I am thinking about learning a language other than English which will give me access to the largest number of disney comics.
So what language will that be? Background info- I'm looking to read the best of the best,like the stuff we all want in the Disney Masters line. Or the hall of fame series of various countries. So which language has the most translated versions of comics from all around the world?
Because of course I won't be able to get orignal issues/publications of stuff, so I'll have to reside with reprints/collected editions. So which language has the most accessible reprints of stuff, a person like me sitting in Asia would be able to acquire? (I mean which are not long out of print.)
This question is a bit convoluted, but I hope you all will be able to help me.
I'm currently learning Italian on Duolingo thanks to a comment made by Matilda. If you want to learn new languages to read more Disney comics, why settle for translations? Learn the languages that the stories were written in. Of course, learning new languages is not easy, so it helps if you take a language related to ones you already know. English gives you a solid base for Germanic and Romance languages, which are the basis for the vast majority of Disney comics.
I would say the second-most important language in Disney comics, after English, is Italian. Italy has the highest level of overall story quality, as well as some excellent author libraries. However, the flipside of this is that Italy rarely publishes 4-tier stories from Egmont or Holland. They publish some 3-tier Egmont stories, but those aren't worth the trouble.
Another language you could consider is Portuguese. Portugal has the highest rate of Italian translated stories outside of Italy, as well as having the highest rate of Brazilian stories outside of Brazil. You'll find even fewer Egmont and Dutch stories there, however.
Next up are languages in which the Egmont pocketbooks are printed. You'll find a mix of Italian and Egmont stories there, as well as the bulk of Egmont output. Of these, Norwegian may be your best bet. It has great mutual intelligibility with Swedish and Danish, meaning that if you miss out in one country, you might have luck reading in another. Note that there are two Norwegian languages: Bokmål and Nynorsk. Disney comics are printed in Nynorsk, I believe. Egmont scripts are written in English, so there's no competition there. The Hall of Fame artists are largely being covered in the Disney Masters series, so there's little news to discover there. You don't want to Barks or Rosa in Danish, right?
French is another option. France publishes a great variety of stories, from Egmont, from Holland, from Italy, and even some of its own output. Their regular productions are more varied than in most countries. Most of their collected works are translated from abroad, however. And French domestic output is mostly quite old by now.
The last producer on the list is Dutch, but I would advise against it. The most interesting Dutch stories were translated into English long ago, and the Dutch publisher doesn't do artists' collection unless their name be Carl Barks. If you want to read more good Dutch stories, learn German. That's a much more accessible language!
Post by dorialexander on Aug 20, 2021 20:48:07 GMT
Italian is certainly the best choice if you're looking for a massive amount of untranslated Disney comics as well as a large continuous flow of original content. Now in terms of reprints of comics published elsewhere, this is less clear-cut and French or German publications may present you a more diverse set of Dutch, Nordic or (obviously) italian comics.
Hmmm. There are a lot of questions lurking inside your question. I myself have bought many dozens of Disney comics published in French, German, Dutch and Italian, so you'd think I would have a clear answer for you, but I'm trying to untangle all the issues.
Which language will give you the most worthwhile stories? As dorialexander says, the answer there is probably Italian. But as That Duckfan says, the Italian books don't republish many four-tier stories from Egmont or the Netherlands. So, they don't have most of my personal favorites! Korhonen, Rota, Kruse, Hedman, Midthun....
In which country/language are there the most reprints of good stories from other countries? As That Duckfan says, that's harder to say. I agree with what he says on this overall. Probably the Egmont pocketbooks are your best option: a Scandinavian language, German, or Dutch, right? Though the small size is not ideal for appreciating the art. The Portuguese reprint Brazilian stories, but I don't know how you'd access Portuguese comics. The French also have published a fair smattering of Brazilian comics. Lately I haven't been so pleased with the selection of stories in Super Picsou Geant, but the selection of stories in Picsou is improving, no longer Barks-dominated. For my personal taste, the Germans have done pretty well in story choice in Micky Maus Comics (as distinct from the weekly comic Micky Maus) and in Micky Maus Taschenbuch. MMComics has published stories for sure from France and from the Netherlands along with Egmont stories. MMTaschenbuch seems to make an effort to include stories featuring the female characters in every issue. MMTaschenbuch is only a bit bigger than the Egmont pocketbooks; MMComics is considerably bigger, more like the standard American comic book size.
Which country/language produces reprints or collected editions *which you will be able to get*? A more complicated question. I order almost all my non-English comics through eBay, which has the great advantage of a single system including PayPal that works throughout the several countries where it operates. So, I have bought a lot of French and German comics through French and German eBay. There is a Dutch eBay, but there are hardly any Dutch Disney comics for sale on it; those are all sold on the Dutch marktplaats.nl --but I haven't figured out how to buy anything from there as an American. Drives me crazy, because I'd *love* to be able to buy a bunch of comics I see there. There is an Italian eBay, and I have bought about twenty issues of Topolino or Zio Paperone from Italian eBay--but the shipping costs from Italy to the USA have been *much* higher than the shipping costs from Germany or from France (though those have gone up in the past year). The Scandinavian countries do not use eBay, and I don't know what sites they do use to sell used comics, or whether those sites are easily usable by someone in another country.
So one question here is which countries have online stores or auction sites you could use. Another is what the shipping costs are from various countries to you. I suppose there might also be regular bookstores or comics stories which would take orders from abroad, though I can't advise you on that. But, a funny story here: many years ago I bought a Rosa calendar from the main Finnish online bookstore. Every page of the online site was helpfully translated into English for me, but when I got to the point of purchasing I entered my credit card number and then had to click on one of two buttons, and the words on those buttons were *not* translated (this was before there was much in the way of online translating services, and even today, Google Translate does *not* do a good job with Finnish!). So I clicked on one at random and hoped for the best!
I don't find German to be a fun language to read; the sentence structure is annoying for someone who is used to verbs coming immediately after the subject of the sentence. But because German eBay works for me and the shipping costs have not been prohibitive and the publications I mentioned (along with the usual Egmont pocketbooks) have printed lots of stories I was looking for, I have gotten more comics from Germany than from any country other than France. France has been #1 for me because I read French the most fluently after English--then Dutch, then German. I would get more Dutch comics than German ones if I could figure out how to buy them. I might have decided to learn a Scandinavian language in order to read Disney comics if there were an easy way for me to buy comics from Norway or Denmark. When friends or relatives go to Scandinavia, I send them to comics stories with a list of comics I want--a couple of times that has yielded great results! Of the European languages in which Disney comics are published, Dutch is the most like English, and would be the easiest for you to pick up since you are familiar with English.
Thank you so much for the replies! And I've come to the realization that I need to narrow down on what Disney comics I *want to read*. I guess I'll have to familiarize myself with the works of a lot of people first. I'm really interested in reading like Midthun, Van Horn, Marco Rota, Scarpa, Cavazzano, Massimo De Vita among others. But I'll try to read more works and I'll surely consult you all again on a later date on this matter. Thanks again.
Definitely German! They reprint pretty much all good Italian stories in Germany and even most bad ones. On the other hand many Egmont and Dutch 4-tier comics are never reprinted in Italian.
Post by Daniel Maline on Aug 24, 2021 15:02:29 GMT
The best options are German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese. Personally, I would recommend Finnish because it is my mother tongue. Several American, Italian, German, Dutch and Danish comics have been published in Finnish. But unfortunately, Brazilian and Japanese comics are not included in this category. So I would say that quantitatively German may be a better language option than Finnish.
I've been learning Modern Greek on and off for 20 years; I converted to the Greek Orthodox Church in my 20s and being around Greeks, I began to pick it up. I haven't become fluent, however, due to family and work obligations popping up every time I try to "really dig in." But I persist...
I own almost all 48 editions of the Carl Barks Library in Greek (it's not the CBL technically; it's based off the Italian collection). I'm only missing about 4 issues which were sold out from the bookseller I purchased them from online. Besides being a collector, I thought it would be a good way to practice my Greek, as whenever I experience difficulties, I can consult the same passage in the English original. That has been fun. I also have a few issues of Komiks in Greek. Finally, one can find a large number of scans on Scribd, although I won't link as I think it's against forum policy.
So you can find a good amount of material in Greek, although it's mostly translated; but if you had some other reason for learning Greek, then hey, why not join me in learning Greek?
I recommend German it has the highest number of publications after Italian, but then you can easily learn Dutch as a branch language and get access to thousands of exclusive comics as well. I am doing this currently and it's really fun
Last Edit: Sept 20, 2022 19:53:27 GMT by silverzzz