Symbolism of Sound Effects in

Translation of Graphic Novels from

English into Serbian
Sound effects have long been a staple of comics, particularly those featuring
superheroes and other action figures. Indeed, they have become a kind of
clich; journalists find it irresistible to include "Pow! Blam!" and the like in
headlines when writing about comics. (Covey, 2006)
Whether or not comics (and graphic novels) are considered a 'genre' of
literature, as Kaindl (1999: 264) suggests, or an art form of their own, they
are undoubtedly a unique combination of word and picture. This means that
they also require the translator to make the combination of different
elements function properly in the foreign language version of a comic as
well. (Kokko 2013: 18) Successful translation of a graphic novel thus
requires an extensive linguistic knowledge on the part of the translator. The
two major problems which translators encounter when translating a graphic
novel (or a comic book) are the localization of the source language sound
effects and the integration of pictorial content and translated text. This
research will shed light on the former issue.
As a phenomenon that is often associated with comics, onomatopoeia is
indeed quite visibly present in a great amount of them. Onomatopoeic words
in form of sound effects enhance the expressivity of both visual and textual
elements of graphic novel content.
Onomatopoeia is a subcategory of sound symbolism which is proven not to
be consistent cross-linguistically. Translation difficulties arise from the fact
that symbolism of onomatopoeic expressions is not linguistically universal.
1

Due

to

the

fact

that

English

language

offers

the

possibility

of

grammaticalizing sound imitations without adding any affixes, English

speakers are more prone to creating and using onomatopoeic words with
ease in everyday speech, which makes their reading experience more
familiar and vivid. On the other hand, Serbian language is not as flexible
regarding grammaticalization of inarticulate sounds, nor do Serbian speakers
use onomatopoeic words as frequently as English speakers.
Being left with very few options for figuring out the right solutions, Serbian
translators often cut corners by leaving English onomatopoeia intact, which
explains why most of the sound effects in translations of graphic novels are
of English origin.
Main aims of this research study would be: to determine the factors which
affect the choice of the translation strategy, to identify the type of sound
effect which tends to be translated more frequently (interjectional or
lexicalized one), to compare the levels of expressivity of sound effects in both
the original and the translation, as well as to check whether the translated
sound effects describe the ongoing action as successfully as the original
ones. Should the aforementioned aims be achieved, the reading experience
of Serbian graphic novel readership is expected to be considerably improved
in the future. Bearing in mind that the same issue arises in the translation of
literature for children and comic books for young readers, where sound
symbolism plays an important role, this research could be considered as
multiply significant and offer new food for thought to linguists, but primarily
to translators.

LITERATURE REVIEW
As opposed to Ferdinand De Saussures theory about language as arbitrary
system which is considered to be the ground of modern linguistic approach,
2

Eduard Sapir claimed that language is non-arbitrary system, meaning that

certain correspondences between the phonological features of words and
their meaning do exist. This phenomenon came to be known as sound
symbolism. With Khlers experiment conducted in 1929, psychologists too
became interested in sound symbolism. In this experiment, respondents were
given two pseudowords takete and baluma, and shown the pictures of a spiky
and a curvy object their task was to match the objects with the
pseudowords.

Kohler

determined

the

tendency

of

great

majority

of

respondents to match the spiky object with takete and the curvy one with
baluma. These results were later confirmed by number of experiments and
observations which, apart from matching tasks, included picture-naming
tasks, in findings of which certain regularities were found.
However, the role and impact of sound symbolism in general have often been
underestimated and neglected by translators, linguists and theorists. Hence,
not much research was conducted in the area of sound symbolism in
translation, let alone in the field of sound symbolism in translation of graphic
novels. Nevertheless, there are a few notable works relevant to this research,
which examine the topic of symbolism of sound effects in comic books and
literature for children.
Pischeddas work Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound Symbolism
from English to Italian: The case of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2011) served
as a solid basis for this research for several reasons.
It concerns the linguistic difficulties which Italian translators encounter when
translating books for young readers, sound effects in particular. Majority of
these difficulties are present in English-Serbian translation process. Pischedda
explains why English language shows natural propensity in creating and
using onomatopoeia in everyday speech, while the Italian language
struggles. [] As a consequence, Italian readers of comics were provided
with onomatopoeia which was not included in their language and, several
3

times, was not even understandable. Adult readers of comics had to learn
English onomatopoeia in order to easily recognize its meaning. (Pischedda
2011:2) Identifying the issues Italian translators deal with, may help in
grasping why it is difficult for Serbian translators to localize foreign culture
onomatopoeic expressions whilst at the same time attempting to transfer the
symbolism of foreign sound effects.
As a simple guideline, Pischedda offers a classification of sound symbolism
which is considered to be the most appropriate for this research. This
particular classification is a combination of two different classifications
Hintons and Frewleys. It places onomatopoeia in the category of imitative
sound

symbolism,

and

further

divides

all

onomatopoeic

words

into

interjectional (all sounds from the environment which are not made into
words, such as BANG!, THUD!, CLICK! etc.) and lexicalized (sounds which are
made into words i.e. lexicalized, such as to bang, to gasp etc.).
Furthermore, Pischedda offers the classification of translation strategies
detected by Delabastia in his research on the translation of film subtitles,
which is suggested to be applicable to any type of text with pictorial content.
These are: addition, repetition, deletion, partial substitution and total
substitution.
In Specifics of Comics Translation (2012), Mackova emphasizes one of the
most important features of onomatopoeic expressions - cross-linguistic
inconsistency: Even though onomatopoeic words represent sounds, they
need to be translated as any other word, because written representations of
sounds differ across languages i.e. a dogs bark in English is represented as
woof-woof and in Czech it is haf haf (Mackova 2012: 48). Mackova also
indicates that even newly composed onomatopoeic expressions require newly
composed translations.
In her research KPOW, CHINK, SPLAT: Translations of Sound Effects in Seven
Comics (2013), Kokko describes onomatopoeia in terms of its role in comic
4

books, as the means of providing comics with the possibility of expressing

unarticulated sounds of the environment in writing, and expanding the range
of expression instruments in comic books.
Sound effects resort to onomatopoeia for obvious reasons: ordinary words
may not be enough for expressing sounds that the human vocal tract is
unable to reproduce, and the writing system lacks the means of putting the
sounds into writing without processing them through a language's sound
system first. (Kokko 2013: 37)
Bloomfields list of English clusters and the symbolism they can carry, which
served as a basis for one of the tasks in this research, was also cited in Kokko
(2013) and Abelin (1999).

METHODOLOGY
Given the number and diversity of sound effects found in superhero graphic
novels, it is highly recommended that the researcher conduct the analysis on
graphic novels such as Amazing Spiderman, Batman, Sandman or similar. The
corpora should contain the originals and translations of the chosen graphic
novel.
The research itself should be conducted in two phases, first phase being
extraction

and

catalogization

of

sound

effects,

and

identification

of

translation strategies; second phase including previously formed group of

respondents completing the tasks.

Before turning to analysis of the corpus, both the original and

1.

translated sound effects should be extracted and catalogued

according to their type (lexicalized and interjectional).
Next step would be to identify the translation strategies applied
and classify them according to Kaindls typology of translation

Phase One

strategies:

2.

Repetition onomatopoeia has been left intact

Deletion onomatopoeia has been removed
Addition source language onomatopoeia

transcribed to fit the target language phonetic system

Partial substitution L2 onomatopoeia has been localized

and the same class onomatopoeia has been used

Total substitution L2 onomatopoeia has been localized but

has

been

a different type of onomatopoeia has been used.

The researcher should also determine which type of sound effect
(onomatopoeia) tends to be translated more often interjectional
or lexicalized one.
The researcher should include a group of respondents aged 1230, the age
group with medium-sensitivity to sound symbolism, but old enough to be
able to understand and accomplish the tasks. Before the respondents are
introduced to their tasks, they should answer questions about their graphic
novel reading habit as well as their knowledge of English (e.g. Have you ever
read a graphic novel?, How often do you read graphic novels?, What is the
Phase Two

level of your knowledge of English?)

In the first task, each of the respondents should be given 15
3.

4.
5.

images extracted from the analyzed graphic novel and match

them to 15 listed sound effects in English.
In the second task, the respondents should match same 15
images to 15 sound effects in Serbian.
In the third task, the respondents should be provided with another
10 images extracted from the corpus. Next to each of the images,
they should be provided with 4 solutions (a lexicalized sound
effect and an interjectional sound effect in English, and a
6

lexicalized sound effect and an interjectional one in Serbian). They

have to decide which of the listed sound effect best symbolizes
the action in the picture.
Using Bloomsfields list of English clusters (and the symbolism
they can carry but not necessarily) as a guideline, the researcher
should provide the respondents with 10 sound effects in English,
6.

which contain clusters from the Bloomfields list, and for each of
the effects provide several actions (or feelings). The respondents
task would be to decide which of the actions from the list they
associate to the sound effect in question.
In the last task, respondents would be asked to describe in their

7.

own words the meaning (symbolism) of 5 sound effects and to

decide whether those sound effects are from English or Serbian.

REFERENCES
Abelin, A. (1999). Studies in Sound Symbolism. (Doctoral thesis, Gteborg
University, Sweden).
Covey, S. (2006). Beyond the Balloon: Sound Effects and Background Text in
Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse. (Dept of English, University of
Florida).

Retrieved

from

http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v2_2/covey/.
Kokko, V. (2013). KPOW, CHINK, SPLAT: Translations of Sound Effects in Seven
Comics. (Masters thesis, University of Turku, Finland).
Mackov, M. (2012). Specifics of Comics Translation. (Masters thesis, Masaryk
University, Czech Republic).

Pischedda, P. S. (2011). Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound

Symbolism from English to Italian: The case of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
(Masters thesis, University of Leeds, UK).
Suevi, J. (2013). Ispitivanje jeziko-simbolikih korespondencija u srpskom
jeziku: bihejvioralna i ERP studija. (Masters thesis, University of Belgrade,
Serbia).