Global Comic Book Heroes: Intra- and Inter-Cultural Translations of Tintin, Asterix, and Paperinik Comics

Comics are hybrid visual and verbal texts that in translation cut across intra- and inter-semiotic boundaries. In this article I briefly review semiotic approaches to the study of comics in translation, focusing on those based on Roman Jakobson’s and Gunther R. Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen’s models. I then discuss examples of the translation in several languages of three of the most translated and reprinted comic series in the world—namely, Tintin, Asterix, and the popular Disney character Paperinik/Donald Duck. The examples show some of the different types of relationships which are established between visual and verbal signs in intra- and inter-cultural translation.