DCML digest, Vol 1 #91 - 9 msgs

[Don Rosa]

From: Thomas Schuster <t.schuster at bo.nettuno.it>
Subject: Re: ducks - human beings
>>>DON: I don't know whether you've been asked this before, but I recall
occasion in which you called a Disney character a duck, even if you had to
do so in order to be able to quote one of Monty Python's biggest ever gags.

Yes, we cover these same grounds when we discuss Donlad-is-human every few
years. I never avoid calling Donald a "Duck". I can hardly avoid that...
it's right there -- "Donald DUCK". He's a Duck. But, as we've said in the
past, in this "Universe", that type of "Duck", as well as Gladstone's
Gander, and I s'pose Mickey's Mouse (if I deigned to discuss the guy), are
looked upon as some sort of ethnic grouping or a family name. There are
"Duck"s and "Swine"s and "Gander"s and such in Duckburg sorta like the way
there are Romans and Gauls and Druids in "Asterix", or Italians and Jones'
and Catholics in Louisville. But I don't mean I analyze it so carefully. I
just know when I think of Donald's "Duck" it's not like the "duck"
wandering around in Grandma Duck's barnyard.

>>>Now, Monthy Python are almost completely unknown in Italy,

How sad!

>>> so I suppose the
translator limited himself (herself?) to translate your script literally.

I always know I risk terrible consequences when I put those in-jokes into
my scripts, and sometimes I almost take them back out... but then I decide
that I like it the way it is and I'm doin' the stories for myself anyway,
so I leave it in there and hope for the best... and I hope for clever
translators to recognize the reference or for wise translators to know to
rewrite and remove it. Translating it literally when it makes no sense, and
not bothering to contact me with a quick question (which almost all the
translators know they can do via e-mail and get an almost instantaneous
personal reply), is what I hope they won't do... but I know I risk that.
But I knew this job was dangerous when I took it!
(F'rinstance, in the past 24 hours alone, I've answered e-mail queries from
the Finnish translator for their use of the "Coin" story, and the German
translator for the re-use of the Kalevala story in the German "Rosa album"
series.)