Cover not available

Article In: Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts: Online-First Articles

Translating nuclear disaster

Raymond Briggs’s When the Wind Blows

 | University of Bari
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
The advent of atomic energy vividly highlights the inherent duality of human nature, a synthesis of both creative and destructive potential (Malvestio 2021). Within the context of the Cold War, British cartoonist Raymond Briggs explores the threat of nuclear disaster in his 1982 graphic novel When the Wind Blows, thereby reflecting the anxieties of his era.
Through the interplay of words and pictures (Altenberg 2015), the reader is introduced to an unfamiliar world of devastation, seen from the perspective of a trusting elderly couple, Jim and Hilda, who naively attempt to protect their home in compliance with governmental specifications. As memories of the Second World War blend with the present, the figures of traditional enemies — the Germans and the Russians — begin to overlap.
Acknowledging the role of translation in shaping the reception of politically committed narratives in a different linguistic and cultural context, this paper presents a qualitative contrastive analysis of Brigg’s When the Wind Blows and its 1984 Italian translation. The study aims to examine the strategies employed in the target text to render culture-bound elements (Baker and Jones 2026), including terms related to British customs and politics, and to reproduce the polysemy of puns, trying to preserve the satirical undertones of the original work.
Grounded in the theoretical framework of Translation Studies, the analysis will evaluate the translator’s ability to mediate between the two cultures without erasing the foreign identity of the source text (Venuti 2001).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.“The awful shadow of some unseen power”: Framing nuclear anxiety
  • 3.The graphic novel
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Contrastive analysis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (44)
References
Agorni, Mirella, ed. 2005. La traduzione: teorie e metodologie a confronto. Milan: LED.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Altenberg, Tilmann, and Ruth J. Owen, eds. 2015. “Comics and Translation: Introduction.” New Readings 15: i–iv. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Mona, and Henry Jones. 2026. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. 4th ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barbieri, Daniele. 1991. I linguaggi del fumetto. Milano: Bompiani.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. 1992. Translation, History, and Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bradbury, Ray. (1950) 2008. The Martian Chronicles. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Briggs, Raymond. 1982. When the Wind Blows. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1983. When the Wind Blows. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1984. Quando soffia il vento. Translated by Ferruccio Giromini and Cristina Ivaldi. Bologna: L’isola trovata.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Calabrese, Stefano, and Elena Zagaglia. 2017. Che cos’è il graphic novel. Roma: Carocci.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Casilio, Silvia. 2006. “« Beat Si Vive, Inseriti Si Muore ». L’epopea Dei Capelloni in Italia (1965–67).” Meridiana 56: 213–36.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Celotti, Nadine. 2008. “The Translator of Comics as a Semiotic Investigator.” In Comics in Translation, ed. by Federico Zanettin, 33–49. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chute, Hillary, and Marianne DeKoven. 2012. “Graphic Narrative.” In The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction, ed. by David Glover, and Scott McCracken, 175–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cordle, Daniel. 2017. Late Cold War Literature and Culture. The Nuclear 1980s. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Protect/Protest: British Nuclear Fiction of the 1980s.” The British Journal for the History of Science 45 (4): 653–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. States of Suspense: The Nuclear Annihilation, Anxiety and Anticipation in Postwar American and British Fiction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stobbart, Dawn. 2021. “Raymond Briggs: When the Wind Blows.” In Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives, ed. by Sebastian Domsch, Dan Hassler-Forest, and Dirk Vanderbeke, 451–466. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. (1964) 2011. Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa. Milano: Bompiani.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisner, Will. 1985. Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forlenza, Rosario. 2022. “The Soviet Myth and the Making of Communist Lives in Italy, 1943–56.” Journal of Contemporary History 57 (3): 645–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentzler, Edwin, and Maria Tymoczko, eds. 2002. Translation and Power. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gravett, Paul. 2003. “The Raymond Briggs Interview.” The Comics Journal 250, February. Accessed April 1, 2026. [URL]
Guidotti, Francesca. 2020. Catastrofi: Disastri nucleari e incidenti spaziali nell’immaginario britannico (1950–1968). Roma: Tab.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Home Office. 1980. Protect and Survive. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malvestio, Marco. 2021. Raccontare la fine del mondo: Fantascienza e Antropocene. Milano: Nottetempo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mazzeno, Laurence W. 2004. Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Companion. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCloud, Scott. 1994. Understanding Comics. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muzzioli, Francesco. 2007. Scritture della catastrofe. Roma: Meltemi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oramus, Dominika. 2023. (Eco)Anxiety in Nuclear Holocaust Fiction and Climate Fiction: Doomsday Clock Narratives. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shelley, Percy. 2002. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” In Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. by Donald H. Reiman, and Neil Fraistat. New York: Norton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. 1897. The Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Ed. by Eugene Parsons. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
UK Parliament. House of Commons. 1980. Parliamentary Debates, February 15, vol. 18, cols. 1–126. Accessed April 1, 2026. [URL]
Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Strategies of Translation.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. by Mona Baker, 240–44. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. “Local Contingencies: Translation and National Identities.” In Nation, Language and the Ethics of Translation, ed. by Sandra Berman and Michael Wood, 177–202. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zanettin, Federico. 1998. “Fumetti e traduzione multimediale: Tra codice verbale e codice visivo.” inTRAlinea 1. [URL]
, ed. 2008. Comics in Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Humour in Translated Cartoons and Comics.” In Translation, Humour and the Media, ed. by Delia Chiaro, 34–52. London: Bloomsbury Academy.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Translating Comics and Graphic Novels.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture, ed. by Sue-Ann Harding and Ovidi Carbonell Cortés, 445–460. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold-dark jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold-light jbe-platform.quadraat-sans-bold prag Twitter_Logo_Blue