Translations (again!)

[David A Gerstein]

        Dear Folks (and especially Geir),

        I'll respond to this message one part at a time.  I already
wrote a bit about it before, but now I have a chance to say more, so I
will.

        First a quote from Geir's thought-provoking letter to ground
my comments in what's been already said:

* Barks language was using contemporary speech, slang, newly formed
language structures.
* The Disney editors want the series to be moulded from the frozen language
of that day. The translators have to use that language - unless it is
considered safe to use more _modern_ language.
* Thus the emotional expressions of Donald and Scrooge are repeated, even
though it is a small matter to invent or even use modern day expressions.
This holds true for the translators, and to a certain extent for the
writers.

        I suppose, first of all, that you're talking about Disney
editors *all* over the world -- Gladstone in the U. S., Egmont in
Denmark, Fleetway in England, Oberon in Holland, and whoever it is who
you especially find terrible in Norway (may be a division of Egmont).

        In England, by no means is the language in the new stories
like that of the old.  In the 1930s, Gottfredson strips appeared in
Britain in their American English, while other local features
(including British long Donald serials BTW) had British idiom that
sounds old-hat in the modern UK.  As time passed, the British language
as featured in Disney comics changed.  Now new stories use modern
British idiom... unfortunately, the vintage ones are often partly
rewritten now -- Barks included -- to make the idiom "modern".

	It's not so much simplified as simply brought up-to-date.  So
the Brits have avoided time-lock -- but is *this* what you really
want, Geir?

	New phrases have indeed cropped up in the ducks' jargon in
this country.  I don't believe that the ducks said "Great Honk!"
before Don Rosa stepped in, but it's become commonplace now, and I use
the exclamation now and then in my own duck work.  The "DuckTales"
show gave $crooge the epithet "Curse my kilts!"  Despite my general
distaste for most of that show's additions to the Duck universe (which
I essentially ignore in my own work -- as Don Rosa says, it smacks of
a fictionalization of the "real" Scrooge's life!), I have used "Curse
my kilts!" once, just for some variety.  And I'll have my own comments
as well.

	But I don't leave the old phrases in the rubbish -- my ducks
still say "Howlin' crashwagons" and "Oh, my sainted Aunt Clarissa!"
Isn't it the best thing to build on the classics but bring my own
flavor, too?

	That's about it for now.  I will send a hoozoo on Clarabelle
Cow and Horace Horsecollar to Per soon, for the characters file.

	Yours,

	David