DCML digest, Vol 1 #125 - 8 msgs

[john garvin]

-stephan wrote:
What he was trying to do was to add
some extra detail and flourish to his text, or to make it flow more easily
and naturally - which, as I have stated here many times before, I believe
is his job rather than to translate every line literally. When I translate
Disney comics, I usually ask myself (more or less subconsciously, nowadays)
questions like these: "What would the character say in this situation?" or
"What needs to be explained for the story to work?". More often than not,
the answer is just about the same that's already in the balloon, because
the writer (and his editor) posed the same questions while working. But it
sure happens even at my stage that I want to add something extra, or
rewrite some passage in order to make it clearer, funnier or whatever. It
may not be my official job description, but if need be, I want to be
something of a "dialog editor" just as much as a translator.

As an artist and writer, Stephan, I take great exception to this.  It sounds to
me that you are in the wrong line of work.  You don't want to be a translator,
you want to be a writer.  It is one thing to reword a bit of "untranslatable"
slang or phrasing, it is quite another to examine the words in front of you and
arbitrarily decide that they are not clear enough, or funny enough.  For you to
decide that the original writer and editor did not "pose" the correct questions
to themselves, and to then CHANGE their work to suit YOUR fancy, well that is
really quite incredible.  Do the original creators a favor: "add something
extra" to your own work, and leave their's as written and intended.  If I want
to read a story by Rosa, Barks, Scrapa, whoever, I want to read their works, not
the modified works of Stephan Dios.