my easy quiz

Frank Stajano fstajano at uk.research.att.com
Fri Jan 12 16:32:07 CET 2001


At 2001-01-11 17:17 +0100, you wrote:
> >Can you recognize the following story?
> >
> >LEVEL NORMAL, just recognize it from
> >http://marcobar.cce.unifi.it/DCML/pato1.jpg

Yes, it's my favourite Barks short story! The one where Donald has a little 
plane and can produce rain on demand.

> >LEVEL EASY, use also
> >http://marcobar.cce.unifi.it/DCML/pato2.jpg

Haven't checked this yet.

> >LEVEL DIFFICULT,
> >can you tell all the differences from the original version of the story?
>(Language apart, of course...)

The most obvious one is that the 1st panel is not by Barks in the version 
in Spanish.

Another point is that the editor thought s/he was "correcting" the story 
when s/he changed the "2 cm of rain" (which most likely were 2 inches in 
Barks's story) to "2 cubic cm" which is totally wrong and nonsensical. (I 
won't go into the obvious maths --- it's in a sense the reverse argument as 
that concerning the volume of the money bin ;-))

I have not checked back on the original -- maybe I'd spot more differences 
if I did.

> >LEVEL EXPERT (I couldn't do this)
> >was the "big" difference in pato1.jpg traced from some other story? Which
>one?

Can't do this either.

A related question would be to figure out why it was changed. Maybe looking 
at the Barks story would help.

Let me check the easy url now, to see if there are any clues there... no, 
nothing, it's just a page from later on.

Let me check the original now...

The shapes of the panels are different -- so different that this could even 
explain why the 1st panel was completely redone.

Ok, sure enough it was 2 inches. Note that the 2.5 were originally 2 1/4... 
There are other similar changes in the numerical values such as "ninety 
cents an acre-inch" becoming "twenty pesetas per hectare and cubic 
centimetre"; apart from the impossible dimensions, I haven't computed 
whether the prices are comparable ;-)

In the Barks story, the lower price was not just for S-shaped but also for 
square and round fields.

In the 2nd panel of the Spanish version, both bags contain "natural rain", 
whereas in Barks's they are "rain seed" and  "hail mix" respectively.

The (IMHO good) joke of "x is always an unknown" is original, ie absent in 
Barks.

"Bargain week" is incorrectly translated to "weekly contract"

One could go on with nitpickings on the translation, but it's stuff that 
you could do with any translation of any story, so I don't think it's worth 
continuing.

  Frank (filologo disneyano)  http://www.uk.research.att.com/~fms/




More information about the DCML mailing list