Translations

[Stefan Diös]

Joakim Gunnarsson:

>And I can confirm that according to the Swedish translator P-AWestrin, who
>did the translations at that time together with his wife, they did indeed
>get the stories in many various languages, to translate from. (Information
>source: an article/interview about Westrin in Swedish fanzine
>"NAFS(k)uriren"!.)


That's very much correct; I was one of the interviewers. The Westrins 
translated "Kalle Anka & C:o" 1957-1981, and they told us that for many 
years (I don't know the exact dates), the standard procedure was to receive 
ripped-out pages from various foreign Disney magazines to work from: 
American, Scandinavian, German, Italian, anything. They could handle most 
of it as Mrs. Westrin was a language Ph.D. or something like that. I think 
they told us that they only once had to return a Turkish "original". That 
language was beyond their abilities.

1948-1957 Axel Norbeck was the Swedish translator. He is deceased since 
many years, but last year a colleague and I had the opportunity to visit 
his daughter. She was very surprised when we implied that her father might 
have worked from Danish originals, for example. As far as she knew, 
everything was always American. But I believe there are too many 
similarities between the Scandinavian issues that are too far away from the 
American text. I cannot surmise otherwise than they all were made from the 
same, non-original source even before 1957. However, it was news to me that 
wordings like "the margarine factory" appeared in Germany, as well! Very 
interesting. (It could also be noted that Norbeck's daughter moved out of 
the house as early as 1951, so after that date, she could not have observed 
her father's work as closely as before.)

Now, it might be interesting to know if the Danish translation usually was 
the first one that all the other countries were given as "original". At 
that time, the stories did not always appear simultaneously in all the 
Scandinavian countries. For a clue, one might want to check when the skunk 
oil/margarine story first appeared in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and even 
Germany. If Erika Fuchs didn't read Danish, as Gerd suggests, maybe hers 
was the first one that the Scandinavians used later on? Likewise for other 
famous examples such as our well-known Scandinavian "Crying Sailor" song, 
which is "The Screaming Cowboy" in Barks' original story; and so on.



Stefan Dios
Malmo, Sweden