Horace and Clarabelle, Norse gods and Duckburg factories...

[RMorris306@aol.com]

    I have to agree that Horace and Clarabelle make a better couple than 
Goofy and Clarabelle...especially since Glory-Bee entered the picture. 
Besides which, why would a cow be interested in a dog?

    Of course, carrying that to its logical conclusion one might wonder why 
she'd be interested in a stallion, either. But then again, there really 
aren't any bulls in the Disney universe, nor mares for that matter. (Yes, I 
did think of Ferdinand...and of Frou-Frou from "The Aristocats..." but 
they're not really the same type at all; they're much closer to real animals 
than to people. It'd be like pairing off Mickey with Miss Bianca, or Donald 
with Sonia from "Peter and the Wolf"...they might technically be two mice or 
two ducks, but otherwise they have nothing in common. In essence, I have to 
agree with Don Rosa that Horace, Clarabelle, Donald, and Mickey are all 
people who look like animals, whereas Ferdinand and the rest are "real" 
animals.)

    I just got over a discussion of the Norse gods with someone on another 
list. The same gods (essentially) were worshipped all across northern Europe 
including the British Isles, but (just like the much more famous alternate 
names of the Graeco-Roman pantheon, where Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite and Poseidon 
in Greece became Jupiter, Juno, Venus and Neptune in Rome) often by 
different, if usually related, names. Odin, for instance, is the Scandinavian 
name of the god known as Wotan in Germany and as Woden in Britain, where he 
gave his name to Wednesday.

    I wonder if the Egmont "factory" someone mentioned was in the translation 
of one of Don Rosa's earliest stories...yet another, by the way, where 
$crooge seriously considered Donald and Gladstone as heirs only to think 
better of it by the end? In that story he'd promised to set both his nephews 
up in business if they made a profit, and since both did (though only about 
$10 for Donald), $crooge bought up a lemonade stand for Donald and a comic 
book company for Gladstone. The latter was of course an inside joke that 
wouldn't translate (for the American publisher that revived the Disney 
license was CALLED Gladstone Publishing, Ltd.), so could Egmont just have 
substituted its own name?

    And maybe "margarine" simply sounds funny in some European languages. I 
seem to recall (from one of the rare occasions I tried to pick my way through 
an Asterix book in the original French...which I have no doubt is better, but 
I know almost no languages apart from English with any depth) that one of the 
Gaulish women was named Oleomargarine. All the female Gauls originally had 
names ending in "-ine," as the male Gauls' names like Asterix and Obelix end 
in "-ix" in both the original and most translations...but the English 
translations regrettably substituted the same final "-a" used for most Roman 
woman, so even names that would work perfectly well in English...like the 
fishmonger's wife, Bacteria (nee Ielosubmarine) had to be changed...


Rich