Abstract
This article presents a pilot study conducted in Hungary and Italy in the autumn of 2015. The study had two goals: to test the method of focus-group discussion for collecting data on a multimodal reading experience and to collect information on participants’ reading experience with comics, with an emphasis on their ability to understand the visual language of comics. The study examined the importance of the verbal mode in understanding non-verbal messages and the way in which the role cultural background and the competence to read comics affect participants’ interpretations of the meanings of the visual content of comics. In addition to answering the main research questions, the article reflects on focus groups as a data-collection method. The study indicated that cultural background, including the tradition of reading comics, may have an effect on enhancing participants’ understanding of the visual content of comics, which is also an important aspect the translator has to take into consideration.
Highlights
Translation Studies is an academic area that is interdisciplinary by its very nature
Whereas reception research methods have been applied in the field of Audiovisual Translation (Chiaro, 2007; Di Giovanni, 2016; Tuominen, 2012), until recently reception in other genres has remained almost unexplored in Translation Studies
The focus-group method was suitable for answering the main research questions
Summary
Translation Studies is an academic area that is interdisciplinary by its very nature. The aim of this article is to introduce a study in which focus-group discussion was used as a data-collecting method to examine how Italian and Hungarian readers understand the visual language of comics, especially the non-verbal messages that are conveyed via images. The study sets out to examine the following research questions: What happens when the reader does not understand the verbal mode of the comic book: do the non-verbal messages come across in the image?. Recognizing the cultural differences between these semiotic systems is extremely important, to the visual artist and to the reader and, more especially, the translator Both images and the written text and other visual signs are merged in comics and the translator needs to be able to interpret other semiotic systems apart from the verbal. The same applies to the translation of non-humorous comics: if the readers do not recognize the cultural references in the images, they may not understand the multimodal message as a whole
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