Edward Gauvin: Comics in Translation

Edward Gauvin knows his job is one of the funnest on the planet, and he’s here to share why. The translator of more than 300 graphic novels from French will reflect on changes in the medium over the last fifteen years, the joys of the genre, and the formal challenges of fitting dialogue in speech balloons and reinventing onomatopoeic sound effects (think “BAM!” or “OUCH!”)

Edward and Susan will also discuss working as a translator, a profession struggling for greater visibility, in comics, a field still fighting for cultural legitimacy at home and abroad.

Featured Translator:

Edward Gauvin has received prizes, fellowships, and residencies from PEN America, the NEA, the Fulbright program, Ledig House, the Lannan Foundation, and the French Embassy. His work has won the John Dryden Translation prize and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award. Other publications have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, and World Literature Today. The translator of eight works of prose fiction and over 300 graphic novels, he is a contributing editor for comics at Words Without Borders. He is currently a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow for his work on Pierre Bettencourt, whom he has written about at Weird Fiction Review. Photo credit: Quitterie de Fommervault-Bernard

Featured Editor: