A Memoir in Graphic Form: Translating Hybridity in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
Summary
The graphic narrative is a hybrid genre, weaving graphic and textual elements to form a new medium. This entails unique translation problems, which this investigation will explore. Problem which are specific to graphic narrative translation are space restrictions, the necessity of synchrony between word and image, and the intertextuality in the imagery. However, more regular issues, which come into play when translating literary texts as well, will also be explored in the context of graphic narrative translation. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) will be used as a case study, as I will illustrate how these translation problems can be solved using her graphic memoir, and I will provide a translation of chapter three of Fun Home to further demonstrate the translation of graphic novels and the problems encountered in this process.