Pensar en traducir la imagen en publicidad: el sentido de la mirada

Abstract

José Yuste Frías elaborates on the role played by translators in the reading and interpreting of the image in advertising, being as they are its first audience. Since images can only exist if they are perceived, the translator’s attitude in seeing them appears as a key factor in the whole process of translating texts-with-images. In order to offer a practical and more conscious application of everything that is paratranslated by images when they accompany texts that are going to be translated, this paper presents a theoretical analysis of visual messages whose are based on the new concept of “paratranslation”, created in Vigo. The author of this article insists that the study of translation for advertising cannot be focused solely on the translation of the verbal part of the message; on the contrary, it is necessary to translate the image, that is, to translate each and every iconic and verbal-iconic unit that constitute iconic-textual entities — those units in which the non-verbal aspect is so important as the verbal side, or even more. In order to demonstrate it, the paper rounds off with an analysis of the Carrefour logo, offering a reading, interpretation and (para)translation of its visual identity