ONOMATOPOEIA IN COMICS: FUNCTIONS, TRANSLATION STRATEGIES, LANGUAGE DIFFERENCES

Abstract

The article deals with the classification, functions, and strategies of translating onomatopoeia in comics.

The authors determine that onomatopoeia in comics has a multimodal nature: it functions not only as a linguistic unit, but also as a visual element of the frame.

An analysis of onomatopoeia in comics confirms that its semantics and functioning depend on several simultaneous parameters. Depending on the source of the sound, anthropophones and zoophones convey human reactions and animal voices, naturophones form the atmospheric background of the natural environment, and artifactophones give sound to objects and mechanisms and provide the dynamics of the action. In terms of the degree of mediation, primary onomatopoeia directly imitates a real acoustic signal, allowing the reader to hear the event with almost no additional explanation; secondary onomatopoeia, on the other hand, acts indirectly – through sound associations and phonestems, suggesting the nature of movement or state and enhancing the imagery of the scene. In terms of structure, monosyllabic forms most often convey a short, sharp, single impulse, while disyllabic forms reproduce rhythm, creating a sense of duration or seriality of sound.

The analysis shows that the choice of translation strategy always involves a balance between the accuracy of reproducing the acoustic effect, the naturalness of the Ukrainian sound, and the technical/graphical capabilities of the layout. Equivalent translation and functional rsubstitution prove to be the most productive, as they best ensure comprehensibility and stylistic appropriateness in the target language, while transliteration, descriptive translation, and techniques for enhancing or weakening expressiveness are used depending on the genre, context, and intent of the scene. At the same time, the significant difficulties in translating onomatopoeia are due to differences in phonetic systems and established sound-writing models of languages: the same sound can “sound” different to speakers of different languages, especially when it comes to conveying emotional reactions, exclamations, or intonationally colored effects.