GENRE TRANSLATION

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Tara Giri

Professor Valentina Fahler

Writ 2

17 May 2020

Writing Project 2

Genre Translation
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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

existence for the next few months.

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

hand with the biggest grin Fritsch had ever seen.

“You must be Detective Fritsch! I see you finally found your way here,” he exclaimed

with his hand still held out.

Fritsch quickly glanced down and shook his hand lightly.

“I am...and you are?” he asked tentatively.

“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

background in biology. We figured you would be perfect for the job.”

“I suppose I could be, but what exactly is the job?”

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

had, and how that might have affected their lives.”

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Fritsch’s curiosity peaked and he was immediately interested. He stared at the bones and

already began to think about all of the possible illnesses the body might have had.

“Done. When should I get started?” Fritsch inquired.

“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

same door that he came in through.

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

that Horus uncovered in order to scan them.

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

until he came upon one peculiar bone.

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

not understand what exactly was on the tibia.

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His frustration began to grow as he stared at the bone as well as the picture. He racked his

brain for all the diseases he had seen in his life on these ancient skeletons yet nothing came to

mind that matched what was happening on this bone.

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

looked similar to the problem at hand.

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

possible disease this mummy might have had.

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

war and whose bones were broken or fractured numerous times.

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

exact shape of the hole on the bone.

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

conclusion he came to was of much more importance.

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Analytical Essay: The Successes and Struggles of Genre Translation

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

similar overall content.

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

transform the research article into a unique detective story.

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

had a much easier time translating it into a completely different one.

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

“essential to a good piece of communicative writing” (p.198). On top of this though, to

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

operate and how they can be differentiated from one another.

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References

Driscoll, D., Stewart M., & Vetter, M. (2020). An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal

Composing. In D. Driscoll, M. Stewart, & M. Vetter (Eds.), ​Writing Spaces: Readings on

Writing Volume 3 ​(pp. 65-85). Parlor Press.

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.

Anatomical Record, 298(​ 6), 1036-1046.

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.

191-204). Parlor Press.

​ itchen Sink Press.

McCloud, Scott. (1993).​ Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. K

Smith, Morgan. (2019). Science Apes to Smelly Apes. In I. Miele & C. Dean (Eds.), ​Starting

Lines: An Anthology of Student Writing (​ pp. 193-195). Macmillan Learning Curriculum

Solutions.

Van der Naald, N., Smeeing D. P. J., Houwert R. M., Hietbrink F., Govaert G. A. M., Van der

Velde, D. (2019). Brodie’s Abscess: A Systematic Review of Reported Cases. ​Journal of

Bone and Joint Infection. 4(​ 1), 33-39.