the intricacies of adapting art
I’ve been thinking about adaptations a lot recently.
Lies.
I think about adaptations too much for my own good. If I could spend my entire life thinking about what you need for a good adaptation, I would.
Why? You might ask. Why do you care so much that you would think about it 24/7, 365 days a year?
Simply, because of translation.
I've always liked translating. It was something cool I did a lot of in school growing up, but I never truly appreciated it as an art form until college, when I really started thinking about the process.
The process of translation is absolutely fascinating and adaptation, technically, is translation, since it is the act of transferring a story in one media into another.
And like with the process of translation, there is this understanding that some things that exist in the original may not be translatable. You’re not going to get an equivalent exchange, and you have to accept that right off the bat.
However, to make a good translation, something about the original has to be preserved. And yes, how and what is up for discussion and that decision making process is honestly the beauty of it, but here’s where adaptations I feel always tend to go wrong. I think they don’t focus enough on the spirit of the work they are adapting. Like yes, changes can be made, and sometimes they are necessary, but why change the heart of it?
I mean maybe people’s ideas of the heart of the art are different and again that’s the beauty of it, stories mean different things to different people, but I feel like I should at least be able to see why a choice is being made, what stance the translator has taken. But too often I feel like I don’t even see the original work at all. It’s just some empty shell the translator has pulled all the guts out of and then filled with ones that often seem like they don’t even belong. And that’s beyond depressing.
And I know that money is why it’s happening and thus it’ll be hard to make any sort of changes, but I have hope. I’ll even do it myself if I have to.
~dys [I should just write an essay.]