Do people in R-to-L text cultures read pictures that way too?

September 1, 2024 12:41 AM

I noticed recently how much I'm in the habit of "reading" photos & other images from left to right - presumably because I grew up in an English-speaking country where text is always presented that way. But what happens for people whose first language is one of those (like Arabic or Urdu) which is written from right to left? If that's the direction you've always been taught to read and write in, does that affect the direction you apply when reading images too?
posted by Paul Slade to Society & Culture (14 answers total)

what happens for people whose first language is one of those (like Arabic or Urdu) which is written from right to left?

you may find Effect of habitual reading direction on saccadic eye movements: A pilot study helpful [nih]
posted by HearHere at 2:42 AM on September 1 [3 favorites]

Children’s book illustrations are often designed to be viewed sequentially in the same direction they text is read. This can create challenges for translating books from one language to another.
posted by mortaddams at 4:29 AM on September 1 [1 favorite]

Are you talking about a series of photographs, or like an individual picture?

I don't have an answer, but for example Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Bruegel the Elder (maybe) works so well because the direction of the painting is from the top right to bottom left, where the viewer finds the little splashing Icarus legs. Bruegel (maybe) obviously directs the viewer's eyes this way with how everything is laid out, but does it have the same effect on people who read right to left? I have no idea, but it is a fascinating question.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:58 AM on September 1

Panels in manga are generally to be scanned from right to left.

Western-style comic books in Hebrew are the same way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:07 AM on September 1 [13 favorites]

Every piece of Japanese manga I’ve read has not only had the panels organized right to left, but also the visual sequences inside the panels. Certainly the speech bubbles are presented right to left, but also any implied action.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:07 AM on September 1 [9 favorites]

Some explanations of the Gestalt Theory of Perception include cultural reading direction as one of the things that influence how we decode images, for example this article briefly acknowledges this influence.
posted by Zumbador at 5:21 AM on September 1

photos & other images

I don't think all images are the same though. I think illustrations in a picture book or comic, where the text is often inside the image itself, encourage the eye to move in certain patterns in ways that I think freestanding images generally don't.

I say "think" because this has probably been studied and I have not read any of those studies. I will say that I don't think that I generally scan freestanding pictures in any particular direction; my eye is drawn to points of interest, which can appear in any part of the image. And I know that with news photos where there are multiple people in photo and the captions, by convention, list them from left to right, I had to consciously build a habit of starting from the left, and even then it's often not where my eye will be drawn first (for example, maybe someone on the right is a face I'm familiar with or appears larger in the image). I don't think I specifically look at group photos from left to right when they're not captioned.

With respect to manga, there is (or was?) a debate about whether it should be flipped from RTL to LTR when translated into LTR languages. I think maybe professional commercial editions often flip it? But having read a lot of fan-translated manga where the text is in English but the original directionality is maintained, I can say that I quickly got used to the combination of LTR text with RTL narrative flow - and it was easy in a way that, for example, getting used to reading an English sentence or multi-digit number backwards is not easy for me. I think the latter types of processing are much more deeply ingrained than anything to do with image directionality is.

(Also wrt manga, keep in mind that Japanese is usually read LTR when written horizontally and RTL when written vertically. Books and manga are vertical and therefore RTL, but lots of other kinds of text is horizontal and therefore LTR. If you expect image processing habits to be dictated by text-reading habits, would you expect Japanese readers' image processing directionality to be less strongly ingrained because of the dual reading modes in Japanese? That's also something that's probably the subject of some experiments.)

On a more general level, if you feel you regularly scan photos LTR, do you do the same for real-world image processing? Like, if you walk into a room, do you scan the room LTR? If you're at an art gallery or museum walking from picture to picture, do you always interpret the pictures LTR, even if you happen to be walking RTL? Does the direction you're walking in affect how you view the images? Do other factors?

tl;dr My instinctive guess would be that a lot of this is more about conventions and expectations for particular visual contexts rather than something deeply, fundamentally ingrained on a cognitive level, and that in contexts where there isn't an expected narrative flow - like a random photograph or art painting - other factors are more important in determining where your eye is drawn. But that's a non-scientific take.
posted by trig at 5:44 AM on September 1 [1 favorite]

I think illustrations in a picture book or comic, where the text is often inside the image itself

It's also the physical affordance of a book and its pages; someone used to reading right to left is going to open, scan and turn a wordless picture book the same way by default; differently than a mural, for instance.

(Now I'm wondering if this affects how things like walk-through museum exhibits are laid out--I feel like they're typically entered from the left here -- are they typically entered from the right in places with languages that scan that direction?)
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:48 AM on September 1

Hokusai's The Wave is even more powerful when scanned right to left. First you see the small boat and then the great wave looming over it.

Many manga panels do not make sense unless they are scanned right to left.
posted by vacapinta at 5:51 AM on September 1 [11 favorites]

I was raised reading LTR, but around high school started to read manga, RTL. As a result when I’m looking at comics I tend to default to whatever style I’ve been reading most recently. It’s less of a problem when I’m holding physical media, having to turn the pages orients me to start at the correct spot. But if I’m reading comics digitally I’ll have to remind myself where to start, and sometimes I’ll read a comics page a few times wondering why it doesn’t make sense before switching my mental orientation.
posted by lepus at 7:24 AM on September 1

A caution to the English manga reader: some publishers, in localizing manga for English readers, flip the pages over so that they can be "processed" left-to-right.
posted by SPrintF at 8:13 AM on September 1

!
I never even noticed the boats before.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:54 AM on September 1 [4 favorites]

I know next to nothing about this subject, although as an English reader, I naively agree that I tend to approach images from left to right. I do wonder if being strongly right or left-handed makes any difference in how one approachs an image?

I'm also questioning the idea that viewers would automatically approach all art works in a R to L or L to R depending on experience. Often artists demand that the viewer engage with art in a particular way, and it takes a conscious or nearly conscious act to for the initial engagement to deviate from where the artist has directed the eye. I think use and placement of horizon line, vanishing point, ground plane, perspective lines, as well as atmospheric perspective concentrate attention in particular ways. At least for me, it's hard to encounter every painted or drawn image right to left. I'll have to think if that applies to photography....
posted by BlueHorse at 12:42 PM on September 1 [1 favorite]

I came here to post the Great Wave At Kanagawa example that vacapinta gave above. I first saw that linked in a thread somewhere on the blue, and it stuck with me ever since.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:08 AM on September 6