Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The Spanish comics of Mortadelo y Filemón have travelled around the world, not only thanks to their adventures but also thanks to their translations. In this paper, we will analyse a fictional language with Germanised features that appear in the volume El sulfato atómico: the language of Tirania, as well as its translation into German and Catalan. To account for this phenomenon, we will first briefly reflect on the external factors for translating comics. We will then discuss the relationship between language and cultural references, known as realia, and their transfer to fictional worlds, irrealia. Following this theoretical basis, we will analyse the pseudo-German language and culture found in El sulfato atómico, both in the original and in its two translations. We will also include a section analysing the discursive creations that were made in the German translation to compensate those humorous features that could not be conveyed with more direct resources. From this analysis, we will draw some general guidelines for the translation of fictional languages.
Source: Zeitschrift für Katalanistik
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4413764646