Dylan Dog Goes to the USA: a North-American Translation of an Italian Comic Book Series

Abstract

This paper is about the translation of comic books from an “importing” country like Italy to an “exporting” country, the USA. Our analysis focuses on the publication by Dark Horse, a major USA “independent” comic books publisher (as opposed to “mainstream” publishers such as Marvel and DC comics) of a number of comic books featuring Dylan Dog, the main character and title bearer of a monthly series of considerable success in Italy. First of all we introduce the original series against the background of the Italian comics market and readership, highlighting the elements that make Dylan Dog a unique cultural product. We then proceed to discuss the general publishing strategies which characterize the North American edition. In the light of this discussion, we analyse the content of the comic books using the “anatomy of comics” proposed by Kaindl (1999), who distinguishes between linguistic, typographic and pictorial signs. Through a comparative analysis of original and translated elements we wish to account for the type of changes which have taken place during the translation process. Our conclusions are drawn according to Grun and Dollerup's (2003) distinction between “gains with losses” and “gains without losses”.