03.1 Methods of translating

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For this brief, I started to think of how I could translate different mediums into another – images, text, video…

I then decided to choose my subject, my element to translate: Return to Tipasa, Summer, Albert Camus 1954 > extract from ‘But in order to keep justice from(…)I, at last, discover that there was in me an invincible summer’

  • french (original)
  • english (translated)

1. first thoughts

thinking of what I could do as an experiment/way of translating.

2. experiments

For this first experiment, I looked at the basic notion of translation. I used Google Translate to translate the text in different languages and then back to English, in order to study the differences that appeared in comparison to the original piece.
This experiment with the morse leads me to my third experiment, more in relation to the typographic grey of the text and its purely visual aspect.

experiment 03

My main reference for this project was the artist Emilio Isgro and his technique of ‘Cancellatura‘.
His aim was to preserve the word, in opposition to the way it has been ‘emptied’ by mass communication and media > re-discovering the word.

< on the left: Libro Rosso per la Divina Comedia, 2018 >

example of this ‘visual aspect’ of the text
I did this visual translation with the English and French text with the idea of looking at how from a language to another the ‘typographic grey’ can differ. The idea to push this experiment further could have been to then translate this visual representation into an experimental morse code.

experiment 04

For this 4th and last experiment, I decided to think of translating the text into a map. The reference that led me to that is this map of The Geographical Guide to a Woman’s Heart Emphasizing Points of Interest to the Romantic Traveler by Jo Lowrey for McCall’ s Magazine, 1960 (left). As well as one of the graphic designer’s work Patrick Lindsay (right).

with this (attempt of) map I tried to focus on the main parts/words of the text and then represent/include them in the map, layout them in the way they relate to each other in the text.

3. feedback

  • Map idea is the strongest > keep going with that
  • Map make sense in relation to the text has he talks about a place.
  • look more into maps / ways of understanding, systems…
  • look at the format of maps, how it is published, level of details…
  • digital map? can be on a phone and play with what you see when zooming in and out OR a more physical map?
  • look at fantasy books maps
  • look at the aethetic of maps at the time the book was first published