The paradox of intersemiotic translation and the comic book: examples from Enki Bilal's Nikopol trilogy

Abstract

Intersemiotic translation is a border case of translation. When it refers to word and image relations, such as the film version of a novel or the verbal description of a visual art work, it usually includes a two-phase process of transmutation. In order to get to a verbal version of the image, both the image and its verbal description must be translated at the same time. In order to get to the visual image from a text, both the text and its (dis)assemblage into visual elements must be translated as images. This two-phase form is experienced simultaneously. In this regard, one can ask whether the actual source text of translation, in the case of image to word transition, is a mental perception of the image that has a linguistic meaning, as opposed to the image itself. In the case of word to image transition, the source text of the translation is perhaps the visualization, the translation of linguistic units into meaningful mental images, and not the verbal signs themselves.