careless translators

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Thu Oct 23 19:59:51 CEST 2003


On the subject of how irritating it is for me to carefully construct a story
making sure everything is just right, and then have the meaning botched by a
careless translator... here is a good example: now, if you have not yet read
my story in the new Egmont weeklies called (in English) "Trash or Treasure",
stop reading now and skip to the next letter.
******SPOILER WARNING******
I hear this from a reader in Poland:
"However I believe the Polish translators screwed something up: On page 12
panel 11 Scrooge is thinking something which in English would be "This is
end! Now Donald will tell him how much this stamp is worth!" This does not
make sense because it looks like Scrooge also was thinking that it's the
stamp, not the pens, that were valuable. What was the text supposed to be in
the original version?"

Very good. Assuming you are accurately reporting this balloon, you're quite
right. Apparently this translator didn't even understand what was going on
in the story he was working on. And it's not rocket science. My original
balloon for $crooge in the official script from which the translator was
working (I have a copy of it) is "That does it! Now the auctioneer will tell
him the value! I’m doomed!" For one thing, the translator is saying that
Donald is going to tell the auctioneer how valuable the stamp is -- if that
were true and the stamp was valuable and Donald knew that for a fact, that
alone would have rendered the whole story senseless. But in addition to that
flub, the story in Poland now reads as if $crooge was also out to get the
stamp the whole time and... what?... changed his mind on the last page? How?
Why?
So... dare I ask what happens in this balloon in other translated versions
of this story?



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