Euros and duck universe

Kari Lepola Kari.Lepola at hut.fi
Tue Jan 15 17:12:44 CET 2002


Don Rosa wrote:
> I foresee some problems with my friends in Finland or Norway when they
> start putting Euro symbols on *my* Money Bins. I will suggest they switch
> to the initials of $crooge McDuck (in their translations) such as they use
> in other European countries, or I will be upset. They can put the Euro
> symbols on the 99.999% of the stories that are *not* mine.

Well, this isn't really a problem in Finland anyway, because the symbol
on the money bin has (at least as far as I know) always been RA meaning
Roope Ankka, which is Scrooge's name in finish. I don't know how
did this start but probably they figured that the $ on the bin
translated
nicely into meaning Scrooge. Putting $ in a kid's comic in 1950's 
would not have been obvious and maybe they wanted also to be closer to
the original and didn't use mk meaning markka (FIM).

I think that there is really much more need to use euro when ducks
talk about money in a normal everyday sence and it isn't any special
money or the currency has no importance for the story. After all, Donald
Duck is still a comic for kids and it would seem strange if the money
was still markkas, say ten years from now on.

As for the consistency of the stories, well Don is always a special case
and his stories do happen in the 1950's in USA, and they will be 
translated carefully, because a big part of his stories greatness is in 
the details (them being always meticulous and historically correct and
the
plot being flawless), but as for the more "mass produced" stories, the
money has been markka and will (probably) be euro and the location of
Duckburg will be undefined, (exept when defined, then it is USA, [except 
if it needs to be somewhere else])  

Don's Ducks live always in the 1950's, but other stories quite often use
for example modern high tech gadgets, and happen in the present,
which moves, but since the past also moves, Hewey, Dewey and Lowey are
always kids in school and the bin's content hasn't been moved ever.
The duck universe can change quite a lot even in a single weekly and I 
don't see there beeing any problem with this. For a comic this is
natural
thing. So Scrooge's first coin is a dime and he does his business in
dollars, but in the next story he might by his ice cream with euros
(!what a horrible way to throw away money! :-) He might even in a one
story change money in order to travel to Europe and then in the next one
alreay live in Europe.
As for kid reading these comics, I would say that it is totally logical
for the money in the comic to be in the same currency as their pocket 
money.

And finally it will at least be more locical when $crooge pays Donald
30 cents per hour :-), but what will they do if Don writes a story
where ducks travel to Finland and $crooge has to pay something which
costs over 100 cents ??!!??

Kari Lepola




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