So far, 2024 has been an amalgamation of events catering to a wide variety of my interests. I’ve rediscovered my love for films (aided by a ‘free movies for members’ offer by my local cinema) and seen The Boy and the Heron, 20 Days in Mariupol, Godzilla Minus One, American Fiction, and Wicked Little Letters so far. I’ve been to the ballet (Cinders), musical (Shrek) and experimental theatre (Plinth), and independently organized talks (The Art History of Studio Ghibli). And, of course, I’ve attended EFI and related university events: Understanding Planetary Health; Controversies in the Data Society: AI Safety and AI Ethics; and Developing TILT: a Toolkit for Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching.
A common theme among these events is how to communicate information in non-dialogical ways. Body language, color schemes, music, and terminology all inform how we transfer meaning from one person to another. Each medium has its own language and shorthand that it uses to communicate, that has evolved over time, and can cause some subtleties to become lost in translation to the uninitiated.
Obviously, this isn’t a new idea. There are entire disciplines devoted to studying the history, methodologies, and trajectories of mediums like film, art, etc. But it has gotten me thinking about the issue of translation and adaptation. In fan circles, there’s this persistent idea that a good film adaptation of a book needs to include every single detail of the book, and that every change is unnecessary and borderline offensive. However, translation of any kind doesn’t work that way. There are always ideas, phrases, and peculiarities of one ‘language’ that simply don’t translate into another in the same way. And while I’ve recently developed a particular fondness for translated works that embrace their peculiarities and leave ‘foreign’ audiences to sink or swim, I’m going to have to pay attention to medium-specific language when creating my final project. So far, I’ve been approaching this as a written story borrowing ideas from games, but it’s worth considering that characteristics of either form might be lost in translation. If I do want to explore this liminal space of not-quite-a-book, not-quite-a-game, then I need to make sure that the subtleties of my writing can still be read and understood in this digital, interactive form.
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