DCML digest #846

[Don Rosa]

From: "Olaf Solstrand" <harryklein at hotmail.com>
>>>>I notice that many of the dialogue balloons in CB stories have a very
"free"
language that does not at all look like what I learned in English class at
school - like "kin" instead of "can" and "de" instead of "the". These
examples I found in some villains' dialogue, but also Donald and his nearest
have words in their vocabulary which are impossible to find in a dictionary.
I just don't get it! I've always imagined that this stories would be written
in perfect dictionary American English, just like the Norwegian Duck Comics
are in perfect dictionary Norwegian bokmål. I also notice this in some
online Don Rosa stories. Can someone explain to me _why_ this is so?

Is this odd question posed ironically? Sarcastically? What are you asking?
Why the Norwegian editions don't translate the spirit of the originals
correctly? Or why there is improper grammar in the originals?
Well, I'll hafta assume you are being serious...
Any proper, effective dialogue in a story, whether it's a movie or a book or
a comic, should show a distinct character when that would benefit the story
and help identify the character or personality of the speaker. If the
Norwegian editions sabotage that aspect of a story (and I don't know if they
do, I'd hafta take your word for that), probably with the well-meaning but
misguided idea that to have even some small bit of dialogue written with an
accent or broken grammar would cause all the readers to suddenly UNlearn
everything they know about their language, that is a fault in that editor's
view of good storytelling. I assume such an editor (if you say they are so)
would also want all spoken dialogue in a film to sound as if it was coming
from the mouth of a college professor in linguistics and grammar, and that
would be just as wrong for good film storytelling. By that same logic, all
the characters in the film or comic should look as though they just bought
their clothes new at a fashionable boutique, regardless of whether they have
just spent 6 months on a desert isle or are crawling across the Sahara
desert.
Anyway, the thought that *good* dialogue is being mucked up by an editor
somewhere is rather disturbing to this storyteller. I'd hate to know what
such an editor, just as regards my stories much less the thousands of
others, did with the dialogue for Arpin Lusene in "The Black Knight" or all
of the backwoods aliens in my "Attack of the Hideous Space Varmints". The
broken grammar of the characters in the latter was about 50% of the humor
and character of the story!