4 ms·

That sounds a bit pointlessly pedantic to me. "Bande dessinée" is aptly translated as "comic strip", I'm not sure why you couldn't call them "comic books". Of

by simias 8y ago

That sounds a bit pointlessly pedantic to me. "Bande dessinée" is aptly translated as "comic strip", I'm not sure why you couldn't call them "comic books". Of course there are massive cultural differences between American-style comics and the Belgian/French kind but it's also true for many other art forms and we don't feel the need to come up with a different name every time. I suppose there's a precedent with Japanese comics that are usually called "mangas" but at least that's short and easily pronounceable by your average anglophone. "Bande dessinée" will be painful both to pronounce and to write (as you showcase yourself, you forgot the accent and the feminine -e at the end of dessinée). I guess you could borrow the common shorthand "BD" (pronounced bédé).

egypturnash 8y ago
The literal translation is "drawn strip", which doesn't have the continued implication that everything in the media must be comedy that "comic book" does. Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics". There's also the term "graphic novel", which sometimes only applies to stories first published as a book , rather than a series of monthly pamphlets, and also still sometimes has people saying "are they full of explicit porn or something?" as a misinterpretation of the "graphic" part.
- amyjess 8y ago
  Interestingly enough, Stan Lee always preferred the term "comicbook" on the grounds that writing it as one word made it more clear that it was its own thing and not just a book that's comedic. Another term I've seen bandied around is "sequential art".
- msbarnett 8y ago
  > The literal translation is "drawn strip", which doesn't have the continued implication that everything in the media must be comedy that "comic book" does. There is no implication that "comic books" are comedic in modern American culture. You're over-focusing on the etymology of a term that has since come to mean something quite different. > Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics" This is merely how language evolves. We park on driveways. "Fat chance" indicates, in fact, a very slim one. Suitcases are a thoroughly incorrect way to store or transport suits, unless you like creasing them. Civil wars, aren't. Comic books are rarely comedic. We speak in customary meaning, not based on overly literal analysis of component words.
  - egypturnash 8y ago
    So. I make comics. I have spent a lot of time reading about the history of the medium. I have opinions about the terms used for it, and how they have shaped the medium in the past, and how their meanings have changed. This conflict between the term we use for this art form in America and the ways it shapes what we think "a comic book" can be was an important discussion for comics creators to have had, as the medium grew and changed. Comics has been a medium seen as only suited for children for much of its American lifespan; it's only in the eighties that this began to change, with best-selling work by creators who would tear you a new one if you called their "graphic novel" a "comic book" because Comics Were For Kids and they were making work that was distinctly Not For Kids. (In the sixties, folks making works distinctly Not For Kids mostly called them "comix", and there are still creators who favor that term for their work because they feel a connection to that particular horny, counter-culture kind of energy. In the nineties, Scott McCloud floated "Sequential Art" as an umbrella term, but it never really stuck, even my copy of his later book "The Sculptor" says "graphic novel" on the back.) The diversity of literal translations of other terms for "stories told as sequential pictures, often with words" is worth reflecting on, especially if you have devoted a significant chunk of your life to the medium like I have. Were the French more open to adult work than Americans because their term for the medium didn't include implications about the content? Or is it just that Americans are weird and uptight? And on the other side of the world, a literal translation of "manga" is "whimsical/impromptu pictures" and Japanese comics sure grew up a lot faster than American comics - but on the other hand, the sixties saw the coining of the term "gekiga", which literally translates to "dramatic pictures", and was promoted by... creators who wanted to mark their work as being distinct from kid-friendly manga. The term has faded, they're all just "manga" now for the most part (to the best of my knowledge, I am not exactly up to the minute on the current manga scene), but the way this parallels the period of distaste for the literal meaning of "comic book" is pretty interesting! This is a thing people making Serious Work in a medium whose name has connotations of being silly need to grapple with. Of course, there was also Frederic Wertham and his 1954 book "Seduction of the Innocent", which lead to the creation of the Comics Code. Which essentially set back acceptance of the medium as something you could tell adult stories in for a generation, and it's only in the past couple decades that "comics" have been something it wasn't considered kinda childish for an American adult to read, outside of the subculture of comics aficionados. France had their own crackdown on Immoral BD around the same time, but embraced adult work a lot faster. Did their lack of a term that inherently marked the medium as frivolous help? Maybe it really is that Americans are weird and uptight. Perhaps we have finally arrived at the point where we can call the overall medium "comics" without ever worrying about the fact that the word originally referred to the comedic content found in much of the form. And that's pretty cool! But the literal meaning of the name has only recently stopped being a thing creators felt a need to really engage with, and the alternative terms still have a life as a cue to booksellers and librarians that they should probably double-check the contents before reflexively shelving a "graphic novel" in the kid's section. tl;dr: i make comics, and the literal meaning of these words is an important part of the three strands of the global history of this medium.

by simias 8y ago

egypturnash 8y ago

The literal translation is "drawn strip", which doesn't have the continued implication that everything in the media must be comedy that "comic book" does. Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics". There's also the term "graphic novel", which sometimes only applies to stories first published as a book , rather than a series of monthly pamphlets, and also still sometimes has people saying "are they full of explicit porn or something?" as a misinterpretation of the "graphic" part.

amyjess 8y ago
Interestingly enough, Stan Lee always preferred the term "comicbook" on the grounds that writing it as one word made it more clear that it was its own thing and not just a book that's comedic. Another term I've seen bandied around is "sequential art".
msbarnett 8y ago
> The literal translation is "drawn strip", which doesn't have the continued implication that everything in the media must be comedy that "comic book" does. There is no implication that "comic books" are comedic in modern American culture. You're over-focusing on the etymology of a term that has since come to mean something quite different. > Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics" This is merely how language evolves. We park on driveways. "Fat chance" indicates, in fact, a very slim one. Suitcases are a thoroughly incorrect way to store or transport suits, unless you like creasing them. Civil wars, aren't. Comic books are rarely comedic. We speak in customary meaning, not based on overly literal analysis of component words.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  So. I make comics. I have spent a lot of time reading about the history of the medium. I have opinions about the terms used for it, and how they have shaped the medium in the past, and how their meanings have changed. This conflict between the term we use for this art form in America and the ways it shapes what we think "a comic book" can be was an important discussion for comics creators to have had, as the medium grew and changed. Comics has been a medium seen as only suited for children for much of its American lifespan; it's only in the eighties that this began to change, with best-selling work by creators who would tear you a new one if you called their "graphic novel" a "comic book" because Comics Were For Kids and they were making work that was distinctly Not For Kids. (In the sixties, folks making works distinctly Not For Kids mostly called them "comix", and there are still creators who favor that term for their work because they feel a connection to that particular horny, counter-culture kind of energy. In the nineties, Scott McCloud floated "Sequential Art" as an umbrella term, but it never really stuck, even my copy of his later book "The Sculptor" says "graphic novel" on the back.) The diversity of literal translations of other terms for "stories told as sequential pictures, often with words" is worth reflecting on, especially if you have devoted a significant chunk of your life to the medium like I have. Were the French more open to adult work than Americans because their term for the medium didn't include implications about the content? Or is it just that Americans are weird and uptight? And on the other side of the world, a literal translation of "manga" is "whimsical/impromptu pictures" and Japanese comics sure grew up a lot faster than American comics - but on the other hand, the sixties saw the coining of the term "gekiga", which literally translates to "dramatic pictures", and was promoted by... creators who wanted to mark their work as being distinct from kid-friendly manga. The term has faded, they're all just "manga" now for the most part (to the best of my knowledge, I am not exactly up to the minute on the current manga scene), but the way this parallels the period of distaste for the literal meaning of "comic book" is pretty interesting! This is a thing people making Serious Work in a medium whose name has connotations of being silly need to grapple with. Of course, there was also Frederic Wertham and his 1954 book "Seduction of the Innocent", which lead to the creation of the Comics Code. Which essentially set back acceptance of the medium as something you could tell adult stories in for a generation, and it's only in the past couple decades that "comics" have been something it wasn't considered kinda childish for an American adult to read, outside of the subculture of comics aficionados. France had their own crackdown on Immoral BD around the same time, but embraced adult work a lot faster. Did their lack of a term that inherently marked the medium as frivolous help? Maybe it really is that Americans are weird and uptight. Perhaps we have finally arrived at the point where we can call the overall medium "comics" without ever worrying about the fact that the word originally referred to the comedic content found in much of the form. And that's pretty cool! But the literal meaning of the name has only recently stopped being a thing creators felt a need to really engage with, and the alternative terms still have a life as a cue to booksellers and librarians that they should probably double-check the contents before reflexively shelving a "graphic novel" in the kid's section. tl;dr: i make comics, and the literal meaning of these words is an important part of the three strands of the global history of this medium.