This document discusses Jessica Abel's graphic novel La Perdida and the themes it explores such as bilingualism, multiculturalism, and identity politics. It touches on how the work translates Abel's personal experiences navigating different cultures and languages. Additionally, it examines the translation process between languages and formats, and how this relates to ideas around representation, authenticity, and understanding across borders.

1. LOST IN TRANSLATION:
Autobiography, Bilingualism,
Multiculturalism
and
Identity Politics in Jessica Abel's
La Perdida
Ernesto Priego
University College London

2. La Perdida
Comic book series, 2001-2005

3. Graphic Novel, 2006

4. México DF, 22 million
inhabitants

5. La Perdida/<La pérdida>
The Lost One/The Loss

6. Comics in the border(s)
! Comics Scholarship
! Autobiography
! Fiction/Non-fiction
! Social commentary
! Mexico-US relations
! Gender, Class, Ethnicity, Nationality, Origin
! Identity Politics

7. About Me
(not all about me)
About Jessica
(about Carla)
About Mexico
(about perspectives of Mexico)

8. Translation
<Traducción>
o From culture to culture to culture
o From language to language
o Male-female
o Idea-script-layout-editing-draft-comic book series-graphic novel-
translated version
o Text-Interpretation of text
o From publication type to publication type
o From market to market
o From audience to audience

9. Identity Politics & Politics of
Representation
! Bilinguism
! Multiculturalism
! International Relations
! Cultural referents
! Mediation-remediation
! Impossibility-necessity
! Cultural prejudices

10. Comics (Scholarship)
at the border(s)
! Objectivity/Subjectivity
! Authenticity
! Resentment; mobility
! Migration; exile; diaspora
! Multireferentiality
! Indexicality/Connotation/Denotation/

11. The Archive:
Collaboration & Process

12. Mainstream Historietas
("Sensacionales")

13. US-Mexico: Joan & William
Burroughs in DF

14. First Notes on Joan Burroughs
for La Perdida

15. Mexico-US: Frida Kahlo

16. The Archive:
Process & Collaboration

17. ["The Mexico Diaries":
Diasporic Intertextuality]

18. The Archive:
Process & Collaboration

19. The Archive:
Process & Collaboration

20. Bilinguism
! Issue 1: dialogues as "they are spoken": in speech
balloons in Spanish
! Translation at the bottom of the panel between " "
! English dialogues in English, no Spanish translation.
! After issue 1, dialogues in English are represented
between <arrow brackets>.
! Most dialogue is supposed to be in Spanish. Original
Spanish is used for words of Mexican "feel."
! No italics are used for foreign words (non-English). A
glossary of Mexican terms was prepared.

21. The Archive: Plotting

22. The Archive:
A Room of Carla's Own

23. The Archive:
Laying Out the Scene(s)

24. <Translation>
! Symbolic Violence of Inaccessibility to the
Represented Other

25. La Perdida
Spanish Edition
(2007)

26. La Perdida
<en español>
! The editor asked me to translate dialogue supposed to
be <in English> in the original into continental
Spanish. I always thought this was a terrible idea.
! Translating the dialogues <in English> as continental
Spanish establishes a false and dangerous analogy
between the relationships between the US and Mexico
and between Spanish and Mexico (Mexico was once a
Spanish colony).
! As a result the Spanish edition I translated does not
feel mine. Even less than if I had been happy with it.
! The Spanish edition comes with a glossary of Mexican
terms.

27. Original(es)

28. Authenticity/Fidelity

29. Authenticity/Referentiality

30. Exotic/Natural

31. As Real as Fiction

32. Traveling Perspective

33. Mexican Food,or the (im)
possibility of Translation

34. <¿De qué van a ser, güerita?>

35. From <México> to Spain

36. Feeling like an Exile

37. Arriving/Leaving <Home>

38. Arriving/Leaving <Home>

39. [Intermedial Intertextuality]
"En la estación del metro Balderas/una ola de gente se la
llevó."
<"In the Balderas underground station/a crowd took her
away.">
-Rockdrigo González, indie "urban folk" Mexican
songwriter, died 1985 in the Mexico City earthquake

40. Arriving/Leaving <Home>

41. Migration & Change
Time & Memory (comic book)

42. Migration & Change
Time & Memory
(graphic novel)

43. Arriving & Leaving Home

44. Getting Lost & Found
<in translation>

45. Comics as site(s)
for Interrogating Borders
! Coming to terms with constraints and possibilities
! Remembering the past but learning to leave behind
(losing).
! Enrichment through hybridit
! "Loss" as Gain, Charge, Load, Addition, Weight,
Experience.

46. <Cheers!>
efpriego@gmail.com
*¡Salud! or gracias
(not the same in Spanish)
La Perdida and all La Perdida artwork is © Jessica Abel.
<http://jessicaabel.com/>
Images used and distributed under Academic Fair Use.
With thanks to Jessica Abel.