Translating Comics: Between Bubbles, Cultures, and Constraints in East Asia
An international hybrid workshop organized by Marie Laureillard (Paris Nanterre) and Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm) (CRPM & Asie-Sorbonne Association), and assisted by Wenlan Xiang.
Contact: mlaureil@parisnanterre.fr
Held in English in a hybrid format. For online attendance, please preregister with Jaqueline Berndt, indicating your name, affiliation, and field of specialization: jberndt@su.se
As a hybrid form that merges text and image, comics offer a particularly stimulating field of inquiry for translators and translation scholars. This international workshop aims to explore the specific challenges of comics translation by focusing on translations from or into Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (manhua and lianhuanhua, manga, manhwa, and webtoons). It seeks to contribute not only to Translation Studies through comics but also to Comics Studies through translation, with an emphasis on East Asia. While the first day foregrounds the intersection of text and paratext, publication formats and editorial management, the second day addresses broader issues pertaining to multimodal, intermedial, and intercultural adaptation.
PROGRAM
Friday, 10 April 2026
Conference rooms – Max Weber Building, University of Paris Nanterre
(200 avenue de la République, 92000 Nanterre)
9:00 Opening Address
9:10–9:45 Antonio Paoliello-Palermo (Barcelona): Translating Sinophone Comics: The Role of Translators’ Notes in Italian Editions
9:50–10:25 Paula Martínez Sirés (Tokyo): Prefaces, Afterwords, and Cultural Mediation: The Role of Manga Translators in Spain’s Early Manga Reception [ONLINE — JST (+7h)]
10:30–11:05 Martina Caschera (Bergamo): Translating “Chinese comics”: two case studies from the Italian context [ONLINE — CET]
11:10–11:45 Asuka Ozumi (Turin): Making the Translator Visible: Notes and Paratext in Italian Manga Translation
11:50–12:25 Blanche Delaborde (Fukuoka): Translating Gender and Queerness: Around Boys Run The Riot [ONLINE — JST (+7h)]
Short lunch break (via catering in the lobby)
13:10–13:45 Dalma Kálovics (Kyoto): From foreignization to domestication—Korean comics in Japan [ONLINE — KST (+7h)]
13:50–14:25 Bounthavy Suvilay (London): Editorial strategies for material domestication: history of the first manga translations in France (1970–2000) [ONLINE — GMT (-1h)]
14:30–15:05 Giovanni Stigliano Messuti (Tokyo): How did it end up there? Editorial solutions to linguistic and visual extravagance in the collected works of Hanawa Kazuichi (1972–1980) [ONLINE — JST (+7h)]
15:10–15:45 Alba Quintairos-Soliño (Zaragoza): Shaping the Idea of Manga through Translation: The Case of Editorial Decisions in Spain
Saturday, 11 April 2026
Walter Benjamin Room, National Institute of Art History (INHA)
(2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris)
9:00–9:35 Yoon-Jung Do (Incheon): A Study on the Translation Patterns of Characters in Images within Graphic Novels: Focusing on Works Translated Between Korea and France [ONLINE — KST (+7h)]
9:40–10:15 Daryna Morhun (Kyiv): Negotiating Word, Image, and Culture: Intermedial Challenges in Manhua Translation
10:20–10:55 Nick Stember (London): Soldiers, Citizens, and Compatriots: Bo Yang’s Contentious Localization of Popeye
11:00–11:35 Yangjie Zhao (Paris): Translating Marginal Women: French Mediation of Rural Chinese Lives in Ma Maman and Le Printemps prochain
11:40–12:15 Inkyeong Chung (Philadelphia/Zürich): Beyond Untranslatability: ‘Che’ (체) as a Linguistic–Visual Register in Korean Comic Translation
Short lunch break
13:00–13:35 Dana Iacob (Cluj-Napoca): Ethics of Translating Darkness: Moral Ambiguity and Translator Responsibility in Dark Fantasy Manga
13:40–14:15 Sangi Yi (Seoul): Translating Voice and Performance in the Korean Webtoon 정년 이 (Jeongnyeon): Constraints and Possibilities in the Japanese Context [ONLINE – KST (+7h)]
14:20–14:55 Olga Bobrowska (Kraków): Adaptation as Ideological Practice. The Case of a Puppet Animated Film Rooster Crows at Midnight (Banye ji jiao, 1964, dir. You Lei)
15:00–15:35 Mariia Guleva (Prague): A featherless bird that flew internationally: a case study of a 1956 manhua and a 1960 diafilm
15:40–16:15 Lena Henningsen (Heidelberg): Adaptation and Transmediation
Due to the unexpected number of promising proposals, the program has become rather tight. Instead of adding another presentation, the organizers would like to use this site to draw attention to a recent Francophone initiative by a collective of service providers in Asian comics publishing (translation, proofreading, lettering) who are speaking out against AI: https://labandeillustree.com/ #actualite
Last updated: 2026-02-03
Source: Department of Asian and Middle Eastern studies