The Linguist

8 The Linguist Vol/65 No/1 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES is not entirely accurate, as that term refers only to sonic depictions. 'Ideophones' – describing sounds that express an idea – is now the preferred label in comic studies, precisely because it captures the full extent of these linguistically creative forms. This scenario, while a fertile canvas for creativity, poses several challenges for translators as such forms resist tidy solutions. How does one carry sensory immediacy across languages, especially when the language itself must be instantaneous and evocative? SBAM! A MULTI-SENSORY EXPERIENCE This issue is what originally inspired me to research the translation of these forms – a project that has spanned the last 15 years of my academic career. My doctoral research (2017) began with a simple task: to track down and catalogue the onomatopoeic and ideophonic forms used in Italian Disney comics, especially the famous Topolino ('Mickey Mouse') magazine, across more than 80 years of publications (1930s-2010s). The resulting corpus, which includes nearly 5,000 entries, revealed sound symbolism at its most unruly. Italian Disney comics do not merely import English ideophones; they manipulate them and reimagine them. The result is a multilingual, multi-sensory ecosystem that challenges the very idea of what a 'literal' translation is and what it should feel like. Take one of the most ordinary English onomatopoeic forms: 'bang'. It is commonly used in comic-book scripts to express the sound of an explosion or any loud impact. In Italian comics, it rarely remains 'bang'. Instead, it blossoms into a series of creative forms that have appeared consistently across decades: sbrang, sbam, beng, sbreng, sbarabang. Although these forms might appear random at first glance, they are anything but. They represent an attempt by translators and artists to capture the same event in a range of evocative ways – brief bursts of sensory input that attempt to recreate an event through the medium of the eyes. These forms can also be analysed from a strictly linguistic perspective, through the lens of phonosemantics and sound symbolism, the two branches of linguistics that study them. Take the initial sb- cluster in several of the Italian variants: it is not random. It gives Italian readers an immediate sense of impact by juxtaposing a sibilant /s/ with a bilabial plosive /b/. This pairing phonetically mimics the hissing sound that often precedes an explosion (the elongated 'ssss'), followed by the sudden release of air as the lips produce the /b/ consonant. The elongated -ang contributes further acoustic symbolism; the final -ng cluster carries a faint resonance that evokes the eerie silence that follows an explosive burst. Of course, these interpretations are partly subjective. My own reading may be influenced by my linguistic background and familiarity with comic-book language, and a reader whose first language is not Italian might perceive them differently. Our languaculture – the intertwining of language and cultural experience – plays a crucial role in how readers interpret these forms. This variability adds yet another layer of complexity when attempting to transpose such forms across languages. INVENTIVE FORMS Sound words are an integral part of comics (top); and (above) the Italian Disney magazine Topolino provides a rich corpus

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