). Even if it opens the door for the study of such multimodal translation forms as the adaptation of novels into film, theatre or comics, Jakobson’s ‘intersemiotic translation’ is therefore bound to a verbal source text. That is why subsequent scholars have felt the need to broaden this category to include translations among non-verbal modes of communication. The growing focus on multimodality in translation studies is an outcome of the realisation that in its many current forms, translation cannot be limited to linguistic source texts.

Multimodal approaches in translation studies focus on the use of various sign systems within the same text in order to explore ‘how we make meaning by combining multiple signifying means or modes – for example, image with writing, music and body movement, speech with gesture – into an integrated whole’ (Pérez-González 2019, 346). The notion of multimodality thus requires us to step beyond the conventional definitions and methods used in translation studies. Following Maria Tymoczko’s discussion on translation as a cluster concept (Tymoczko 2007) Tuominen, Jiménez Hurtado and Ketola suggest that ‘multimodal translation covers a multiplicity of activities that do not fit under a single definition with clear boundaries’, and that ‘research could aim to explore as many contexts and genres as possible in order to develop the most comprehensive understanding possible of the variety of ways in which this cluster concept becomes actualized’ (Tuominen, Jiménez Hurtado, and Ketola 2018, 4). Complicated by the inevitable mutability of retranslation and the fine lines among various forms of retranslation, such as re-edition, re-production and re-packaging (Berk Albachten and Tahir Gürçağlar 2019a, 3, 2019b, 2), the study of multimodal retranslation makes a broad interdisciplinary approach imperative. This is also required by the very nature of the objects under scrutiny; retranslations in film, music, graphic novels, etc., necessitate forays into the realms of other disciplines that also offer critical frameworks for the study of the works in question.

To date, the most comprehensive volume focusing on the retranslation of multimodal texts is the special issue of Status Quaestionis edited by Margharita Dore (2018), which, however, deals exclusively with audiovisual retranslation. Contributions to the issue mostly tackle retranslation of films and television programmes and explore the topic in its various aspects, including: the economic, historical, linguistic and political reasons behind the retranslation of films and TV material (Chaume 2018); the use of archival material in retranslation research (Zanotti 2018); the concept of ‘improvement’ as a motive for redubbing (Raffi 2018); and the reception of dubbed and subtitled films (Sandrelli 2018). Two volumes by the editors of the present special issue (Berk Albachten and Tahir Gürçağlar 2019a and b) also feature works on the retranslation of multimodal works, including music (Haug 2019; Güven 2019) and the interaction between film and printed versions of fiction (Eker-Roditakis 2019). What is evident in these works, as well as in contributions to the present issue, is that the tools and frameworks used by translation scholars in dealing with printed texts fail to provide the breadth needed when approaching material that straddles multiple modes (written, visual, audial, etc.) and multiple media (film, TV, digital media, comics). For instance, visual analysis has become an indispensable component of most studies on retranslated multimodal texts – and this raises questions of method. Even a simple question such as what can be identified as a unit of translation in multimodal texts becomes a challenge. Translation scholars working in the field of multimodality now appear ready to tackle methodological challenges. A recent issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia was devoted to methods for the study of multimodality in translation (Tuominen, Jiménez Hurtado, and Ketola 2018). Contributors to the issue demonstrate a rich range of methodologies that are informed by varied disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, cognitive studies, visual design and reception studies. The studies included in the special issue attest to the soaring interest not only in the practice of multimodal translation but also in its theoretical and methodological underpinnings. They each explore innovative approaches to the study of translated texts, such as visual design (El-Farahaty 2018), visual analysis (Tercedor Sánchez and Casado Valenzuela 2018), geosemiotics (Liao 2018), gamer interaction (Mejías-Climent 2018), corpus research in multimodal translation (Jiménez Hurtado and Martínez Martínez 2018; Soler and Luque 2018), multimodal conversation analysis (Hirvonen and Tiitula 2018) or social neuroscience (Chica Núñez 2018), to mention a few.

We believe that the current special issue will further open up the field, inviting readers to think about the specific challenges brought on by investigations on retranslated multimodal texts and their processes of retranslation, an aspect that is not systematically tackled by any of the contributions in the Linguistica Antverpiensia volume.

The major point of departure of the current issue was the need to understand and explore the expanding boundaries of retranslation beyond the printed page and the verbal mode. The incorporation of multimodality into the theme came as a natural extension of this central question. Retranslation operates on a range of different levels and confining its study to interlingual translation and to the printed page denies its potential to offer greater understanding of processes of meaning-making in our contemporary world, where we are surrounded by images and sounds travelling in multiple directions. While translation is a mediated form of discourse, it can be argued that retranslation is hypermediated and involves multiple processes and agents. The authors included in this issue illustrate this point in more than one instance, while also posing a challenge to the conventional framing of retranslation as an exclusively literary and verbal phenomenon. Additionally, just like translation, and perhaps even more than translation, retranslation can constitute a conceptual tool in discussing shifting and evolving cultural and literary images and memories – a thread also present in the articles in this issue.

In addition to shedding light on the complexities of multimodal retranslation, this issue has a strong focus on the agency of the retranslators, as they engage in intricate networks across various media. Each of the contributions brings the various agents involved in the production and reception of retranslated multimodal works into focus and shows how their interpretive stances shape trajectories of texts and images moving both through time and across audio-visual and printed media.

Overview of contributions

The authors contributing to the present special issue adopt interdisciplinary approaches, confirming the methodological trend that characterises recent research in multimodal translation. They engage in the joint problematisation of the two main topics under study, raising questions about the nature of both retranslation and multimodality. The articles centre around combinations of texts in various modes, such as written and graphic texts or stage performances and the language of cinema, and in various media including the printed book, film, television and theatre. They not only draw upon (re)translation studies but also bring insights from drama translation, dubbing, and subtitling, adaptation studies, comic studies, fandom studies, postcolonial studies, and memory studies.

The issue opens with a contribution by Zofia Ziemann, who applies the concept of retranslation to a graphic novel adaptation of Kafka’s life and work. Written by David Zane Mairowitz in English and illustrated by Robert Crumb, Kafka, offers an account of the writer’s biography as well as a graphic adaptation of a selection of his writings, including short stories such as ‘The Judgement’, ‘The Metamorphosis’, ‘The Burrow’, ‘In the Penal Colony’, ‘A Hunger Artist’, and the novels The Trial, The Castle, and America. Ziemann analyzes Mairowitz and Crumb’s Kafka, with its complex structure, together with its German and Polish (re)translations, and she examines the role played in each version by visual and verbal modes. In Ziemann’s article, retranslation works at different levels. Mairowitz and Crumb’s English language Kafka is itself considered as a retranslation, since it represents both a rewriting of Kafka’s texts and of his cultural image. However, retranslation also refers to the ‘back translation’ of Kafka’s texts which takes place when the graphic novel is translated into German. Furthermore, in both the German and Polish translations, retranslation also indicates the rewriting of Kafka’s image for the German and Polish readers.

Rachel Weissbrod and Ayelet Kohn stretch the concept of retranslation even further, considering translations and retranslations that take place within one and the same text. Applying the concept of retranslation within the context of ‘cultural self-(re)translation’, they focus on Israeli artist Yohanan (Hans) Simon’s biography, demonstrating how Simon translated and retranslated himself as an individual and as an artist. Inspired largely by Rushdie’s metaphor of ‘translated men’ (Rushdie 1991) and Bhabha’s work on hybridity and the concept of ‘third space’ (Bhabha 1990, 1994), Weissbrod and Kohn trace the artist’s evolution through his public art and illustrated correspondences to reveal how migration and the experience of different countries and languages changed Simon’s artistic identity as well as his ideology. These transformations, as the authors argue, ‘translated’ and ‘retranslated’ Simon as the process of migration – in both literal and metaphorical sense – were repeated.

In her contribution, Stephanie Faye Munyard examines multimodal retranslations of Un sac de billes, a Second World War autobiographical novel by the French Jewish author Joseph Joffo which tells the story of his flight, together with his brother, from Nazi-occupied France, as a young boy. Adopting Boase-Beier’s work on ‘stylistic silence’ (Boase-Beier 2015) as a model, Munyard shows how the loss and absence described in Joffo’s memories were first adapted into a French-language bande dessinée in 1989 by Alain Boutain and Marc Malès and subsequently retranslated in 2011/2012 by Vincent Bailly and Kris, as well as transposed into two French films in 1975 and 2017. Her analysis demonstrates the potential displayed by (re)translations into the visual mode to provide new possibilities for narrating the silences that insist in the original text, thus transmitting traumatic memories, especially in Holocaust narratives.

Francesca Raffi’s article is a novel contribution to the otherwise scant literature on audiovisual retranslation/resubtitling. Focusing on De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) and Fellini’s La strada (1954) and examining the English screened and DVD versions of two canonical films separated by several decades, Raffi questions the validity of the retranslation hypothesis with respect to resubtitling. She carries out a comparative analysis of the English subtitles of Bicycle Thieves dating from 1963 and 2001, and of those for La strada, from 1972 and 2009. As the first English subtitles for both films were produced in 1950 and 1955, respectively, all the subtitles analysed in Raffi’s article are retranslations. The comparison reveals that while, on the technical level, major improvements can be identified in the most recent versions, as far as the translation of culture-specific realia is concerned, it is not possible to draw general conclusions about the ‘improvement’ or greater ‘closeness’ of the retranslated subtitles to the original texts. Raffi’s article thus confirms the complexity of the retranslation phenomenon and the multiplicity of the factors affecting retranslations, pointing to similarities between audiovisual retranslation and the findings of research conducted in the field of literary retranslation.

In her contribution, María Laura Spoturno looks at the French and Spanish (re)translations of Bashir Lazhar (2003), a one-character play by Québécois playwright Evelyne de la Chenelière. The author also discusses a stage performance of the play delivered by the French-Mexican actor and translator Boris Schoemann in Spanish. Building on Pavis’ model of concretisations (Pavis 1992), Spoturno adopts the notion of ‘retranslation chains’, showing how the Spanish version of the dramaturgical text, the stage performance in Spanish, and the text created as a result of the reception on the part of the audience can all be seen as retranslations of the original French play, following its initial translation into Spanish. Furthermore, Spoturno argues that each stage performance should be considered as a new retranslation, since each performance, whether in the original language or in translation, remains unique. As a case study, Bashir Lazhar foregrounds various multimodal meaning-making processes in drama translation. Arguing that the verbal component of a dramatic text is only one of its many modes, Spoturno offers a definition of retranslation that incorporates inter/intra/multilingual, intertextual, intermodal, and intermedial processes and products.

Finally, Mengying Jiang investigates the role of intralingual and intersemiotic retranslations of The Story of Yanxi Palace, a historical period drama set in China, as a form of collective resistance against heteronormativity and a communal celebration of lesbian identity. More specifically, Jiang’s article explores how in this TV show the sisterhood narrative is reinterpreted and retranslated into lesbian-themed slash fictions, fakesubs and videos by the series’ fans. Jiang highlights the collective role of fandom in forming and disseminating a resistant space for lesbians within the hegemonic, heteronormative culture, as well as the transgressive force of retranslation and its ability to subvert hierarchies.

With their diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, the articles in this special issue enrich the field not only by extending the definition of retranslation but also by posing a challenge to the verbal bias in (re)translation. They explore a range of modes and media where retranslation surfaces as both a shaping force and an outcome of a variety of cultural processes, including cases where it emerges as a powerful metaphor for remembering, movement and transformation. They reveal that the study of retranslation on the printed page, on stage, in film, or in the digital world can help illuminate individual as well as collective experiences of migration, trauma, resistance and resilience. We hope that this heuristic capacity of retranslation will open up new avenues of research and create new areas of inquiry in translation studies and beyond.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Özlem Berk Albachten

Özlem Berk Albachten is professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. She has an M.A. and PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Warwick. Her main research interests and publications lie within translation history, intralingual translation, retranslation, and Turkish women translators. She has published two books and co-edited two books with Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar on retranslation.

Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar

Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar is professor of translation studies and teaches in the graduate programs at Glendon College (York University) and Boğaziçi University (Istanbul). Her main fields of interest are translation history, retranslation and periodical studies. She is the author of Politics and Poetics of Translation in Turkey (Rodopi, 2008) and among the editors of Tradition, Tension and Translation in Turkey (John Benjamins, 2015). She also co-edited Perspectives on Retranslation: Ideology, Paratexts, Methods (Routledge, 2019) and Studies from a Retranslation Culture: The Turkish Context (Springer 2019) with Özlem Berk Albachten.