Faithfulness to what?

The overall goal of a film maker is making the translation of faithfulness of literary text successful.

There are multiple features to take into consideration when translating the parent text. If there are two love interests that the audience falls in love with, you must be able to display that chemistry throughout the movie’s entirety.

• a turning point: a major fight scene
• the theme of the entire book
• the enemy
• the main point of the book
• main characters and their chemistry

Comparing translation with a scene from 'Safe Haven' the film, to the book: This scene in the movie is towards the end of the film where Katie has a flashback of Kevin (her abusive husband) having dinner with her and she upsets him in the smallest way. He gets enraged and starts to abuse her. He pulls a knife on her and she has to fight back or she will get killed. She has to stab her husband in the ribcage to get out of his death grip (it’s very violent)- she nearly escapes. In the book, the suspense builds up and keeps the reader on their toes. The book also incorporates details about the abuse.

I think in translating the film to the book it was successful capturing the "dark scary" scene. The film did have suspense that kept your focus and made you feel sympathy for the victim in the scene. I think the film did translate very well from the book and gained the respect it deserved. However, the intense suspenseful scene could have been a bit longer, building the anticipation more, which would've equaled the book's intensity that was well-known.