From Baker Street to Tokyo and Back: (para)textual hybridity in translation

Abstract

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 novel, A Study in Scarlet, has been widely translated and adapted for both film and television, including the BBC series Sherlock. Following the popularity of the series around the world, the Japanese artist Jay has produced a series of adaptations as Manga in his native Japan (2014), subsequently translated into English (2017), among other languages, with some of the distinctive (para)textual features of its previous Japanese incarnation (it reads ‘back to front’ and right-to-left, is produced in black and white, has vertical balloons). The hardcopy texts are surrounded by online material (screenplays, reviews, fansubs, scanlations, etc.). This paper analyses the (para)textual features of the volumes and, in particular the English, French and Italian editions, highlighting the conscious hybridity of the text. These publications are evidence of a dynamic textual exchange, an overlapping of translation and adaptation, a blurring of media and genre, an interlingual and intercultural métissage.