Question about years in italian story about Cornelius Coot

Ole R Nielsen oleroc at tdcspace.dk
Fri Feb 13 17:26:05 CET 2004


Harry Fluks writes:
>> > The danish version claims Cornelius Coot lived from 1672 to 1748.
>> > http://coa.inducks.org/coa/c1/story.php/0/I+TL+1764-B//_
>>
>> an error has happened in the translation. The statue
>> in the splash panel of the story in the Italian version is inscribed
>> with the words "Cornelius Coot 1673-1784".
>
>Maybe it's more an "improvement" than an error? In the Italian original,
Coot
>would have been 111 years old when he died. Maybe the Danish found that too
unlikely.
>(I know, it *is* possible. It's just unlikely, especially in the 17th/18th
century.)

With a name like "Coot" (as in "grumpy old coot") I find it more than likely
that
Cornelius lived well beyond average expecteed lifespan of the times.

I too considered that explanation, along with the more common one, being
that
translators are very often wrong when translating numbers - possibly they
are
better at remembering a semantically meaningful sentence than a string of
numbers.

Unless the translator has a better reason than an opinion of what seems
likely,
improvements like this should be avoided - even with lesser Italian writers.

-- Ole




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