Translating Graphic Realities

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Comics have become a privileged medium for the representation of a variety of related non-fiction genres: current events, travelogue, politics, history, testimony. Many of the best known practitioners of “documentary comics” (to use Nina Mickwitz’s definition) embed a critique of journalistic objectivity within their narratives by placing themselves and often mediating figures like interpreters and guides or “fixers” at the center of their works, while others de-emphasize authorial presence and perspective in order to give voice to the subjects of their accounts, often witnesses of historical events or survivors of trauma and violence.

Focusing on my translation of Italian comics artist Igort’s Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks within the context of international graphic reportage, I discuss the ways in which questions of translation come to bear on graphic narratives, particularly the aesthetic and ethical issues of translating comics that represent the voices of historical subjects and their complex sociopolitical realities.

Jamie Richards is the translator of over thirty graphic novels from Italian and Spanish as well as books by Viola di Grado, Ermanno Cavazzoni, Igiaba Scego, Giovanni Orelli, Serena Vitale, Giancarlo Pastore, and others. Her writing and translation have appeared in numerous online and print periodicals such as The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Massachusetts Review, The Florence Review, Firmament, World Literature Today, and Words Without Borders. A 2021 NEA fellow, she holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon.

Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies

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