new PM, questions to Don Rosa / French translations

[Olivier]

Hello!


Gilles:

>>> *and surprise... Gyro's first invention, by Don rosa. too bad the colors are ugly. The story
>>>  is great! congratulations, unca'keno!!! Some observations about the french translation :
Shacktown, althought
>>>it had been called shacktown or pauvreville (poorville) in french translations of barks' story,
is here called
>>>"bidonville". Helper is not called Filament, but Assistant, the french word for the noun
*helper*.

Well, "bidonville" is the actual translation of  "shacktown". Was the name "Shacktown" kept in one
French version?
"Pauvreville" has a nicer ring to it. The problem is: how was the place called in the previous
translation? If  they keep changing the name, it gets confusing, especially as the note only refers
to issue numbers (Journal de Mickey & Picsou Magazine) rather than a title.
As for Helper, they couldn't, uh, help calling him anything else than "assistant" in French, then
baptizing him Filament-- from your sentence one might think they changed his French name.
And yes, the coloring is yucky. Gyro always looks like he's stuck his beak in mud; I, understand the
colorist tried to make his beak a different hue to further mark the difference in species with the
ducks; maybe in fact his original coloring was subtler but the printer converted it to the closest
brownish color (though I very much doubt such a magazine as PM is limited in its range of  colors);
anyway, Gyro looks dirty-- and we're lucky he his "hair" is yellow, not dirty yellow.



>>>> Another question to Don : On panel 2, Huey, dewey and louie tell that gyro has had his
>>>> job for 51 yrs... what is the exact number in the original script, and how does Don
>>>> Rosa you explain this? (according to your theory, it cannot be true).

Keno Don Rosa:
>>Are you certain they made that extraordinary blunder in the script
>>translation? That might take the cake for the worst one ever.
>>My original script clearly said that the shop had been open only ONE year.
>>Slight difference... 1 year as compared to 50. Now it looks like there's
>>even a translator who doesn't read the story.

Hilarious! Well, not really, no-- but still, funny, to a certain degree.
Here's what Huey (or is it Dewey? or Louie?) says:
"He's been an inventor for 51 years! I had almost forgotten!"
A note (at the bottom of  the panel) explains:
"Gyro's first appearance: May 1952"


Thank you very much for this "new" story!
I love it.
I love the way (the Rosa way) everything ties in & fits together perfectly and the logic of  it all:
how Scrooge's money was salvaged, the creation of  Helper (in several stages), and the
side-references-- which this time are more than in-jokes and play an important part. Lots of  fun
too.
I particularly like "lamp gag page" (in Gyro's workshop-- page 7)-- very nice. Elegant, actually:
simple, dramatic, funny; a very fine page of  comic story-telling, in my humble opinion.
Seeing Fulton (and the reference to Ratchet) was nice. So Gyro's full first name would be "Gregory",
right? I had never thought of  it.



Gilles:
>>>Indeed! makes me think that i'd love to work as the French translator
>>>of Disney stories. Do somebody know if it requires some special studies
>>>or graduations? they need a real Disney comics fan for this job, not a
>>>simple guy who even doesn't keep the same names from a story to another...

I have no idea who does their translations, whether they hire translators or just go around the
office asking "Hey, d'you speak English? Here, translate this! You can say "thank you in Swedish?
Translate this!"
Good sense would dictate hiring a bona fide translator for each language, someone who has truly
studied the language; not merely learned to speak, but how it works, the linguistics of  it, someone
who understnads the cultural references, idioms, colloquialisms, ...
In this particular instance, it's not even a matter of  knowing the comics or mastering the
language; as has already been pointed out, it looks like they are not paying attention, not actually
reading-- hence such incongruities as the ten year old nephews witnessing events that supposedly
occurred 51 years ago.
It's just like those dreadful pseudo-translations of  movies & TV series, where they systematically
(99.99% of  the time) make the same gross mistakes: "compass" becomes "a pair of  compasses" instead
of  "boussole" ("compass" being similar to the French for  "a pair of  compasses", "compas"), and
20+ students still go to (grammar) school rather college (because those so-called translators don't
know that "college" means "university" and not school).
*sigh*

Fortunately, we will soon all be able to read those stories with their original English text! :) :)
:)


Best wishes,

Olivier