DCML digest, Vol 1 #522 - 10 msgs

[Halsten Aastebol]

At 07:56 08.05.01 -0400, Don Rosa wrote:

>I'd mentioned that before, but I relate it again because I wanted to ask
>about this business of Donald working in a "margarine" factory in
>Scandinavia. A margarine factory? I don't get it. Barks' "skunk oil"
>factory sounds funny... like, why would anyone want skunk oil?!

Maybe the skunks would want it for refill! :-)

>But to
>American ears "margarine factory" isn't the least bit funny. Margarine is a
>blend of vegetable oils used as a butter substitute. Perhaps a translator
>who didn't know what a "skunk" was made a wild guess that it was some type
>of a vegetable?

I cannot imagine the translator not knowing what a skunk is. In Norway we 
even use exactly the same word with slightly different pronounciation, 
although the word "stinkdyr" (stinking animal) is just as common. So the 
gag can't have been unnoticed by the translator.

>Or is there something funny about the word "margarine" in
>Europe that is not translatable here?

No, not at all.
But guess what! I still think it's funny! Just because the whole setting i 
funny, with Donald and the nephews (and the boy at the end of the story) 
refering to this job that we never get to see. What is lost in the 
translation is in this case compensated by the increased realism 
(possibility of such a job actually excisting), and the remains of the gag: 
What factory would base it's existence on a single product of this type? It 
might be bought up by the milk factory, then merged with the cheese 
factory, finally changing it's name to the Duckburg dairy.

Halsten