In many respects, the translation of comics presents challenges of the same kind as literary translation. For instance, in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus the author’s father speaks English with interferences from Polish, but how to translate this “Polglish” into Polish? In this case, the difficulty arises only on the level of language, but it is not hard to predict problems specific to this medium, i.e. resulting from the graphic character of the linguistic sign and the interaction between written words and non-linguistic graphic signs. For example, in Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers the English idiom “to drop the other shoe” can be translated into an equivalent Polish expression, but since such an expression does not mention a shoe, the semantic connection to the frame featuring a gigantic shoe falling on a panicked crowd, a metaphor of a terrorist attack, will be lost.
The analysis of translation problems can be formalized by means of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s Conceptual Blending Theory. The theory allows for describing the content derived from various codes and semantic frames (linguistic and visual meanings, cultural scripts, etc.), which makes it suitable for describing complexities of the comics medium. For the purpose of this article, I distinguish three classes of problems pertaining to the translation of comics: problems related to the overlap of linguistic content and image, the overlap of written texts, and the overlap of different languages. The article poses questions rather than provides answers; it draws attention to problems without proposing definitive solutions. There are no universal and definitive answers in the art of translation, and technical limitations may prevent a practicing translator from implementing idealized solutions devised by a theorist. The theorist, however, can point out the complexity of certain problems and consequently the distinct character of comics translation in general.
