Abstract
This study deals with the problems involving translating Arabic cartoons into English and the strategies that can be adopted by a translator to make them more accessible and more target-audience friendly. It uses an approach based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL; Halliday 1985/1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). The concept of equivalence is revisited within the framework of SFL to include register analysis and the three strands of meaning or metafunctions. The study is based on a number of Yemeni cartoons that have been translated in the Yemen Times , a prominent English-language Yemeni newspaper. The study concludes that if a cartoon is to be translated in such a way that the target cartoon sounds as natural and entertaining to the target audience as the original, the translator should take into account the context of culture, the context of situation (i.e., register analysis) and the metafunction(s) involved in the source cartoon and tries to render them as far as possible in the target language. In addition, a cartoon is a multi-semiotic genre in which both text and image go hand in hand. The image-text semantic relation in this multi-model discourse can facilitate the comprehension of the context and the interpretation of the schemata of the cartoons more clearly. The translation of a cartoon cannot be achieved unless the two codes are considered.
Highlights
Cartoons have become an interesting way to tackle several issues of society, and they touch the hearts of millions of people across the globe
This study has attempted a holistic approach to translating cartoons that stems from Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and House’s (1977/1997) SFL-based translation model
The study concludes that if a cartoon is to be translated in such a way that the target cartoon (TC) sounds as natural and entertaining to the target audience as the source cartoon (SC), the translator should take into account the context of culture, the context of situation and the metafunction(s) involved in the SC, and should try to render them as far as possible in the target language
Summary
Cartoons have become an interesting way to tackle several issues of society, and they touch the hearts of millions of people across the globe. Cartoons can deal with different social, economic, religious and political topics in a very simple manner. They appeal to people of all ages and they capture the attention of all. A mistaken notion about cartoons is that they are designed to be humorous but this is not always the case. Cartoons are treated as a multimodal genre in which both visual and written modes need to be considered during the process of translation. We will attempt a holistic approach to translating cartoons that takes into consideration the analysis of meaning potential across the visual and written modes. Due to the novelty of this genre in Yemen and many other Arab countries, we first discuss its significance and present a brief history of its development in the Yemeni context
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