Sampo in Holland

Fluks, H.W. H.W.Fluks at kpn.com
Tue Mar 13 20:12:18 CET 2001


This week in the Dutch book shops: DD EXTRA #3 with part 2 of Don Rosa's
Kalevala story ("Strijd om de Sampo").

Now that the story has been published completely in Dutch, here's a short
review of the Dutch translation.

In one word: crap.

The Kalevala poetry has degraded to some kind of cheap Sinterklaas-rhyme
(do-it-yourself poetry). Parts don't even rhyme, and there's *no* meter at
all. The *only* advantage is that I can now read and understand the story
without having to use a dictionary (both the English and German versions
used words that are too difficult for me). The Kalevala texts are printed in
a normal italic font; no fancy special fonts, like I've seen in other
countries.

Worse: the translator seems to have made an effort to remove all puns and
jokes in his translation. Donald is NOT laughing death in his face. It's NOT
the "second biggest frog" that man has ever seen. Et cetera.
Very depressing.

Also this week: a new OOM DAGOBERT album. With the Croesus story, and some
other reprints.

--Harry.



More information about the DCML mailing list