¡Valor y al toro!: cultural contrastive study of Spanish-German comics

Abstract

Comics are a cultural product, and their translation represents an essential phase for their diffusion and internationalization. In this paper we approach the textual genre of a comic book from two perspectives. On one hand, we address the process of translation into German of the comic book Aius. El destino de Numancia (Aius. The fate of Numantia), presenting some of the challenges we faced during the process. On the other hand, we carry out a contrastive study of Spanish-German comics, taking as an example a graphic comic strip from the Mortadelo y Filemón (Mort & Phil) series. The objective is to observe the treatment given to cultural references, focusing on proper names, phraseology, as well as the reproduction of onomatopoeias. Both comics are mainly addressed to young people, but the first one has a historical character with a clear educational function, while the second one has a ludic function, which will influence the result of the translation.