Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1
Tara Giri
Writ 2
17 May 2020
Writing Project 2
Genre Translation
GENRE TRANSLATION
2
Genre Translation: The Tale of Detective Fritsch
Detective Fritsch shivered as he stared down at the many bodies that laid before him,
covered in sheets. These were not regular human bodies however, they were thousands of years
old. These were Egyptian mummies, and they were going to be the bane of Detective Fritsch’s
As Fritsch stood there admiring the physical history that laid before him, he clutched his
arms to preserve body heat. He heard the door to the left of him swing wide open and a man
wearing a light brown business suit stepped through. He strolled up to Fritsch and extended his
“You must be Detective Fritsch! I see you finally found your way here,” he exclaimed
“Well I’m your new boss actually! My name is Horus. My organization has heard all
about you. You managed to solve so many cases from ancient history and you have a
Horus sauntered over to one of the Egyptian mummies and threw off the cover that laid
on top.
“This is your job. If you look closely at it, you can see that its bones are not in great
shape. We need you to figure out what is wrong with their bones, what diseases they possibly
already began to think about all of the possible illnesses the body might have had.
“Well as soon as possible of course! This work is vital and our organization wants it
completed immediately. You can use the CT scanner in the other room to get a closer look. Have
fun!”
Horus flashed Fritsch another big grin before he turned around to go back through the
Fritsch scanned the massive amount of bodies that laid before him and immediately felt
overwhelmed by the amount of work he needed to do. Yet, his excitement for finding out new
information about the people of the ancient world overpowered that. He reached for the bones
Hours went by as Fritsch continued to scan each and every bone that he could find on the
tables. He hung up the pictures of the scans on the walls and immediately began to spot
numerous different diseases and fractures. He wrote down everything in a small journal that was
organized by the type of bone and which mummy it came from. All was going well for hours
Upon his first look, he noticed that it was the distal tibia of a male mummy. It looked as
if there was a small, peculiar hole on the foot. It was nothing like Fritsch had ever seen before.
He decided to bring the mummy into the CT scan to see if it would give him a clearer image of
what the ailment possibly could be. As soon as the photo came out however, Fritsch still could
brain for all the diseases he had seen in his life on these ancient skeletons yet nothing came to
Fritsch jumped onto his laptop and opened all the notes he had accumulated over the
years from his work on ancient bodies and diseases. As he scrolled through it all though, nothing
As his anger and frustration began to surmount, Fritsch went back to the CT scan one
more time. No matter how hard he concentrated on it though, he still could not understand what
In a fit of rage, Fritsch ripped the tibia from the mummy’s body and threw it across the
floor where it split open. As he looked at the now broken bone though, an idea popped into his
head.
He looked over the mummy’s entire body and noticed that it had injuries everywhere
associated with blunt force. It seemed as if the Egyptian might have been a soldier who was in a
The realization struck Fritsch like a bullet train. He picked up the broken tibia and studied
it, remembering that bones can be inflamed by an infection through an open wound. This is
called osteomyelitis and rare forms of it result in a cystic lesion on the tibia that tends to be the
Fritsch began to jump with joy and rushed to scribble down the disease in his notes.
Although he felt ashamed of himself for breaking a piece of history, he realized that the
With every new genre comes a new audience, writing style, jargon, and many other
evolving aspects. However, two vastly different genres do not necessarily need to have
completely different content. A poem and a newspaper article can both center on the massive
influx of refugees in Europe or a comic book and a play can discuss the effects of depression. To
illustrate this idea, I translated the research article, “The Orthopedic Diseases of Ancient Egypt”
by Klaus O. Fritsch et. al. (2015) into a detective story. Both genres are focused upon uncovering
what sorts of bone diseases the Ancient Egyptians had. The change in genre audiences, my main
issue when it came to translating the genre, and the struggle I faced attempting to write a
detective story that encompassed the content of the research article are all representative of the
fact that the two pieces, despite being written in two drastically different ways, are simply both
about utilizing numerous clues to solve an important issue. This means that the way that a genre
is written is essential because it can be perceived very differently by an audience despite having
The audience for the research article was biologists while the audience for detective
stories tends to be avid fans of books. I changed the research article into a narrative by adding a
setting, characters, and a main problem for the character to solve because the purpose of these
genre conventions is to keep the audiences hooked onto the story. The original research report
consisted of the findings of the scientists involved in the study, their jargon, and their methods.
Their target audience is clearly other specialists because only they can understand the scientific
terminology such as the numerous complex diseases and bone fractures that they named.
However, the research report did not illustrate how these scientists spent their time studying the
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mummies. In the narrative, this is what I focus on. Rather than being centered on the results that
the detective came to, the story is more about his journey to finding those results because many
detective stories are about the character’s struggles and successes that bring him closer to
uncovering the problem. This is what keeps the audience of detective stories hooked. Scott
McCloud (1993), a comic book artist, agrees with this sentiment in regards to audiences by
stating, “...we want them to care enough to stick around ‘til we’re done” (p.8). The audience
stays when reading detective stories because they feel like they are struggling right alongside the
detective to solve the problem. They “care” deeply enough about the detective and the issue at
hand to keep on reading until the end. On top of this, to make the research report more like a
narrative, I created a setting, characters, and dialogue to keep the audience interested. All of
these aspects combined with a main problem that the detective needed to solve helped to
The main challenge I faced while translating the genre was creating a problem about a
disease that the detective needed to figure out considering I had little knowledge on orthopedics.
In order to solve this, I decided to conduct quite a bit of online research to create a problem
because a main case that needs to be “cracked” is what motivates the detective in all detective
stories. When it came to coming up with a puzzle that the character had to solve, I found myself
stumped because I realized that I knew very little about what the results in the research article
meant due to the high amount of scientific terminology. I began to search through the article
hoping that there would be some sort of explanation for the numerous diseases that they named
but to my dismay, there was none. I then remembered that in Melanie Gagich’s (2020) writing
piece, An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing, she stated that outside
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research is absolutely necessary in certain assignments (p.77). As soon as I read this, I began to
do some basic online research on one of the diseases in the article called Brodie’s abscess. To my
luck, I was able to find an article that explained in detail what the disease was and that
oftentimes one was able to get it through an open wound in the bone (Naald, 2019). I then
decided to utilize it as the mysterious disease on one of the mummies that the protagonist was
having difficulty discovering. Once I finally gained some more context from the original genre, I
The main concern I had was creating a detective story that obeyed the guidelines of that
genre while maintaining the content of the original research article genre. In order to accomplish
this, I had to use my skills of creativity and knowledge of genre audiences. There are thousands
of detective stories across the world with all sorts of problems and detective characters within
them. However, many of them most likely do not center around ancient historical diseases. When
I first began to write, I realized that this might make the detective story less of an actual
“detective story.” Yet, as I began to research detective stories online, I realized that the problem
that must be solved is not what defines a detective story. Rather, it is the journey to solving a
problem is what defines it. This is what keeps the audience of detective stories captivated
because they feel like they are solving the problem right alongside the detective. As I read these
detective stories online as well as their reviews, I came to the realization that this is the main
reason as to why audiences enjoy detective stories and so in turn, this is what characterizes them.
Sandra L. Giles (2010) adds on to this sentiment by stating that understanding one’s audience is
effectively devise a detective story about ancient historical diseases, I had to exercise my
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creative muscles. Morgan Smith (2019), a student who also translated a genre, stated that as
someone who wasn’t an artist, she was uncomfortable drawing. Similarly, I was not familiar with
creative writing so I struggled immensely. Due to this obstacle, I thought about what I personally
would find to be interesting in a story like this. I pondered over all of the stories I had read in the
past and which ones were my favorites. I then utilized my own reading history to craft a unique
story.
The audience of detective stories consists of avid reading fans while the audience of
research articles normally consists of scientists. To satisfy the new genre’s audience, I ensured
that I added essential traits found in many novels including an overarching problem to my
detective story. This project challenged me as well because I needed to devise a case for the
protagonist to solve despite the fact that I did not know much about the content in the research
article and I solved this problem by reading up on the article’s content. The main concern I had
while writing was that I was not sure how to create a detective story that did not stray far from
the ideas found in the research article but I worked this out through my creative prowess and
awareness of what audiences want. Although this entire project was incredibly difficult to write
and analyze, I still had fun while doing it. The writing of the actual story gave me a chance to
flex my creative muscles and the analysis gave me a greater insight into the ways that genres
References
Driscoll, D., Stewart M., & Vetter, M. (2020). An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal
Fritsch K. O., Hamoud H., Allam A. H., Grossmann A., El-Din A. N., Abdel-Maksoud G.,
Soliman M. A., Badr I., Sutherland J. D., Sutherland M. L., Akl M., Finch C. E., Thomas
G. S., Wann L. S., Thompson, R. C. (2015). The Orthopedic Diseases of Ancient Egypt.
https://doi-org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/10.1002/ar.23136
Giles, Sandra L. (2010). Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You
Thinking? In C. Lowe & P. Zemliansky (Eds.), Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing (pp.
Smith, Morgan. (2019). Science Apes to Smelly Apes. In I. Miele & C. Dean (Eds.), Starting
Solutions.
Van der Naald, N., Smeeing D. P. J., Houwert R. M., Hietbrink F., Govaert G. A. M., Van der