Abstract
This study is concerned with the reception of onomatopoeia in the English translation of digital manga. In manga, onomatopoeia is often presented as part of the aesthetics, being both verbal (meaning) and non-verbal (showing) simultaneously. Drawing on the relevance-theoretic notion of a showing-saying continuum (Sperber and Wilson 1995), this study aims to identify factors that affect reading behaviour including the translation strategies and the degree of the showing/meaning ness. We conducted an eye-tracking study to gain empirically supported insight into readers’ interaction with onomatopoeia in manga. Findings of this study show that full-textual substitution, which is the hybrid of showing-meaning, attracts most interest and is the area that receives most attention when compared with annotation or the Japanese original. This in turn indicates that the degree of showing-ness of onomatopoeia influences the way readers interact with onomatopoeia in manga. The conclusion is that separating the showing and meaning elements of onomatopoeia in manga could result in a loss of engagement potential with readers, and full-textual substitution would be the recommended translation strategy for the best level of attention.
Highlights
Manga is the Japanese form of comic book literature
If onomatopoeia in manga, embedded in aesthetics, plays a crucial role in manga, as agreed in previous studies we have reviewed so far, and if translation of onomatopoeia involves a number of different translation strategies, it would pose a unique challenge for a theory of communication, especially to identify a strategy best suited for readers to interpret onomatopoeia
In Rohan et al (2018), Sasamoto (2019), we argued that the showing-meaning continuum and perceptual resemblance could be extended to analyse onomatopoeia in manga
Summary
Manga is the Japanese form of comic book literature. As with Western comic books, it is a mix of illustration and texts in panel format conveying action and time, with text used to convey dialogue, thoughts, and narration. While Western comics are predominantly driven by the superhero genre, manga is used across genres often determined by the demographics of target readers. The target demographic for shojo manga would be young girls while shonen manga would target young boys. The target for seinen manga would be adult readers. Manga is used for adverts, textbooks, or even for official guidebooks/PR documents published by governments
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