Abstract
Our point of departure is the conceptualisation of translation as an interpretive act which may involve intermodal transfer. The test case comprises comics pages created by Israeli comics artist and journalist Ilana Zeffren. They first appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a weekly column featuring her immediate response to the news. Later they were collected in self-published, small-format books characterised by a fixed layout: on the right side of each two-page spread, we find a mini text which is a free and clearly subjective rendering of an authentic news item, simulating its external features and its apparent objective treatment of the topic covered. The comics on the left side, which “translate” the news item, revolve around Zeffren՚s cats who function as both real animals and the artist's animators. The overall effect is humorous due to (1) the co-presence of the news item and the comics which results in incongruity, and (2) the use of various humorous devices, some of which are typical of comics as a multimodal medium. However, humour is not just an end in itself, rather—shifting from light-hearted joking to bitter sarcasm—it serves Zeffren՚s political agenda against racism and discrimination.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Transmedial Perspectives on Humour and Translation |
| Subtitle of host publication | From Page to Screen to Stage |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis |
| Pages | 1-264 |
| Number of pages | 264 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781003826736 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781032328713 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Jan 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Loukia Kostopoulou and Vasiliki Misiou, individual chapters, the contributors.