Translation and censorship

[Donald D. Markstein]

> I'm not sure I'd like it, though... just as I did not like the 
> Flintstone reference... this is 1957, the Flintstone still had to air! 
> But besides that... if there is no reference in the original, then 
> there must be no reference in the translation, no matter what. Not 
> even the Phantom Blot reference later on in the story, there is no 
> such thing in the original.
>
> I'm also sorry to see that censorship in the first two pages (about 
> hunting). I know that many Italian reprints of this story were just as 
> censored (actually, even more), but that's not a good reason. 
> Censorship is always wrong, no matter what.


How ironic to read the second "no matter what" in the paragraph 
immediately following the first! What is an absolute, unequivocal 
statement of what MUST NOT be in something, if not an attempt at censorship?

Being a typical monolingual American, I don't do translation work. But 
I've written new dialog for both Gladstone and Gemstone when the 
original writer has made a good story, but his non-native skill with 
English has rendered  the actual words on the page less than ideal. It's 
a lot like translating from English to American. In the credits, it's 
called "American script".

My sole mandate in this work is to make it entertaining. Usually, that's 
done by remaining faithful to the story as a whole, but playing fast and 
loose with details. If I think of a good gag that can be slipped in 
without damage to the original, I have no qualms about doing so. I've 
even inserted entire subplots that weren't there before, tho the 
opportunity for anything as radical as that doesn't come up very often.

If there's a reference in the original that may strike a modern reader 
as dated, you can bet it'll be modernized in the American script. And if 
I can insert a reference into the script, that modern American readers 
will get, I'll do so in a heartbeat. In a Scarpa story published by 
Gladstone during the '90s, I needed an anology to fit into the reader's 
cultural context, so I made a passing reference to President Clinton's 
cat. It was perfectly apolitical, so no problems there -- just a thing 
everybody had heard of, which was therefore available for use -- which, 
to an American audience, the European equivalent was not, even if a 
"faithful" translation would have used one.

I took some flak from this very list for something else in that same 
story. "How would you like a translator to do that to one of your Egmont 
stories?" I was asked, tho it came more in the form of a challenge. I 
responded by asking the translators to make me look good in their 
languages, whatever that took. We're all familiar with the idea of 
things being "lost in translation". That's inevitable. But the 
translator can also put something in to replace it. There's no reason a 
translated version can't be as good as the original, provided the 
translator, who presumably is as good a writer in his own language as 
editors seem to think I am in mine, is given a free hand.

As for "censoring" things like references to hunting or (one of my 
favorite things to drop) tobacco smoking, bear in mind that while these 
stories, churned out like yard goods for the voracious appetite of a 
weekly comic book, may indeed be deathless art -- that's not how 
publishers see them. They're just trying to sell funnybooks. If a racial 
stereotype, perhaps perfectly acceptable in some bygone era, would cost 
him circulation by offending some modern readers -- he'd be a darned 
fool not to soften or eliminate it. It's not a matter of right and 
wrong. It's what the audience is likely to buy.

In an ideal world, there would be separate editions for quaint, musty 
antiquarians who want it precisely as it was, and modern readers who 
just want to be entertained -- the antiquarian edition, of course, 
available only privately, so as to avoid unnecessary 
circulation-damaging controversy -- but we don't happen to live in an 
ideal world. In the here-and-now, only one edition of the average, 
routine story is going to see print, and it's going to be the one with 
mass audience appeal. End of story.

Quack, Don

P.S. Translating Herriman?!! Since much of his appeal lies in his 
inventive use of the English language, that must be a daunting task! 
Hats off to anyone who can evoke a similar response in another language! 
But I'll bet a good job of it would be nothing like the original.