Over the years, what is normally referred to as visual law has increasingly developed and some scholars have been tentatively experimenting with legally binding comics, although in very limited ...numbers. This article posits itself as part of that tradition, while taking the issue a step forward, further developing the academic discussion around the notion of accessibility in legal language and emphasising the importance that different forms of translation can assume in this context. The article thus discusses the impact that intralingual and intersemiotic translation can have in both “educational” and more “social” contexts, finally providing two brief examples of how these forms of translation can render legal discourse more accessible and understandable to a great variety of receivers, regardless of their age, level of education, cultural origin, etc.
In Translation Studies, explicitation generally refers to an interlingual process where something that is implicit in the source text is made explicit in the target text. This article analyses the ...concept in an intersemiotic context, focusing on word-to-image translation, with the aim of determining whether word-to-image translation includes meaning construction that could be described as explicitation. The empirical data of the article is a comic contract, a verbal-only document that has been intersemiotically translated into a visual form, i.e. a comic. The analysis concluded that while some of the characteristics described for interlingual explicitation operate with verbal language-specific concepts and cannot be applied to word-to-image translation, other characteristics of explicitation – such as the specification of meaning in translation – seem well-suited for this type of intersemiotic analysis. The analysis also emphasized that distinguishing types of explicitation in word-to-image translation is complicated by the inherent differences of words and images as meaning making resources.
This article explores the state of legal design in law and portrays the recent advancements in comic book contracting done at the University of Western Australia (UWA). It makes the important points ...that legal innovation is making room for design and illustrations, and in doing so it needs to make way for collaboration and respect for different skill sets.
Contracts via comics Ketola, Anne; Pitkäsalo, Eliisa; de Rooy, Robert
6e717778-f724-439f-a083-6536d81ac318,
2023
Book Chapter
Odprti dostop
Comic contracts are legally binding contracts presented as comics, where the parties to the contract are represented as characters and the contract terms are communicated mainly visually. This ...chapter examines a comic contract created in the context of the Thai fishing industry. The industry is dependent on Myanmar and Cambodian migrants for its viability, but it is also notorious for the abuse that they can suffer on the vessels. The new contract is created in a visual format to ease the language barriers between the local vessel owners and the migrant workers. In comparison to the employment contracts offered to this group of workers in the past, this particular type of contract aims to afford the employee the dignity of autonomously understanding their rights during employment. In this chapter, we examine how the creators of the comic contract have used visual resources to create a document that is comprehensible by its users and able to fulfil its function in legal knowledge exchange.
"How is agency produced through image and word in the multimodal ”The Rules of Supervised Exchange” comic contract?" Social service documents, such as ”The rules of supervised exchange”, can be ...difficult to understand because of the language and terms used in them. One way to make these documents more accessible is transforming them into comic contracts. Using a comic-style format, can help clients better understand the document and the associated agency of the worker and the client. Additionally, it can make communication by public authorities more accessible. Transforming social service documents involves visualization, i.e., including different types of visual elements in the document. Typically, comic contracts include characters and their interaction is visually displayed. Thus, comic contracts are multimodal texts that combine images and words in different ways. Examining comic contracts in social services is important for both clients and workers. Documents should be understandable and clear so that clients know what services are described in the documents, what are the clients’ rights, responsibilities, and obligations, and what is expected of them as actors.
Traditionally, legal documents such as contracts are verbally drafted by lawyers for other lawyers to read. However, it is highly desirable that the clients also understand their contents. The verbal ...format may be problematic if the parties do not have a common language or if they are unable to understand the legal jargon. For this reason, advocates of legal design have suggested that the contents of conventional legal documents could be presented in visual format. This paper aims to introduce one example of legal design, the comic contract, in which the verbal and visual modes interact. It discusses the process of transforming traditional legal documents into comics, which can be considered a kind of intersemiotic translation, and asks whether this format in fact improves the intelligibility and accessibility of legal documents.
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