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Kendra Twist

Fahler

Writing 2

24, May 2020

Writing Project 2

Genre Translation

Reflective essay:
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Art could be seen as a universal language. It is an expression understood by many, not

necessarily needing diction to comprehend it. Similar to written words, art too can tell a story.

For my translation of a genre, I chose to turn an academic article into an art form using comics as

part of the translation process. This was an attempt to broaden the audience, as the original

article was written for a narrow group of people in the academic world. One of the most

substantial things I learned throughout this process was to identify certain aspects within my

original genre, and take out or add material to create another one. The article falls under the

discipline of philosophy which is characterized by an analytical tone and an argumentative

structure. This convention contained lengthy paragraphs using outside sources as evidence for

the argument. Similarly, throughout the paper there were footnotes to further explain the author’s

investigation. My process proved to be harder than expected as I learned that a desired audience

plays a large role in dictating the formatting of a genre. The most important differences within

each genre would be the changes in audience and format as the translation process concluded.

The article that took part in this process was Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and

Consciousness in Neuroscience by Michel Bitbol. This article was meant for people in the

academic world as the writings in it proved to be more complex and for a research based

audience. The article contained a thesis with sources followed by a detailed analysis of each to

help convey the argument. Bitbol calls on outside sources, “prioritizing this lived, embodied,

approach to consciousness is the program of phenomenology, as Edmund Husserl and his lineage

defined it” (Bitbol, 2019) to help define meditation to the reader. This style of writing already

classifies it into a genre for the academic community with its formally written structure. Since

this format already dictated a certain audience within this genre of writing, I hoped to challenge

myself to make a translation which expands the audience using the same subject matter. By using
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a comic containing art, I hoped to make the scope of viewers wider since pictures help to display

the thought. The audience of the new genre could range anywhere between children to elders.

Even just translating writing into art with captions seemed to expand the audience as I shifted

through the complex diction into something an every day person may understand.

The method behind choosing my new genre was simply to see if I could make a complex

article designed for a narrow audience into something more broad and easy to understand for the

reader. Ideally, I wanted to display my information in an infographic or brochure format, but

with more thought I understood that I could gain more of an audience if I made it into a comic.

Comics are meant to be easy to read and understood by many so I thought this would be the best

method to translate the information given. When thinking about different modes of

communication, it is understood that “the spatial mode refers to how a text deals with space. This

also relates to how other modes are arranged, organized, emphasized, and contrasted in a text”

(Gagich, 2019) which is a concept I attempted to utilize. Using a fair amount of space with

words can help simplify an idea and organize the argument's thoughts. I learned this by

translating concepts from the original genre into a new one. I think it helped effectively

communicate to my new desired audience as the diction used in the comic was more simplistic

and the art helped create a better understanding of the message.

The process which I took to make the translation proved to be most difficult in the

beginning. A challenging aspect was depicting what exactly the argument was trying to show the

reader within the article. Eventually, I took the main idea from each page in the article and

designated a space for it in the comic. This was an easy way to digest information in a complex

piece, and turn arguments into a simpler way of thinking and expressing it as art. This differs

from the original genre as it breaks down the information instead of presenting it in an essay type
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format. The captions in the comic also served helpful as “each panel shows a complete action,

because we’re adapting to a plot that’s anchored entirely in actions” (McCloud, 2019). These

sorts of actions or scenes within my comic also helped it tell more of a story as McCloud

analyzed within his own writing. The use of space sometimes can tell more about the story or

argument than the original writing did as the photos help convey the message. Other key features

include minimal text and drawings to categorize this text into a genre.

Deciding what exact information to integrate in my translation took a lengthy amount of

time. In essence, I decided to keep the key concepts while sifting through arguments or ideas that

took away from the main plot. Bitbol’s article contains lots of lengthy information regarding

meditation along with opinions from outside sources, making it complicated to understand his

main points, “an important aspect of it has been captured by Husserl under the appellation of

"natural attitude, which he differentiates from the attitude of "phenomenological reduction"”

(Bitbol, 2019). Sifting through information like this proved to be helpful when crafting my final

comic because I had a pretty good idea in the direction I wanted to pursue in terms of illustration.

I wanted to take the informational aspect from the original convention and depict it into my

comic as well, while simplifying the argument, which is why the captions helped convey the

concepts. Being an academic article, it was easy to gather the informational pieces, but harder to

take the concepts and draw them in the translation. The comic convention typically is seen as

basic drawings followed by captions with simplistic diction. An article of literary merit does not

contain any sort of use of art. This proved to be the most drastic change when translating the two

genres as I had to think about how I was going to draw these ideas.

The most notable challenges faced when undergoing this genre translation would have to

be taking the original genre’s ideas, and putting them into a whole new format. By choosing to
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take the process more slowly, I carefully picked out the ideas page by page while formatting it

into a comic that could simultaneously be informational while telling a story. Sifting through all

of the information seemed overwhelming at first since the article’s target audience were people

experienced in the philosophy world. The translation itself broadened the audience as drawings

proved to simplify the argument while replacing complicated diction with something more

understandable. Between both genres, I learned how formatting places a large role in dictating

the audiences in the different pieces of writing. This process both challenged me and showed me

new ways of thinking about writing and how it can be expressed in many ways and the ability it

has to change an audience by a mere change of format.

Works Cited

Bitbol, M. (2015). Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience,

Meditation, and Philosophy. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www-jstor-

org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu:9443/stable/pdf/43854365.pdf?

refreqid=excelsior:328c72cca1d5f80f0dd2194d6c90d30a

Gagich, M. (2019). An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing. Retrieved May

18, 2020, from

https://gauchospace.ucsb.edu/courses/pluginfile.php/8129148/mod_resource/content/1/Int

ro to multimodal composing.pdf

McCloud. (n.d.). Writing with Pictures. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from

https://gauchospace.ucsb.edu/courses/pluginfile.php/8218229/mod_resource/content/0/M

cCloud_Chapter_Writing With Pictures_extended_version.pdf