Contemporary children’s literature has witnessed a notable revival of the comic genre, particularly in the graphic novel comic diary format. In 2021, children’s graphic novels accounted for $1.47 billion of the $2.075 billion total comic book sales revenue in the USA (Comic-book Sales). The children’s graphic novel enjoys an indisputable popularity, with children’s bestseller lists in recent years consistently dominated by this format (2021 Children’s Bestsellers). Examples include staples such as the hugely popular Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man and Cat Kid Comic Club series, Rachel Renee Russell’s The Dork Diaries and Tui T. Sutherland’s Wings of Fire. But one of the best-loved graphic novels is Jeff Kinney’s The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (2007–2022), which boasts more than 275 million copies sold worldwide (About Wimpy Kid). In 2022, Diper Överlöde, the latest title in the series, topped the list of children’s bestsellers at 800,000 hardcover copies sold (2022 Children’s Bestsellers).

Perhaps in response to the popularity of the genre, scholarship on graphic novels has now expanded considerably, as evidenced by recent publications, courses and academic programs dedicated to the study of this popular literary form and its cultural significance (Hatfield and Beaty, 2020). A parallel interest in scholarship on the translation of multimodal texts in general can also be observed in the field of Translation Studies (O’Sullivan, 2013; Tuominen et al., 2018), but studies on graphic novel translation remain scarce (Borodo, 2015; Zanettin, 2018; Boria, 2019), and studies focusing on its translation into Arabic even more so (Dubbati et al., 2018).

Similarly, with the notable exception of Fernando Poyatos (1997, 2002, 2008), who has published extensively on the subject, few studies have attempted to investigate the translation of nonverbal aspects of communication, including their written representation in paralanguage (Vermeer, 1992; Seel, 2017). With a focus on textual paralanguage, this study sheds light on the underresearched topic of paralanguage translation, whilst simultaneously addressing the absence of literature on graphic novel translation into Arabic. The study employs the textual paralanguage typology proposed by Luangrath et al. (2017) to classify the instances of nonverbal communication in Jeff Kinney’s Rodrick Rules and Hard Luck and analyse their translation into Arabic. I argue that paralanguage can play a central role in bringing a character to life, and, as such, requires closer attention on the part of the translator, in their attempt to navigate cultural nuances and preserve communicative intentions.

Theoretical Considerations

Nonverbal cues constitute a form of communication capable of transcending language. Communication takes place regardless of whether language is employed or not. Even when language is involved, there is evidence to suggest that the verbal element carries only a small part of the message; the greater part is entirely subject to inference. This inferential process may also completely bypass and take priority over language (Carston, 2002).

The American Psychological Association defines paralanguage broadly as “the vocal but nonverbal elements of communication by speech”, including “tone and stress”, as well as “volume, speed of delivery, voice quality, hesitations, and nonlinguistic sounds, such as sighs, whistles, or groans” (Paralanguage). Paralanguage comprehension is an important predictor of communicative competence in second language learners (Pennycook, 1985), as well as a diagnostic tool employed in identifying autism spectrum disorder, where the ability to recognise and interpret features of speech like prosody and intonation is often impaired (Peppé, 2013).

When nonverbal communication is represented in writing, it is referred to as “textual paralanguage”, which can be defined as “written manifestations of nonverbal audible, tactile, and visual elements that supplement or replace written language and that can be expressed through words, symbols, images, punctuation, demarcations, or any combination of these elements.” (Luangrath et al., 2017, p. 98). One important difference between face-to-face paralanguage and textual paralanguage is that, while the former is both encoded and processed unconsciously, the latter tends to require a more conscious, deliberate encoding and decoding process (Luangrath et al., 2017).

In modern-day communication, we are often exposed to messages from multiple semiotic sources. We engage with texts in complex multimodal ways, which demands complex comprehension skills. What we could refer to as multimodal literacy is fast becoming a requirement to make sense of the world. As we transition from book to screen, from “telling the world” to “showing the world”, the theoretical landscape also sees a parallel shift from linguistics to semiotics, from a theory that focuses on language alone, to one that can account for gesture, image, colour, music as well as writing (Kress, 2003, p. 1). This “semiotic turn” (Serafini, 2010) acknowledges that language is no longer the sole means of communication; meaning is increasingly spread out over multiple modes of representation, making multimodal literacy, the ability to communicate using various media and modes, a necessity for effective communication in the 21st century. Neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to rewire itself in response to new stimuli—means that this change will produce inevitable physiological consequences for our cognitive and affective engagement with the world. Not only will we experience some fundamental changes in the way we read, but also in the way we think (Carr, 2011). Children have become adept navigators of this fast-changing, information-rich multimodal world.

In this study, I understand the term graphic novel as referring to “a full-length story, with a beginning, middle and end, in which both image and text are of equal importance” (Trabachnick, 2009 cited in Jennings et al., 2014, p. 259). Graphic novels have been described as “evolutionary branches that emerge from hybridization among picture books, chapter books, and cheap comic books” (Op de Beeck, 2012, p. 472). Because they integrate a variety of semiotic modes, which include, but are not restricted to, language, graphic novels are considered multimodal texts. One of the characteristics of this genre is that images are not ancillary visual restatements of what was already expressed in the preceding text, but rather integral to the narrative. The comprehension process of a graphic novel requires readers to bring into play the semiotic meanings contained in the visual narrative to interpret those conveyed by the verbal narrative, and vice versa. Building on Roland Barthes’s syntagm notion, Stephanie Reid and Frank Serafini (2018) conceptualise the multimodal novel as consisting of sequences and combinations of meaning units including written text, visual images and design elements, which bear syntagmatic relations to each other, and are woven together into one meaning-making system.

Consistent with the literature on multimodal translation (Weissbrod and Kohn, 2019), I understand translation as consisting of interlingual, as well as intersemiotic, transfer. Due to the multiple channels through which meaning is communicated, ranging from speech bubbles, captions, line drawings depicting characters and scenes, ideophones including onomatopoeia, typeface and font size, the graphic novel is a hybrid, multimodal genre, requiring a similarly hybrid, multimodal translation approach.

The pedagogical potential of the graphic novel when it comes to developing and improving reading skills is well documented (Jennings et al., 2014). Studies show that the supplementation of text with visual stimuli within the format of a graphic novel can improve reading comprehension and motivation in children and young adolescents (Jennings et al., 2014; Edwards, 2009; Snowball, 2005). Due to space constraints, the graphic novel demands the use of concise text complemented with detailed illustrations, which invite a more engaging reading experience as readers build the story through the combination of text and image. For young, reluctant and/or struggling readers, this may play an important role in overcoming difficulties and fostering a general love of reading (Lyga and Lyga, 2004). Hansen (2012), however, cautions against the stigma that teachers may unwittingly attach to the graphic novel by presenting this literary form as the sole province of struggling readers. More proficient readers, as well as second-language learners, also stand to benefit from practising the analytical skills needed to combine text and image, as opposed to a predominantly language-based narrative (Cimermanová, 2014).

Children’s Literature in Translation

The intersection of Translation Studies and Children’s Literature has offered interesting insights into how translation works in relation to the power imbalance between the adult translator on the one hand, and the child reader on the other (Van Coillie and McMartin, 2020). For example, Riitta Oittinen (2006) is a keen advocate for the use of a domesticating approach in the translation of children’s literature, where the translator takes liberties to modify any aspects of the source text that do not lend themselves to a straightforward literal translation, naturalising the language and smoothing out any stylistic peculiarities. Her argument is that while adult readers may be more welcoming of a deliberate foreignising translation, where culture-specific references and stylistic quirks are celebrated rather than concealed, this approach may not be suited to younger readers. Children, Oittinen argues, will find such foreignised target texts opaque and alienating, which may hinder their comprehension, and consequently dampen their newfound enthusiasm for reading. Brigit Stolt (2006) on the other hand, contends that a children’s book “must be accorded just as much respect as in the case of adult literature” (p. 82). This entails a translation where adaptation is used “with a gentle hand, as little as possible” (p. 83) and only as a last recourse.

Since paralanguage is context-dependent, a successful translation of nonverbal meaning requires familiarity with multi-layered connotations, some of which relate to the immediate context, while others pertain to the wider context of culture. The translation of humour is equally demanding in graphic novels, as translators have to navigate the space constraints imposed by the layout and speech bubbles. Pictorial elements including the visual representation of objects, gestures and facial expressions are often rooted in a specific cultural context. To create a humorous effect, comics often rely on intertextuality in the form of allusions, familiarity with which is a requisite for their correct interpretation (Kaindl, 2004).

Textual Paralanguage in Rodrick Rules and Hard Luck

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series (2007–2022) by Jeff Kinney is an amusing chronicle of the misadventures of the witty preteen Greg Heffley, as he navigates the minefield that is middle school, with the aspiration of becoming popular. The following excerpt from Diary of a Wimpy Kid perfectly captures the essence of Greg’s character:

Like I said, I'll be famous one day, but for now I'm stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons. Let me just say for the record that I think middle school is the dumbest idea ever invented. You got kids like me who haven’t hit their growth spurt yet mixed in with these gorillas who need to shave twice a day. (Kinney, 2007, p. 3)

Every page in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series contains a cartoon, which supplements the story by illustrating the preceding narrative. The cartoons may or may not contain balloons depicting thought, dialogue or sound effects. The lined pages and CoopForged font choice suggest that this is a handwritten diary. Some words are capitalised to convey emphasis. The narrative is in the first person and occasionally addresses the audience directly. Direct speech is confined to the speech bubbles in the illustrations. The syntactic style is characterised by short, simple sentences, and the register is informal including numerous colloquialisms.

Using the typology of textual paralanguage (Fig. 1) proposed by Luangrath et al. (2017) as a basis for classification, I categorise the examples of textual paralanguage found in the books Rodrick Rules (Kinney, 2008) and Hard Luck (Kinney, 2013a) of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and discuss their translation into Arabic.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Typology of textual paralanguage (adapted from Luangrath et al., 2017)

Full size image

In lieu of presenting illustrations, I provide cartoon descriptions to contextualise the examples of textual paralanguage. Amulet Books, the series publishers, refused to grant permission to use illustrations for the purpose of analysis, because they found that this work carries negative connotations towards the Diary of a Wimpy Kid brand (personal communication, 12 September 2023).

Visual Textual Paralanguage

Presentational aspects of texts including font, formatting and layout are an important component of textual paralanguage. Research has demonstrated that readers have a tendency to ascribe connotative meaning to fonts, beyond the semantic meaning encoded linguistically in a text (Kostelnick, 1990; Brumberger, 2003; Jordan et al., 2017). For example, Charles Kostelnick (1990) argues that in the visual language of typography, font suggests a rhetorical stance: “serious, conversational, low key, energetic, highly technical, or user-friendly” (1990, p. 199). Subsequent empirical studies corroborate a long-held assumption that readers associate different fonts with different personality traits, attributing characteristics such as “confident, elegant, casual, bold, romantic, friendly, nostalgic, modern, delicate, sassy” to various fonts based on their appearance (Brumberger, 2003, p. 207).

In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, font is used to convey various moods and attitudes. In Hard Luck (Kinney, 2013a), Greg shares a birthday party invitation (Kinney, 2013a, p. 32) where, much to his disappointment, his mother had explicitly instructed guests to buy books instead of toys. In the source text (ST), the invitation text appears in cursive writing to distinguish it from Greg’s writing in the rest of the diary. In the target text (TT), no parallel distinction is drawn—the same font is used in the invitation card as in the rest of the book. Since Arabic is cursive by nature, this distinction between print and cursive handwriting cannot be reflected in the same way, but different fonts could have been used to differentiate Greg and his mother’s handwriting. Additionally, “you’re invited” is translated as تسرّنا دعوتكم [It gives us pleasure to invite you] (Kinney, 2017, p. 38) which is excessively formal and strikes an odd tone in a children’s birthday party invitation. This effect is accentuated by the font, Kufi Standard GK typeface, in which it appears, which triggers associations with “confident, elegant, pretentious, and dignified” (Jordan et al., 2017, p. 2) attributes, it being the font of choice for mosque designs, poetry and formal certificates.

A further divergence from the communicative intentions of the ST as represented in font choice is a cartoon in Hard Luck (Kinney, 2013a), which depicts a promotional poster for an extracurricular children’s club. The ST reads “Enroll your child in the Superhero Training Academy at the YMCA. Unlock your child’s inner superpowers! Enroll at the front desk” (Kinney, 2013a, p. 35). In the ST, the font choice for the word ‘superhero’ alludes to superhero comics. In the TT it rather triggers associations with the horror genre (Kinney, 2017, p. 41).

Another important element of textual paralanguage is intentional misspelling. In one example from Rodrick Rules (Kinney, 2008), Greg’s grandmother shows a relative a note that Greg had to her when he was six years old, in response to her denying him ice cream before dinner. The ST reads “I hate you Gramma” (Kinney, 2008, p. 162). The word ‘Granma’ is spelt as ‘Gramma’ and the message appears in misaligned font to represent a child’s handwriting at this age. The font choice and spelling mistake downplay the harshness of the statement ‘I hate you’ by encouraging its interpretation as a typical overreaction from a young child who did not get his way, rather than a genuine sentiment, which in turn contributes to the humorous effect. In the TT, however, the same font was used as in the rest of the diary, the handwriting is neat and elegant, and the address form that corresponds to ‘Granma’ جدّتي has no equivalent spelling mistake (Kinney, 2013b, p. 168). The translation does not communicate the distinction between a six-year-old Greg and a present-day Greg, causing the message to appear more serious than was intended in the ST, more unforgiving to Greg’s character, and consequently, less funny.

In a cartoon depicting Greg’s older brother Rodrick’s van, we can observe another instance of intentional misspelling, in this case the words ‘loaded’ and ‘diaper’ in Rodrick’s band’s name ‘Löded Diper’, painted on the side of his van (Kinney, 2008, p. 7). The devil’s horns—a common hand gesture at rock concerts—and tail complete the look of the band’s name with allusions to the gothic genre and to the subversive nature of heavy metal. The intentional misspelling of a word to create a special effect is called “sensational spelling” (Ross, 2006, p. 43); examples include the trademark ‘Krispy Kreme’ and the websites ‘Flickr’ and ‘Tumblr’. The umlaut in the word ‘Löded’ is referred to as a “heavy metal umlaut” (Ivković, 2015, p. 90), which is a diacritic sometimes added gratuitously over vowels in the names of hard rock or heavy metal bands to give a band a “German and/or Scandinavian flair” (p. 90). Greg, however, suspects that rather than all of the above, Rodrick simply cannot spell, which invites a double-take on the band’s name, creating a humorous effect. The typical juvenile humour reference to soiled diapers juxtaposed with the intense, aggressive and dark associations to heavy metal music further enhances this effect.

In the Arabic rendition of this cartoon, the translator included a parallel deliberate misspelling of both words الحيفاض and المومتلئ, but excluded all references to heavy metal culture, omitting the devil’s horns and tail (Kinney, 2013b, p. 13). Given that sensational spelling is not common in Arabic, the humorous double-take effect is absent, leaving us with what is now a gratuitous misspelling of an odd name for a band, with no connotations of heavy metal.

Auditory Textual Paralanguage

Vocalisations are defined as “utterances, fillers, terms, or sounds that can be spoken or produced by the body and that result in an audible noise that is recognisable” (Luangrath et al., 2017, p. 101). Some vocalisations feature in language usage but are not accorded word status and may not be found in any of the official dictionaries. Examples include ‘ka-ching’, which imitates the sound of a cash register, and ‘ba-dum ching’, which imitates the drumroll and cymbal crash after someone has delivered the punchline of a joke.

Movement and sounds in Greg’s illustrations are explicitly labelled using onomatopoeic vocalisations and action verbs to make up for Greg’s limited ability to represent movement in his cartoons. Ostensibly infantile representations of reality, Greg’s cartoons contribute to the wry sense of humour woven through the text. In the Arabic version of the book series, vocalisations are rendered via transliteration. Because many of these onomatopoeic representations of sound are not standardised loan words in the Arabic language, transliterating them produces bizarre translations, especially when they bear an accidental resemblance to other Arabic words, entirely irrelevant to the respective context, in either colloquial or Modern Standard Arabic. The effect is at times indeed humorous, but for the wrong reasons.

In a cartoon depicting Rodrick drumming enthusiastically (Kinney, 2008, p. 135), onomatopoeic verbs (crash, smash, thump, whomp), as well as onomatopoeic nonverbal vocalisations depicting various drum beats (ba-dum, bidi bum bop) are used to describe the actions and resulting sounds. Here, transliteration was chosen to render both the onomatopoeic verbs as well as the auditory textual paralanguage represented by vocalisations, producing an odd result where English-specific sound symbolism is maintained, but with Arabic characters. The verbs were translated as كراش، سماش، تومب، ومب and the vocalisations as بيدي بوم بوب، با-دوم (Kinney, 2013b, p. 141). This is an inexplicable translation choice, considering that there are equivalent onomatopoeic verbs خبط ، قرع ، دق ، طبل ، نقر as well as colloquial onomatopoeic nonverbal vocalisations depicting drumbeats and loud noises دوم تك ، طاخ in the target language.

In a cartoon depicting Greg and his classmates in a swimming lesson, the onomatopoeic verbs ‘tap tap’ and ‘splash’ (Kinney, 2008, p. 5) are transliterated producing unintelligible words تاب تاب، سبلاش (Kinney, 2013b, p. 11) that are neither recognisable verbs nor onomatopoeic, given that the respective sounds they represent are not vocalised in the same manner in Arabic. Here, again, we have equivalent onomatopoeic verbs that refer specifically to sounds associated with water رش ، رذاذ while ‘tap, tap’ could simply be rendered as نقرة ، نقرة.

In another cartoon, the onomatopoeic vocalisations ‘kapoing’ and ‘sproing’, used to represent bouncing objects falling out of Greg’s backpack (Kinney, 2013a, p. 63), are transliterated as كابوينغ ، سبروينغ (Kinney, 2017, p. 69). As these are less frequent variations on the ‘boing’ sound in English, they are rather idiosyncratic in this instance, which makes for a more challenging translation problem. One possible way around this problem is to use the corresponding verbs that describe the action rather than the sound such as ارتداد ، قفز، اصطدام. Sacrificing the idiosyncratic aspect in favour of a more natural word choice may be prudent here, so as not to detract from the cartoon.

Throughout the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Greg uses block capitals frequently to emphasise individual words. Capitalisation is intended as a written representation of speech tone and volume, and as such adds an animated quality to Greg’s character, typical of children and adolescents. This form of textual paralanguage indicates how the written text is to be spoken, and, depending on context, serves various rhetorical functions like marking contrast, signalling irony or adding a little drama. These features are integral to a character’s voice, yet, this aspect of paralanguage is entirely absent from the Arabic text. Capitalisation is not a feature of the Arabic language, but emphasis could be communicated by using boldface, larger font size, repetition, or by rearranging the syntactic structure.

In the following excerpt, Greg expresses his disbelief at his grandfather’s acquiring a girlfriend at his age. His shock at the sudden realisation that older people can date is in part conveyed through the capitalisation of the words ‘grandpa’ and ‘date’, which highlights the contrast and adds an exaggerated tone that contributes to the humorous effect. Notably, this is one of several instances in the Arabic version in which the translator intervenes to adapt the text to local culture, where dating is generally frowned upon. In this case, the ‘girlfriend’ becomes a fiancée and ‘dating’ turns into التفكير في الزواج مجدداً [considering remarriage]. Conversely, paralanguage in the same excerpt receives no such attention. No attempt is made to emphasise either word, resulting in a neutralised text. Given that it is socially acceptable, and indeed common, for widowed men of any age to remarry in the Middle East, the translation presents a scenario that Arabic-speaking Greg would probably not find crazy at all.

ST:

And even crazier than that, now GRANDPA has a girlfriend. I didn’t even know you could still DATE once you got to be Grandpa’s age, but I guess I was wrong.

(Kinney, 2013a, p. 46)

TT:

والأمر الأكثر غرابة هو أن جدي قد خطب سيدة الآن. فأنا لم أكن أعتقد إطلاقاً أن الرجال في مثل سن جدي يفكرون في الزواج مجدداً، لكن أظن أنني كنت مخطئاً.

[Back translation: Even more strange is that my grandfather has now become engaged to a lady. I never thought that men of my grandfather’s age would consider remarriage but I think I was wrong.]

(Kinney, 2017, p. 52)

Equally absent from the Arabic version is boldface, which is used mainly in the cartoon speech bubbles with similar intentions to capitalisation. In one example, Greg’s mother guilt trips him into showing more gratitude for what Greg describes as a “a ball of tinfoil with a bunch of toothpicks sticking out of it” (Kinney, 2008, p. 43), that his three-year-old brother Manny had made him as an apology for breaking his video game system. The word ‘made’ is larger than the rest of the text and appears in boldface for emphasis, but no such distinction is reflected in Arabic. Without emphasis, the target version of Greg’s mother’s reproach “Your brother made that for you!” (Kinney, 2008, p.43)

!أخوك صنعها من أجلك (Kinney, 2013b, p. 49) sounds monotone by comparison, resulting in another flat, neutralised statement.

Tactile Visual Paralanguage

Tactile kinesics is defined as “the conveyance of nonverbal communication related to physical, haptic interaction with another individual” (Luangrath, 2017, p. 101). Tactile kinesic paralanguage includes instances of haptic interpersonal communication where touch conveys meaning, such as a pat on the back or a high five. In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, this aspect of nonverbal communication is depicted in the cartoons, allowing the verbal and visual narratives to complement one another, as is the case in any multimodal text. For the most part, tactile kinesics is unaltered, but, in one striking example of intervention on the part of the translator, a cartoon of Greg’s friend Rowley and his new girlfriend holding hands (Kinney, 2013a, p. 2) is modified so that in the target version they are walking side by side but no longer holding hands (Kinney, 2017, p. 8).

Analysis and Discussion

Children’s literature often contains an element of didacticism, motivated by the desire to instill values and reinforce social norms. This moralising aspect of children’s literature appears to take center stage in children’s literature written in Arabic, with religious and ideological considerations that overshadow all other story elements. Sabeur Mdallel (2003) notes that, while this focus on the pedagogical potential of children’s literature is losing ground in Western societies, it continues to be regarded as the sole purpose of fiction aimed at young readers in Arab societies, “where children's literature is basically meant to teach children, to remind them of the dichotomy between good and evil” (Mdallel, 2003, p. 301). This emphasis on moralising naturally extends to translation, sometimes resulting in a blatant erasure of any source culture references deemed to flout taboos or contravene target culture values.

In the Arabic translation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the translator’s tendency to overlook paralanguage can be linked to the general tendency observed in the Arab region to prioritise the didactic potential of children’s literature over its entertainment value. The lack of attention to the pragmatic meanings conveyed through paralanguage becomes all the more conspicuous when considered against the numerous instances of translator intervention on ideological grounds, which occasionally amount to manipulating the graphics in the cartoons. Graphic elements deemed potentially subversive—from a particularly narrow perspective on the more diverse Arab culture—are excised. In Hard Luck, the Christmas tree (Kinney, 2013a, p.119) loses its festive decorations (Kinney, 2017, p.125) and a clairvoyant (Kinney, 2013a, p. 100) has to make do without her crystal ball (Kinney, 2017, p. 105). In Rodrick Rules (Kinney, 2008), another cartoon is dramatically altered. The ST includes two drawings from Greg’s science project, illustrating his particular understanding of evolution from bird to human, and from bird to moose (p. 137). In the TT, only the evolutionary trajectory from bird to moose appears, while the parallel sequence involving a human is omitted (Kinney, 2013b, p. 143).

These examples suggest a uniform strategy informed by consistent, ideologically motivated (Kramina, 2004) intervention in the translation of the series. The translator has gone to great lengths to alter culture-bound associations perceived as problematic,Footnote 1 yet no comparable effort was dedicated to making the necessary adaptations in the case of textual paralanguage elements. This approach has a negative impact on character portrayal and the transfer of the main character’s mind style, defined as “any distinctive linguistic representation of an individual mental self” (Fowler, 1977, p. 103), as reflected in “cumulatively consistent structural options” (Fowler, 1977, p. 76) that together communicate a given worldview. Notably, the word ‘wimpy’ is removed from the title of the series in Arabic, which is rendered as مذكرات طالب [Diary of a Student]. This change may be intended to challenge the heteronormative gender stereotypes the series is criticised for endorsing (Taber and Woloshyn, 2011).

The consistent mistranslation of paralinguistic features, whilst major intervention is employed elsewhere to adapt the text to its intended readership, suggests that the value of children’s literature is recognised mainly insofar as it can serve to instill and reinforce dominant ideologies. This begs the question: if a source text is seen as diametrically opposed to the target culture’s norms and value systems, and hence a threat to the established order, why translate it at all? When considering the rationale behind the decision to translate the series into Arabic, it would be naïve to exclude the obvious promise of profit, given the international appeal of the series. Interestingly; however, among the words of praise reproduced on the back cover of the Arabic versions of Rodrick Rules (Kinney, 2013b) and Hard Luck (Kinney, 2017) are statements that highlight the pedagogical value of the series. Underneath the book blurb, Rodrick Rules is marketed as خيار ممتاز لمن لا يحبون القراءة [An excellent option for those who do not like to read], and Hard Luck as كتاب رائع للقراء الممانعين [A wonderful book for reluctant readers]. Clearly, the potential to improve reading skills attributed to Diary of a Wimpy Kid in English is also promoted in its translated version, yet this pedagogic aspect does not appear to guide the translation. The assimilation approach observed in Hard Luck and Rodrick Rules emphasises the elimination of culture specific references to create an illusion of familiarity in the target culture, but the adaptation effort does not extend to paralanguage. Translation readability criteria including meaning transfer, naturalness of expression and textual coherence are largely ignored. Textual paralanguage is rendered incomprehensible, hampering the pedagogic potential of this graphic novel for young Arab readers.

The age-old translator’s dilemma of how to transplant a text into another, fundamentally different, language, whilst also considering fidelity to the author; has more recently situated translation in the context of postcolonial scholarship on national identity, power relations, language hegemony and otherness (Bassnett and Trivedi, 2012; Bassnett, 2005; Lefevere, 2016). Translation operates in a context of asymmetrical power relations, where English is the language of power. In translation into English, the tendency is to prioritise accessibility over fidelity, often resulting into a neocolonialist representation of the Other (Venuti, 1995/2008). As Gayatri Spivak (2021) puts it, ‘the law of the strongest’ applies, and the literature of the Third World is translated into ‘a sort of with-it translatese, so that the literature of a woman in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan’ (p. 324). In the Arabic translation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, directionality appears to have no bearing on the tendency to domesticate. In this case, a translation from a dominant to a less dominant language displays an equally strong tendency towards assimilation and adaptation. The aggressive, ideologically-biased, distortion of the ST evidenced in this study is irrespective of the disparity in power between the languages involved in this translation.

When analysing translated literature in general, it is important to factor in constraints pertaining to the macro context, i.e. censorship by publishers, editors and various politically motivated institutions (Hermans, 1985; Billiani, 2014; Lathey, 2010). Likewise, commercial considerations (Van Coillie, 2020) can also influence the translation product: an ostensibly familiar text is more likely to appeal to parents and children than a text openly presenting itself as foreign. Under the pretext of protecting them, “nanny translations” (O’Sullivan, 2019, p. 18) expose children to ideologically manipulated texts that tacitly inform their worldviews. For example, in her examination of the Spanish translation of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series, Teresa Asiain (2016) notes that the translated version, informed by a didactic agenda, attenuates the subversive potential of the text, which employs humour to question social institutions and ridicule figures of authority. In her critique of translated children’s literature into English, Gillian Lathey (2001) blames the ‘one-dimensional’ portrayal of the sounds of other languages, for the foreign-language-averse ‘tongue-tied ghetto’ (2001, p. 302) that is 21st century Britain.

Translators of children’s literature tend to take more liberties with excessive, often gratuitous, cultural adaptation, compared to literary texts aimed at an adult readership (Lathey, 2010). The assumption—arguably unfounded given the paucity of studies designed to explore children’s perceptions of foreignness in translated literature (Van Coillie, 2020)—is that children do not possess the ability to comprehend foreign elements or the nuance to accept that other cultures can have different values and norms. Perhaps the inferior status accorded to children’s literature, often recommended as a good place to start for a future career as a literary translator, makes it more susceptible to manipulation through translation to comply with prevailing rhetorical conventions and social norms. In their analysis of children’s literature translation into Slovene, Marija Zlatnar Moe and Tanja Žigon (2020) note that editors, who often do their work without access to the ST, replace “non-normative language with normative solutions, unconventional messages (…) with conventional ones, and informal registers with more formal ones” (2020, p. 138). Considering the general tendency to mitigate or altogether eliminate foreignness, JanVan Coillie (2020) quite rightly questions the extent to which translated children’s literature can in fact bring cultures into contact with one another.

Concluding Remarks

That translation is intrinsically manipulative (Hermans, 1985) may be a rather unpalatable proposition, but it is hard to deny given that translation necessarily involves an element of rewriting (Bassnett, 2005; Lefevere, 2016). Due to semantic, syntactic and rhetorical differences across languages, it is often impossible to say the same thing in the same way in another language. Translation shifts, then, do occur, and with good reason. But there is a difference between introducing changes to comply with the linguistic and/or stylistic conventions of the target language and erasing the cultural identity of a source text to suit the target readership’s ideological leanings.

The translation of humour in general and of textual paralanguage humour in particular is best approached from the perspective of communicative intention and equivalence of effect (Nida, 1977; Newmark, 1981). Here, I find it appropriate to draw on Nord’s (2006) distinction between fidelity and loyalty. While the former term is understood in the strict sense of faithfulness to the wording of the source text, the latter sees faithfulness in terms of a relationship between the people involved in any given act of communication, which commits the translator bilaterally to both the source text producer and the target text receiver. Taking into account the source text producer’s intentions on the one hand, and the contextual background of the target reader on the other, the notion of loyalty gives the translator license to use their judgement to intervene as appropriate, making changes only if strictly needed to enhance communication.

An argument for loyalty is not necessarily an argument against equivalence. Eugene A. Nida (1977) defines dynamic equivalence as a matter of correspondence in effect between the source and target texts, achieved by selecting the most natural equivalent to the ST message in the target language. Equivalence in meaning, then, is a function of similarity of effect, or the extent to which the target reader experiences the text in a similar way to the source text reader. Similarly, functional approaches to translation (Reiss and Vermeer, 2013; Nord, 2018) prioritise the overall communicative purpose of the text as the level at which equivalence must be sought, shifting attention to the reproduction of macro-, rather than micro-level features of a text. Both approaches allow considerable latitude in translation where the focus is on rendering the intention of the ST author.

In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, as well as in other similar diary-format graphic novels for children, an alternative, more loyal translation to communicate paralanguage could be the use of colloquial spoken Arabic in the cartoon speech bubbles. Attitudes toward the use of regional spoken Arabic varieties in educational contexts, and in children’s literature, remain fraught with a long-established language ideology that accords special status to Modern Standard Arabic as the lingua franca of the Arab Islamic world, and betray a fear of it being eventually displaced by the “easier” spoken Arabic varieties (Al-Bataineh and Gallagher, 2018).

Despite this resistance, the combination of Modern Standard Arabic and spoken Arabic in dialogue, in an attempt to reflect the linguistic landscape of a given setting more authentically, is common practice in modern Arabic literature for adults (Mejdell, 2006). When it comes to the screen, the vast majority of animated films are dubbed into the Egyptian spoken Arabic variety. A notable exception is the film Frozen, which was curiously dubbed into Modern Standard Arabic. As Elias Muhanna (2014) notes, the Arabic lyrics to the song Let it Go are “as forbidding as Elsa’s ice palace” and “the Arabic of Frozen is frozen in time, as localised to contemporary Middle Eastern youth culture as Latin quatrains in French rap” (2014).

As contemporary children’s literature continues to evolve to incorporate an ever-expanding array of multimodal elements, so should the translation strategies involved in rendering these texts into other languages. Further research should focus on the translation of paralanguage elements in multimodal texts including speech bubbles, captions, line drawings, typeface and font size. Given the role of textual paralanguage in representing character traits, it is important for translators to pay closer attention to these nonverbal features, as part of their general quest to maintain translation quality. When translating for children, I concur that, “just like the best authors, the best translators do not consciously write for children. Their writing flows from the child within themselves” (Van Coillie, 2006, p. 138). It is not the prerogative of the translator to assume the moral authority of a self-appointed censor. Not only does this myopic approach insult children’s intelligence, but it also deprives them of the opportunity to enhance their cultural frame of reference by exposing them to different norms, traditions and lifestyles.