Translating Iraq’s selected Covid-19 Cartoons into English

Abstract

Cartoons, since they combine written text and visual content, has a major role in conveying different messages about Covid-19. This significance has typically come from the power of images and words that occurred in the cartoons and their impact on receivers’ response thereafter. In translation, cartoon creates difficulty because of the cultural aspects and ideas that are created for a specific audience and community. Hence, in this paper, the focus will be specifically on analysing the language of selected cartoons and the translation approaches of the cartoonists’ language in the Covid-19 era in Iraq, and this analysis is attained by adopting Norman Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis. The researcher has categorised cartoons as follows: rhetorical, idiomatic, narrative, and rhymed, so this paper will concentrate on the analysis of the message behind each category that is employed to influence the audience and how it can be translated, especially if it encompasses idioms related to the Iraqi culture, musical rhyme, rhetoric, and pun. Accordingly, analysis of the constituent aspects of the cartoons necessarily takes place on linguistic and cultural levels so as to distinguish how each cartoonist represents the denotative and connotative meanings of the lexical items that are associated with cartoons drawings.