Disney-comics digest #544

[PAULO BARRETO]

DON:

  >        Very astute -- of course, in my version of "The Treasury of
  >Croesus", DD would not be singing that ABBA song. The story dealt with
  >Croesus, the king of ancient Lydia -- when the Ducks are approaching the
  >Museum, U$ asks DD what he knows of Lydia, and DD say he learned all
  >about Lydia watching the Late Show and goes into a rendition of "Lydia
  >the Tattooed Lady" (best known as the song Groucho sings in AT THE
  >CIRCUS). DD breaks into this song every few pages throughout the story
  >as the running gag. I knew when I wrote this into my story that it would
  >cause problems for translators, but sometimes I just ignore this problem
  >so that I won't be so burdened with it, and have faith in the able
  >translators to come up with their own solutions. I knew of Stefan Dios'
  >solution for his translation in KALLE ANKA & CO., and it seems a good
  >one. Of course, that song was not written when my story is supposed to
  >be taking place (c. 1955), but that's okay.
  >        The bigger problem will come when Gladstone reprints the story
  >-- I've recently found out that Gladstone cannot print a full line out
  >of a song that is still under copyright, and as old as "Lydia" is, it's
  >probably still covered by some ancient copyright as songs are. (For
  >instance, would you believe that "Happy Birthday to you" is covered by
  >a copyright, and every time it is sung in a movie or TV show, two
  >little old ladies here in Louisville get a check for 1 cent or
  >something like that. This answers the question you might have as to why
  >you hear that tune oddly paraphrased in movies now and then -- not to
  >avoid the 1 cent payment {only Disney would do that} but to avoid the
  >needless red tape.) Anyway, we'll worry about that problem when the
  >times comes -- perhaps Gladstone can use the original song by just
  >changing one word in each line? I had to change a few words even in my
  >script since the lyrics are rather risque for a 1995 Disney comic, even
  >though the tune was written about 70 years ago.

        That reminds me of a similar situation in a Brazilian version:
Editora Abril (the local Disney comics publisher) could neither
translate the original tune nor transcribe verbatim the lyrics of a
Brazilian classic substitute.

        The story is "Mickey e a Ilha do ce'u" (no code available)
published originally in Brazilian _Mickey_ #12 (around mid-50's, I
guess): Mickey and Goofy follow a flying car and find an island floating
in the sky, inhabited by an idealistic "mad" scientist. (anybody know
about that story?)

        The song appears on page 10, panels 13-15.  Sorry, I can't
really reproduce the characters with accents in this ^%@#$&%#@ 7-bit
environment...

        ACTUAL LYRICS            |STORY TEXT
        -------------------------|-------------------------------
        Lata d'a'gua na cabec,a, |13: Lata de o'leo na cabec,a,
        La' vai Maria,           |    La' vai Maria...
        La' vai Maria            |
        Sobe o morro e na~o se   |14: ...o morro e na~o se
                         cansa   |                cansa...
        Pela ma~o leva a crianc,a|15: Pelas asas da esperanc,a...
        La' vai Maria            |

        I've come across a number of Brazilian song insertions in
foreigh-made Disney comics (though local Disney production has been
quite large since the 60's), but the've always managed to make them
as natural as possible.  All in all, the translation is excellent; much
better for Disney than for superhero Marvel and DC versions from the
same Editora Abril.

           _____m__(0/\0)__m_____  []s, Paulo Barreto
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