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Writing Project 2

Genre Translation

Jacky Rodarte

Writing 2

Valentina Fahler

June 12, 2020

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Website: ​https://ageoldfootwear.weebly.com/

Have you ever wondered what goes into making the websites you shop at? Or perhaps

how a website in general differs from articles? Well, they vary in things such as format, imagery,

and audience. With an endless variety of genres in the world, it is important that each one has

unique conventions that appeal to the intended audience of the author. These conventions include

diction, organization, evidence, and much more. One way for us to further our knowledge on

genres and their context is to do a genre translation. In this case, translating an academic article

into a website will help me further my understanding of genre conventions with a focus on a

different intended audience. I will be translating a historically academic article about high heels

into an online store. This article, ​High Heels, ​by Marie-Agnés Parmentier explores the evolution

of and ideology surrounding high heels. My translation will focus on conveying the same

historical information, while appealing to a more fashion oriented audience through the use of

more colors, images, and descriptive vocabulary.

To begin the translation, I had to decide which genre I would be creating. I wanted to

choose something that would be compatible with the primary text so I would not have to stray

from the author’s purpose too much. I wanted to translate the article into a genre that made sense

and might actually exist in the real world. This goes hand in hand with who I wanted my

intended audience to be. I considered the thought that my intended audience could be kids if I

chose a genre like a children’s poem or picture book.I was not immediately sure how that would

work out in terms of execution. However, after searching through countless websites for possible
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multimodal projects, it occurred to me that I could generate a website of my own. The main topic

of the article is high heels, so it seemed only fitting to make a shopping website since plenty of

online high heel shops already exist.

Once I realized what multimodal platform would work for me, I had to make sure that I

could appropriately address a distinct audience through my choice of diction and imagery. It is

necessary to focus on this since “a thoughtful writer will also consider how the final product does

or does not address an audience” (Gagic, 2019, 72). This will ensure that at the end of this

translation, I will be able to conclude if I have fulfilled my goal of targeting a different audience.

The primary text was a historical article with somewhat sophisticated language, using words

such as “arosdimment” and “decried” (Parmentier, 2016). These word choices that would sound

foreign to an uneducated individual suggests that the intended audience were other academic

learners of at least high school age. An online store, however, is typically aimed towards

shoppers who are interested in the specific products. In this case, the products would be high

heels which are often associated with fashion oriented shoppers, most of whom are old enough to

purchase and wear said shoes. This would be my new audience. Additionally, I planned to

include plenty of heel images, bright colors, and interesting backgrounds on the website,

therefore also gearing it towards viewers who are more interested in visually pleasing executions.

After this step, my genre of choice and intended audience were clear and established and I could

move on to translating the information.

Since I was supposed to include historical information on my website, I decided that the

descriptions of the items would be used to incorporate the necessary information. I had a

different audience, however, so could not include the information in the same way. My audience
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cared mostly about the shoes, unlike the original audience who was interested mainly in the

history. The primary article discussed the history of the shoes with less emphasis on what the

footwear looked like. In contrast, I decided to mainly describe the shoes and slightly incorporate

how they fit into history as is explained in the primary text. For example, after mentioning that

heels were once worn by noblemen, I conclude the description with, “these male oriented pumps

will make any one of you look like a King (or Queen)”. The brief explanation of history

immediately ties back to why the shoes would be perfect for the buyer, therefore appealing to my

intended audience more than the primary text would. These descriptions would serve as my

attempt to convince the audience to make a purchase, which is what most shops strive to

accomplish.

Seeing as how my audience were shoppers and not writers, I decided to leave out a lot of

the sophisticated language and instead included many more descriptive adjectives. I used words

such as cherry red, godly, and flirty to describe the items in a way that would captivate the

attention of the reader. This would, again, help me appeal to buyers, who care less about the

background and more about the appearance of the shoes. Another way in which I embodied the

primary text in my translation was by using images. While the author of the original text

provided some images, she mainly used them to help readers visualize her descriptions. In my

translation, I figured that showing the heels would attract my buyers more than the description

alone would since most people would only consider purchasing items they find captivating.

Through these uses of adjectives, descriptions, and images, I was better able to intrigue my

audience.
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In the process of generating my translation, I came across difficulties with the platform

itself as well as some translation concerns related to the quantity of information that could be

included. Regardless of the context, generating a website is a bit difficult.. In fact, it took me

longer to set up the overall format and backgrounds than it did for me to decide exactly how to

incorporate the primary text. This is because one has to worry about titles, font, images, and

especially how to tie all the pages together as a normal website would, all the while keeping it

pleasing to the eye. Once I had set all of the pages up, I was then able to begin adding the items

and descriptions as I desired. The primary article specifically discusses the evolution of high

heels, so I had to decide on a way to incorporate that information. As mentioned before, my

decision was to include the information in the description of each item. When it came to the

genre translation itself, I struggled with finding a balance between including the information I

needed while also making this a realistic website. If I included too much of the historical

information, not as many “buyers” would be interested because of all the unnecessary reading

they would have to do. If I did not include enough, however, it would not be an accurate genre

translation. I therefore had to pay extra close attention to what information from the primary text

would be absolutely necessary to explain the history.. I had to know how to weed out what was

absolutely necessary and what was not. These obstacles, however, were only temporary. After a

bit of thought and consideration, I was able to surpass these impediments and continue with my

translation.

Throughout this process, I learned several new ideas related to multimodality that I had

not considered when writing academic papers. Since my chosen genre was based around a lot of

visual aspects, this included how to incorporate more images and captions and how to make my
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translation an overall realistic article. n “An Introduction To and Strategies for Multimodal

Composing”, Melanie Gagich talks about making a website by saying, “if I am creating a

website (the genre), an audience would expect the following conventions: an easy-to-navigate

toolbar, functional tabs, hyperlinks, and images” (2019, p.79). This is roughly the same idea that

helped me recognize which aspects I needed to include in my website. Seeing as how my website

is a shop, it made sense for me to focus a lot on the images I chose. I also had to realize that the

way in which I incorporated these images was also important. The words that surrounded and

captioned these images were important, too. McCloud speaks of using images in multimodality

in his piece “Writing with Pictures” by saying that word choices are about “picking words that

add valuable information and work well with the images around them” (2006, p.10)). I,

therefore, named my items based on words that would either describe how the item looks or how

they were used by people throughout history. Some of the names I decided on were Bloody

Murder, Royal in Red, and Flapper’s night. Names such as these would therefore help identify

the shoe before the description has even been read. Small details such as these are what tied the

shop together. In the end, I learned how important several aspects of multimodality are in order

for a genre to be well composed.

This assignment was an overall interesting one because I was able to further develop my

knowledge of both genre conventions and multimodality. Because I decided to create a website,

it helped me recognize all the separate aspects that go into multimodal projects and how they all

have to coordinate in order to make a comprehendible piece. The genre translation in general

helped me see how different genres can be related in some aspects, but also be completely

different based on the intended audience. This is a skill that will most likely be necessary for my
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future when presenting specific information to different groups of people, in which I will have to

engage them using different methods but much of the same information. For the most part, I

found this project overall to be fairly intriguing, informative, and overall entertaining.

References

Gagich, M. (2019). An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing. pp. 65-83.

McCloud, S. (2006). ​Making Comics: Storytelling secrets of comics, manga, and graphic novels.

New York: William Morrow, pp. 8-57.

Parmentier, M.-A. (2016). High Heels. Consumption Markets and Culture, 19(6), pp. 511–519.

Retrieved from

https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/doi/full/10.1080/10253866.20

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