Unit 1-Methods of translating

Written Response

This written response re-presents Hito Steyerl’s In Defense of the Poor Image (2009) through the structural method of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (1998).

Steyerl describes the “poor image” as a low-resolution file—copied, shared, and circulated—whose value lies not in clarity but in access.

Following Queneau’s approach, I retell this same idea in several stylistic variations, mirroring how the image itself changes through reproduction.

Neutral：

A poor image travels fast.

It is compressed, duplicated, and reposted.

Each copy loses quality but gains audience.

Authorship fades; circulation grows.

Like Barthes’ idea of “the death of the author”, it survives through others.

Metaphorically：

The poor image is a migrant bird.

Its feathers—pixels—are ruffled by compression winds.

It crosses borders carrying fragments of forgotten cinema.

While high-definition eagles perch in museums,

these small grey sparrows sing across unstable skies.

Retrograde：

First there was a blur on my screen, then a torrent link,

before that a lost archive, and earlier still a camera shutter.

Rewind further: a promise of high definition,

a belief that purity meant truth.

Now, the poor image flies backwards—from perfection to participation.

Surprises：

How fast it spreads!

And how tiny it looks!

Who would believe this smudged picture could speak louder than a film reel?

Yet it shouts across servers, pixels dancing like noise.

What clarity once revealed, compression now connects!

Reflection

Writing through Queneau’s forms turned Steyerl’s theory into practice.

Each variation repeats and distorts, performing what Steyerl (2009) calls “a copy in motion.”

Like Rock’s (1996) claim that design mediates rather than authors,

this translation shows how meaning survives through transformation.

The experiment demonstrates that degradation is also creation:

translation, like compression, shifts from ownership to communication.

Reference

Barthes, R. (1977) Image, Music, Text. Translated by S. Heath. London: Fontana Press.

Queneau, R. (1998) Exercises in Style. Translated by B. Wright. Richmond: Alma Classics.

Rock, M. (1996) ‘The Designer as Author’, Eye Magazine, 20(5), pp. 44–53.

Sontag, S. (1966) Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Steyerl, H. (2009) ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’, e-flux journal, 10. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/(Accessed: 8 November 2025).