Graphic representations

Amar Chitra Katha, the once popular publishing house for children, retold in graphic narrative the classics and stories from the epics. The series they had on Indian history as well as culture served as good introductory pieces for children. They also had rewritings of early regional Indian novels like Anandamath and Indulekha.

The series called Classics Illustrated performed the same task at the global level. They had graphic adaptations of almost all major literary works in different languages. Titles like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Under Two Flags, Ivanhoe, Crime and Punishment etc were published in a form that was accessible to children or adolescents. While doing so, care was taken not to omit crucial details in the interests of young readers.

Comic books like these can be seen as the precursors of the graphic novels of today. They were telling a story in pictorial format where the image was as important, if not more important, than the script. These can also be considered as inter-genre translations, as the story was translated from print to comic book format. In the case of Amar Chitra Katha or Classics Illustrated, translation was occurring at two levels – one, at the level of genre and the other as rewriting, or a carrying of a story across the same language or different languages, with a specific aim to cater to a specialized readership. Although it looks simple and perhaps simplistic, this is actually a complex translation process at work. The right balance has to be struck between word and image, and the message has to be clear and apt for the reader that it has in mind. Narrating from within the constraints of the pictorial format, the translator/narrator also has to face the challenge of conveying culturally alien nuances of the story, if any.