Eliisa Pitkäsalo

Comic Contract: Visual and Verbal Clarity in Intersemiotic Translation

The aim of my paper is to introduce an example of the legal design, a comic contract, in which the verbal and visual modes interact, and to discuss the translation processes of the document. Traditionally, the contracts are verbally drafted for lawyers who „seek to protect their clients in case of a dispute” (Haapio, Plewe & de Rooy 2017: 3). It is highly desirable that not only the lawyers, but also the clients – the contracting parties – understand the contents of the signed documents. The verbal format of the contract becomes problematic if the parties do not have a common language, or if one of them is not able to understand the contents of the contract. Robert de Rooy, an attorney based in South Africa, took up the matter of accessibility and developed a comic contract in 2014, a new form of legal document for recruitment purposes for a South African fruit farm. The comic contract was implemented in 2016. The aim of these comic contracts was to make these legal documents usable for both contracting parties: the visual format of contract was developed to help the parties to understand their rights and duties, but also to prevent disputes and anticipate and eliminate causes of problems. The proactive contracting is used especially when one of the parties either cannot read or does not understand the language of the contract. In such cases it is essential that the contents of the contract is expressed clearly enough. For this purpose, the advocates of legal design have suggested that the conventional, verbal contract needs to be formulated as a visual format. This rewriting-process, in fact, can be considered as intersemiotic translation according to Roman Jacobson´s (1959) categorisation. Formulating a contract requires a rethinking of the possibilities to present the contractual terms both visually and verbally (e. g. in plain language). This process includes several details and the artist, the rewriter and the translator needs to be aware of these.

References:

Michał Borodo 2015. Multimodality, translation and comics, Perspectives, 23:1, 22-41, DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2013.876057

Cohn, Neil. 2013. The Visual Language of Comics. Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney: Bloomsbury.

Haapio, Helena, Plewe, Daniela Alina & de Rooy Robert 2017. Contract Continuum: From Text to Images, Comics and Code. In Schweighofer, E., Kummer, F., Hoetzendorfer, W. & Sorge, C. (eds.) Trends and Communities of Legal Informatics. Proceedings of the 20th International legal Informatics Symposium IRIS 2017. Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft, Wien. 411-418

Jakobson, Roman 1989 [1959]: On linguistic aspects of translation. In Chesterman, A. (ed.) Readings in Translation Theory, Helsinki: Finnlectura.

Dr Eliisa Pitkäsalo received her PhD in Contemporary Culture Studies in 2009. She has extensive experience in teaching Finnish language and culture abroad, mainly in Hungary. At the moment Pitkäsalo works as a university teacher at the University of Tampere, where she teaches written and oral skills in Finnish for interpreting and translation students. After completing her PhD, Pitkäsalo has mainly conducted research into literary translation (e.g. metaphors). Lately, she has investigated the effect of the readers’ linguistic and cultural background on the reading experience of comics. Currently, her research focusses on visualisation as an accessibility tool in the field of legal design, especially in the case of comic contracts. Her research also sheds light on what translators should pay attention to when translating comics. She is a member of the MULTI (Multimodality in Translation and Interpreting) research group that investigates the implications of multimodal meaning construction in translation and interpretation.