Batman: Year One: The Challenges and Implications of a Translation into Catalan

Abstract

[eng] Since the very beginning of the translation of comics in Spain, the Catalan language has been neglected even though the major part of the production is concentrated in Barcelona. As a result, the purpose of this project is to translate into Catalan a graphic novel, a comic genre whose prestige is due to its adult themes and higher level of quality of the stories in comparison to the conventional ones. The comic selected is Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, and the question in mind was what challenges could involve trying to translate a graphic novel about a popular superhero into an overlooked idiom like Catalan, considering the long tradition of Spanish translations about the character. The answer was found mainly in three aspects: Onomatopoeias, inscriptions, and specific terminology related to police ranks. It was determined that, while the Spanish version of the comic does not take any of these matters into account, the Catalan one should try to make the effort of differentiating itself from it by working on them in a way that their adaptation is as close as possible to the Catalan linguistic context and culture. The results show that even mechanical onomatopoeias have official adaptations in Catalan, that inscriptions about erotic shows and houses of prostitution in Catalan are not usual and a careful translation to keep the essence is needed, and that equivalences between American and Spanish police ranks are blurred, and each one must be compared according to their function and tradition in other translations.