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Gage Lopez

Professor Johnson

Writing 2

5/30/18

Genre Translation Analysis

The writing content produced is often highly dependent on the genre in which it is being

written for. In this genre translation a personal letter, titled “Dear Boss”, sent to the Central News

Agency of London by the victorian age serial killer, Jack the ripper has been translated into a

children's book named “The Fox and the Farmer”. This translation has been done in aim to

mimic the same humorous informality that was used to address the awfully gruesome murders of

Jack’s victims.

When crafting a genre translation of such, many careful decisions must be made. A

children’s book, although it may not look it, has a multitude of conventions and practices that

make it that way. One of the more important things to know is language. Not only the language

you use, but the tone, complexity, and length of words and phrases is what can turn a romance

novel into a horror story. In the process of creating a children’s book, often the length and

complexity of sentences is rather short. Small, digestible, and concise, the audiences mental

capabilities limits the way the story is able to be told from the get-go. Additionally, the type of

characters, and the illustrations found in children's books are very specific. I made sure to pick

characters that the intended audience can identify closely with (fox, hens, farmer, etc…) and am
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to include the cartoon-like brightly colored illustrations seen in most children's books. Although

the inclusion of illustrations is not necessary, Scott McCloud's “Writing With Pictures”, changed

my mind completely. With illustrations, he describes how you can have a greater control over

what exactly your work functions as, with the ability to utilize choices of “ moment, frame,

image, word, and flow” [McCloud 3]. With pictures, a true level of clarity can be achieved and

therefore make for less of a “gap” in understanding due to the primary audience.

Character and illustration were one of the main strategies employed in the making of this

book. This method was what made such a translation possible. The fact of dealing with the rigid

dichotomy in content while maintaining the purpose proved to be an extremely difficult task.

Using these characters, I was able to convey the same message with a large use of metaphor. One

example used so that I could avoid the topic of death was the simple idea of a fox in the hen

house. Children do understand that this is unwanted/unpermitted behavior; however, the main

point is that Jack the fox causing disorder in the “hen house” represents Jack the Ripper being the

fox in the “whore house”. Through this assignment I learned that children’s books most often end

happily. Because of the age group, negative, dark, and stress-inducing thoughts are mostly

avoided. This posed a problem as I found it near impossible to do this in words. Being so

concerned with the main point of the letter being evident in the children's book, I used pictures

and a relatable character complex to deliver the message instead.

While also being characters that they can relate closely to, this type of character relationship

immediately creates a relationship in which one player is the authority and one the subordinate.

Personally, I found this sort of character relationship necessary in order to imitate the exigence of
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the Serial killer, Jack the Ripper’s personal letter. Carroll’s Backpacks piece made clear to

“identify the purpose of the rhetoric” in “Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis” by specifically

stating that “ Understanding the exigence is important because it helps you begin to discover the

purpose of the rhetoric. It helps you understand what the discourse is trying to accomplish.”

(Carroll 49). Once this became known, the importance to carry over the same rhetorical purpose

over in my translation became obvious.

Although a translation into a less troublesome genre would have been easier to do well, I felt that

by doing a children's book I could highlight the humorous informality I spoke of earlier. Because

Jack the Ripper treated such an issue so informally, I felt that a story of a game between a fox

and a farmer only further accentuated this irony and reveals the utter psychopathy and twisted

intellect the killer had by treating such an ordeal as “child's play”. This message is one that I felt

important to convey to the intended audience because it was such an important goal of the killer

to portray to the police.

In this translation of a serial killers personal letter into a child’s book the skills of rhetoric

and genre identification/understanding have been effectively demonstrated. Certain parallels

have been identified and used in order to maintain the purpose of the original piece in

compliance with the practices of the new genre. These “parallels” are especially important as

they truly tie together the irony of the situation as a whole. This assignment clearly demonstrates

the true power of how exactly conventions define genres, as well as my understanding of

discourse communities/genres as a whole.

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Works Cited

“ Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, by Carroll Backpack,

vol. 1, Charles Lowe, 2010, pp. 45–58.

McCloud, Scott.“Writing With Pictures.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 1, Charles

Lowe, 2010, pp. 8–37.