"The Duck Who Never Was"

[Thomas Pryds Lauritsen]

Don Rosa wrote:

 > From: Olivier (mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr)
 > Subject: Re: The Duck Who Never Was
 >  >>>>From DD # 586 (Sept '94), p 2 of  the story:
 > panel 6, Donald fills his birthday on the form-- "month: 09" "day: 06"
 >
 > This story was plagued by translator errors on its first go-around 10 
years
 > ago, and the situation is only worse now when they are reusing it
 > improperly!

Then you'd probably like to hear that the whole date dialogue was 
translated correctly (according to Olivier's citations) at least in one 
place: Recently a 110 page hardcover book carrying 8 stories was 
published in Denmark, each of the stories representing its own decade 
from the 30es to the 90es + "a new century". "The Duck Who Never Was" 
represented "a new century", which is strange since it was made in the 
90es and it mentions Donald "being" 60 years old which was relevant in 
the 90es. But the important thing is that they didn't try to change 60 
into 70 or mention any years or the like.

 > Also, later in the story, I had Gus Goose
 > chalking a Duck Family Tree onto a wall with himself and $crooge in the
 > proper positions, but every single international version of the story had
 > the names reversed when added by the local translator.

Oh, and this seems to be correct, too, when comparing with your Duck 
Family Tree poster.

 > [...] that DD's birthday is *June 9* and *not*
 > "Sept. 6", how could all of those translators and editors have not 
realized
 > that they had an error in their script?!)

This is only guessing, but perhaps the fact that one writes a date on 
the form "day - month" in many European countries played a role?

 > It would be so easy to reuse this story properly -- all the editors would
 > have to do is say "here is Don Rosa's 60th Anniversary Donald Duck story
 > from 10 years ago" and use the correct script

This was what they did in Denmark (and probably the other Scandinavian 
countries, too).

Thomas

-- 
Thomas Pryds Lauritsen
http://www.cs.aau.dk/~pryds/