Migration as Translation: Moving Figurski to the Web
"Traduttore e traditore." [The translator betrays.]
Migrating an early hypertext novel originally created with proprietary software programmed in C and published on a removeable disk, to HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for the World Wide Web, as we have done for Richard Holeton’s Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, is an act of translation—one involving not only the translation of its code, but also of its interface design and its functionality. As such, translation impacts our experience with the work, ultimately betraying it as some aspects of it becomes lost in the effort to make it found by a new audience. In a digital translation aimed at restoring access to a work that has become technologically obsolete, the gain is so much greater than the loss. In the case of Figurski, especially, it means that we can now again read one of the most unique and quirky interactive novels of the early 21st Century.
Translating Figurski into a new format two decades after its initial release required many decisions for changes to the original. These fall into four areas: Visual, Navigational, Functional, and Textual.
