Adaptation or transformation: Viktor Pelevin’s “Omon Ra” in the system of a graphic novel

The article explores the process of translating Viktor Pelevin’s verbal novel “Omon Ra” into the polycode system of the eponymous graphic novel. The study aims to identify the mechanisms of semiotic transformation of a literary text during its transition from a verbal to a verbal-visual form. Drawing on Yuri Lotman’s semiotics of culture and the concept of intersemiotic translation, we analyse the techniques of reduction, compression, and excession applied in the adaptation. A comparative analysis reveals the patterns of meaning distortion and transformation of the philosophical dimension of the original: in the graphic version, Pelevin’s idea of the protagonist’s inner cosmos weakens, while the focus shifts toward visual and social expression typical of contemporary literature. The calculated distortion rate (about 37%) indicates the creation of an independent artistic text rather than a direct translation. Thus, the work demonstrates that a polycode text as a form of modern literature has an independent aesthetic and semiotic value, revealing the features of perception and interpretation of a verbal work in a different sign system, and has its own content and structural-formal organization.

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