The unfortunate expression “comics” for a medium that is never just funny or amusing in itself, has contributed considerably to the ambiguity of its definition and the perception of the sequential art (Eisner 1985: 5) in general. Distinguishing between the full range of possibilities comics offer in connection with form and content, artistic value and readership could be a first step for a deeper understanding of this medium. Indeed, this has been the objective behind the translation of Joe Sacco’s “Safe Area Gorazde. The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95”, in which the author combines the techniques of eye witness reportage with the medium of comic-book story telling, giving a “colourful” account in black and white of life during the Balkan conflict.
Besides the need for an effective management of the restraints posed by the coexistence of words and images in the source text, the translator’s challenge has been to render the synergetic impact of the informative and expressive function of the original text in the target text, by switching between a semantic and a communicative approach to translation. The semantic allows the individual and creative traits of the author’s work to be duly preserved, while the communicative accounts for the systematic handling of the lexicon, syntax, style and structure in response to the writer’s communicative intent. The particular “hybrid nature” of Joe Sacco’s story has called for aesthetically calibrated choices between internal and external text factors throughout the entire translation process, the final result of which shows how Christiane Nord’s text analysis and translation theory can be of great assistance to the translator.
