Writing Project 3 Revision

Ana Saldana Santana Writing 2 Masha Federova 15 March 2019 The translation of a writing genre into another writing genre is challenging if you do not examine the conventions of both writings. In my translation, I chose to translate a phone manual, more specifically a Samsung Galaxy S9 / S9+ manual. In general, if you purchase a Samsung Galaxy S9 / S9+, the manual comes with it, and it includes step-by-step instructions on how to use the phone. The manual highlights new features, and it even adds warnings on how to not use the phone. Since I never take the time to read these manuals, I thought it would be a new and fun type of genre to apply my skills as a writer by translating it into a social media comic. Throughout my translation, I considered the conventions of writing manuals and writing comics, my audience, and my purpose. I started the translation of my genre by analyzing the conventions of the Samsung Galaxy manual. At the beginning of my analysis, I noticed that the writer divided the text into two columns per page, which is a popular convention among the formats of other manuals. In addition, the writer provided several sections organized by a table of contents. Each category has a title page at the beginning of each section. For example, there is a section titled Phone. Hence, the title page is the bolded word Phone along with an image of the call log layout. Not only that, but the writer includes more subtitles between each section to differentiate the instructions. For example, in the Phone category, there are subtitles such as Make a Recent Call, Delete a Call, Block a Number, among other subtitles. Under each subtitle, there is a sentence explaining the action you can do with your

phone, and it even includes a numbered list of step-by-step instructions for a better explanation. To make the instructions simpler to follow, the writer incorporates icons to show what you need to tap to perform that action on your phone. All these conventions make up the Samsung Galaxy S9 / S9 + phone manual. With all these conventions, I concluded the purpose of the manual is giving instructions about a new phone; thus, this genre allows me to change it into a social media comic where the character demonstrates how they use their phone. Initially, I wanted to translate it into a customer service letter, but I resisted to that idea because I have written so many letters. Therefore, I created my short comic portraying a character that uses her phone in different ways while showing off some of the features of the Samsung Galaxy. There were different types of comics to choose from, but I decided to go with a social media comic. Social media comics are for people who use social media such as Instagram, Tumblr, or Facebook, and they want to see a comic occasionally. There are many people, including myself, who follow comic accounts on Instagram where the creators post a comic strip as an Instagram post every day or depending on their designated schedule. These comics are relatable, and even funny sometimes. Based on this, I decided my audience would be these people who follow Instagram comic accounts for an entertaining comic read. To translate the manual into an Instagram comic, I created a character. Originally, I wanted to portray an old man named Billy who bought a new phone, and he did not know how to use it. However, to make an effective Instagram media comic it needs to be relatable. Since Instagram is for a younger audience, I changed my character to be a young lady named Julie. In the comic, Julie uses her phone portraying some of the features that the Samsung Galaxy Manual mentions. To create her and the comic, I used the website Pixton where you can create comics for fun or educational purposes. This website allowed me to choose a character and customized their eyes,

arms, hair, and other characteristics to create my desired character. While creating Julie, I realized how comics creators follow through this same process. For instance, comic creators decide how their new characters will look like. They choose between characteristics such as brown hair or black hair, tall or short. Besides choosing a character, comic creators think about the background. In my comic, I chose a background based on what Julie was doing on the scene. However, sometimes it is helpful to include details on the background to grab the attention of the reader. Other times a simple background can get the story going without losing the audience. Overall, it was challenging to think about these characteristics of a comic, but knowing what I wanted to create, and thinking about my audience’s reaction helped me with the process. Besides creating a character, I had to consider other conventions for comics. According to Scott McCloud in "Writing with Pictures", there are five key choices to consider. For instance, McCloud discusses the choice of moment, frame, image, word, and flow. Independently, these choices played a significant role in the process of my translation. The choice of word and its arrangement was a convention I had to consider the most. While creating my comic, I noticed that the text and its placement required more thinking than what I had imagined. For example, if I placed the bubble on the wrong space, it covered up the drawing. If the text was too large, it ended up taking the entire space, and it looked weird. If it was too small, it was difficult to read it. Therefore, I had to think about how much space I wanted to take. Even more, I checked my word choice and my dialogue sentences too see if they were necessary. In the process, I found some sentences that were awkward, as if they were not meant for the character. Then, I changed those sentences to fit in with Julie's personality. Eventually, taking into consideration the choice of word and placement helped me to create a more developed character and to create a flow for the comic.

As for creating the right flow, I considered several ways to layout the comic. For example, a simple way was by organizing the layout for the dialogue. There exist multiple speech bubbles to create dialogue. These bubbles help to express the character's thoughts and emotions. Knowing the purpose of each bubble helped me create an accurate representation of what I wanted to depict in the comic, and it created a smooth transition between my different dialogues. Another thing I considered was the platform layout. For instance, since I chose to translate the manual into an Instagram comic, I to consider the Instagram platform and other similar comics posted in it. As a reference for some Instagram comics, I looked over some of my favorite comic creators that inspired me to create mine (@theawkwardyeti, @sarahandersencomics, @adamtots). Looking at their work, I noticed that Instagram comics tend to be about four scenes because they need to fit into Instagram's picture layout. As Instagram comics, each comic strip does not relate to the previous one. Which means that my comic does not necessarily relate to each other to form a long story, but there is a relationship between the character and each scene. Eventually, when creating this comic, my audience became as important as the conventions. Having a clear idea of who was my audience helped me to make better decisions. I even made some important changes once I realized that I was going off track. It was very important to consider who my audience was as some decisions were difficult to make. But nevertheless, the translation process was fun to do. Not only that, but through the process of translation, I learned that being a good writer requires you to be a good reader as well. By reading other types of genre you expose yourself to more knowledge from different writers and different conventions. Even so, knowing how to translate a genre eventually becomes a skill that can be apply at any time and everywhere, even if it is not writing related. More importantly, this skill in the long run will help you not only to translate the same genre but any genre you desired to write.

Works Cited

McCloud, Scott. Writing with Pictures. New York: Hamper, 2006.