Translation or adaptation? An analysis of a version of the poem “The Raven” into comics form

Abstract

The study on the adaptation concept and process has been frequently a concern on Translation Studies as well as on its correlate and young discipline, Adaptation Studies. In order to contribute to this discussion, this essay mainly attempts to elaborate a brief description and analysis on the Brazilian version for a comic book of the poem The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, based on Machado de Assis’ translation. Based on some passages of the comic book, we discuss translation and adaptation concepts, as well as the boundary between them, and we also discuss the concept of intersemiotic translation. With that in mind, we use as theoretical support some reflections from Jakobson (1971), Plaza (2001) Amorim (2005), Venuti (2007) and Milton (2010). Besides providing an analysis about a not very often kind of adaptation (literature text into a comic book), the expected results are theoretical generalizations which may amplify reflections towards the concepts of translation and adaptation applied to a concrete example of these language operations.