Rosa word-gags and Translators

Anders Christian Sivebaek acsive at mail.mira.dk
Wed Aug 8 22:07:32 CEST 2001


Hi friends. 
I started to think of this mail at the mall!
I did that because I thought of one line: Feeling playful with my food
are we? It's from Metaphorically 
spanking, and one of the lines I will remember for a long time after
laughing at it. 

In chapter 10 of the Lo$ One of the beagle says that Scrooge should
give up "before we're all kilt" I'm convinced you can write the word
kill in the past tense that way, but I was dying from laughter one time
I read the line, because of my own seeing a reference to Scrooge's
scottish past, where he would wear a kilt (eg. in chapter 9). 

The next one is actually pure danish and from the same funny story.
When Scrooge is saying to Matilda that he hopes to fill the bin, in the
danish version she says something like: "Then we'll believe that, and
the one about the soft gold" (I sometimes use that as a somwwhat
untracable quote, just to drive people crazy). In the english version
she says that the canoe-dragging story was more likely. This is an
incident where the Rosa-dialogue is not supposed to be especially funny
at the certain time, but the danish line has become funny, to me at
least.

In A little something special the danish translation has made me laugh
several times. I have made people in a train confused by laughing out
loud at certain word-puns and face-expressions in the story. One that I
laughed very much at, in the dansih version, is the line which Donald
exclaims at a point: Someone must have put some strong things in the
lemonade on the party-square (down below the bin). In the american
version Donald should be talking about some spiked punch, as far as I
remember. The way that this is written is very funny. In both versions

As you can see the danish translator seems to be a good one. One goof
has to be mentioned though. In the danish version of chapter 12 of the
Lo$ Scrooge talks about that he isn't use to kids (eg. HDL), cause he
never had time to *get any himself*. The original says that he isn't
used to kids cause he never had time to *be one myself*. Why did the
danish translator change that into something quite different?? It
baffles science, to use a quote, of which origin I have no idea. 
(I only saw it used here)

BTW I spotted that the danish and swedish weeklies have one translator
each, who both do a very well job. The german weekly has several
translator. The local editor transaltes some of the stories, other
translators that i don't know much about, and then there's a Peter
Daibenzeiher who does the Rosa-translating among other things. He evn
does two versions sometimes, if I read right: One for the weekly, which
reader's group is supposed to be kids, and one for the german Rosa
albums which reader's group would be Rosa-fans. (I strongly suppose the
Michael Schumacher reference in the Cutty sark story was only in the
MM?) And last, but certainly not least, we have Finland, where, if I
understand you people here right, they have a special
consultant/translator who translates the Rosa-stories? And at least
they had that in Norway too, for the Kalevala, where Nils among other
things wrote some comments as to which notes of musical works we could
spot in the story. 

A. C. Sivebaek
acsive at mail.mira.dk




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