Gonzalo Kenny?s blog on Liliana Bodoc?s tetralogy. A case of plastic translation

MARÍA INÉS ARRIZABALAGA

Belo Horizonte

Conferencia; V IATIS Conference Innovation Paths in Translation and Intercultural Studies; 2015

Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais

La saga de Los Confines is a tetralogy produced by Argentinian fantasy writer Liliana Bodoc. From 2000 to 2004 the first three volumes ? Los días del Venado, Los días de la Sombra, and Los días del fuego ? were launched into the market by multinational publishing house Editorial Norma. In 2012 a last volume of lost tales ? Oficio de Búhos ? was added to the first three, thus completing the tetralogy as we know it today. La saga? has become a book market success, with translations into French, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and only recently English. As an epic fantasy product, this tetralogy combines elements from Northern European imaginaries and at once reverses certain components typically found in the genre. The time and place settings are just prior to Christopher Columbus? discovery of the Americas, thus the first nations and the folkloric dimensions around them date back to pre-Colombian days. This is what makes La saga... a sui generis product for the epic fantasy canon considered in European-centered terms. Around 2010, Argentinian sketcher and graphic design artist Gonzalo Kenny opened a blog entitled El arte de Los Confines. With his drawings and exploiting a variety of visual art techniques, Kenny turns Bodoc?s work in the direction of Western Europe. This presentation has two purposes. On the one hand, it seeks to provide a structural analysis of La saga? within the scope of the epic fantasy genre, but one in which character identities and fictional spaces will be explicitly referenced in pre-Colombian archives. On the other, judging from a selection of Kenny?s productions, it aims at discussing that Bodoc?s poetics is relocated in a European-centered scenario, thus causing Kenny?s plastic translation to exert an aporetic effect on La saga?. This case will combine the categories of total translation by Peeter Torop (2000 [1999]; see also Lotman, 1993; Salupere, Torop & Kull, 2013) and adaptation by Linda Hutcheon (2013 [2006]; see also Murray, 2012). The former was coined to hint at all the procedures which, inside the framework of culture, either repeat or translate information in different formats. The latter points at the creative trigger intrinsic to all works of art, particularly those adapted from Literature, which allows for the structural components of a literary piece ? as in the present analysis ? to be translated into a number of adaptive aesthetic traits on a digital platform. The relevance of this case for Translation Studies, especially when it comes to exploring and understanding contexts of production, circulation and consumption of translated literature, lies in its explanatory value about the manner in which plastic translations, conceived as variations of the more general and encompassing concept of total translation, could be accountable for decisions on book cover design (Cf. the Seuil/Métailié 2007, the Mondadori 2008, and the Suhrkamp 2008 editions), editorial series programming, target-readership planning, and eventually literary success according to the professional review arena.