Globality and Translations

Carl Lund clund at cox.net
Wed Feb 18 01:56:08 CET 2009


>
> Harry:
>> I miss the highly literate 
>> translations of European stories in Gladstone Series I (as 
>> well as the erudite commentary often provided)
>>     
>
> I must admit that I hated these "translations". It was more or less like
> saying "the stories are not good enough in their own right, let's add
> some stuff in the translation to make them acceptable".
> That didn't work for me (and for the same reason, the much-praised
> German translations of Barks stories didn't work for me either).
>   

Again, my understanding at the time was that Gladstone was working from 
"literal" translations made from the original language into English.  
Such literal translations are almost never of high quality in any 
language.  This has nothing to do with the quality of the original 
stories.  So Gladstone wasn't saying the original stories weren't good.  
They were polishing the literal translation script provided to them.  I 
don't have the references in front of me, but as an example, there was a 
story printed in an early Gladstone comic that had been printed in one 
of the last issues of the Western Publishing run.  The plot was the 
same, but the Gladstone version, as I recall, tied the story more 
thoroughly into the Duck universe.  (I believe it involved the ducklings 
adopting a dog.  Gladstone's version has Donald say, "You already have a 
dog."  Western's did not.  Hence, the allusion to Bolivar/Bornworthy 
which, to me, makes the story better and richer.)


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