NOTES ON FILM ADAPTATION
Similar to Dryden's categories, this text asserts that film fundamentally translates
literature in three distinctive ways. Each of these three different methods bears distinct
translation values, aims, and ambitions, and each regards different features of the
source text as most vital to preserve when translating the literature into film. These three
translation modes are:
1. Literal translation: which reproduces the plot and all its attending details as
closely as possible to the letter of the book
2. Traditional translation: which maintains the overall traits of the book (its plot,
settings, and stylistic conventions) but revamps particular details in those
particular ways that the filmmakers see as necessary and fitting.
3. Radical translation: which reshapes the book in extreme and revolutionary
ways both as a means of interpreting the literature and of making the film a more
fully independent work.
A working knowledge of these three types of film translations is significant also because
each of us needs to be aware of the biases - the intolerances and preferences – that we
may have for one translation mode over another, as these biases could affect our
appraisal of a film's merits and deficiencies. Each of us needs to realize that no
translation can transcribe every feature of the source text and that a hierarchy of values
operates within any translation, including film translations of literature.
Literal Adaptation
One manner by which a film renders a literary work is through a literal translation, which
reconstitutes the plot and all its attendant details as closely as possible to the letter of
the literature. The film stays as near to the written text as is possible, with little or no
addition of scenes that were not in the original literary work. In a literal film translation,
the filmmakers are duty-bound to follow the original story. Details of character, locale,
and custom are recreated, sometimes painstakingly so, and brought to visual life. The
movie stands as a facsimile, the best examples of which are memorable in their visual
faithfulness to the letter of the text, at the expense, though, of the creative freedom and
boldness of interpretation that the two other translation forms display. While the visual
details have the extraordinary force of making us feel like we are experiencing the very
world that the writer recorded for us, literal translations tend to fail at plumbing the
depths of the book’s ideas.
Traditional Adaptations
The majority of literature-based films are traditional translations. In a traditional
translation, the filmmakers stay as close as possible to the original literary text, while
making those alterations that are deemed necessary and/or appropriate. These changes
may be made in service of the filmmakers' interpretive insight or stylistic interests, but
just as often they are driven by a need to keep the film’s length and its budget
manageable, and to maintain the interests and tastes of a popular audience. In a
traditional film translation of a literary text, scenes are added or deleted as needed;
characters are often composites; and the settings are frequently modified in ways that
make them more visually interesting or more cost effective. While the film's alterations
may rankle those readers of the literature who prefer a literal translation and who find
such tamperings to be either de facto objectionable or beyond the license and scope of
the work and obligations of the film translator, the alterations allow for greater freedom in
rendering meaning.
Radical Adaptations
A radical translation reshapes the literary work in extreme and revolutionary ways as a
means of rendering what the translator sees as most integral to the source text; as a
way of construing or interpreting the literature; or as a mode of making the translation,
itself, a more fully independent work. Radical translations [can also] allow for
multicultural explorations of literary texts, as literature generated by one culture can be
explored and reconstituted in other cultures… While taken to various degrees, a radical
translation allows for total artistic liberties. The literature’s integral meaning, rather than
its literal details, is of paramount importance to the radical film translator; consequently,
the filmic rephrasing of the parent text, under the codes of a radical translation,
permits—even celebrates—the alteration of any or all details that promote the
filmmakers’ personal vision of the literary work.
Source
Cahir, Linda Costanzo. Literature into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches. Jefferson,
N.C: McFarland & Co., 2006.