Localisation and Tradition

[sirtao]

If they aren't translating directly from the original language, then they are doing everything wrong.

Using mechanical translation as a base can work for amateurs and extreme urgent jobs where one ends up just making sure there aren't major grammatical errors, not for "normal" translations.

[RobbK1]

Jul 22, 2017 11:49:19 GMT sirtao said:

If they aren't translating directly from the original language, then they are doing everything wrong.

Using mechanical translation as a base can work for amateurs and extreme urgent jobs where one ends up just making sure there aren't major grammatical errors, not for "normal" translations.

I agree 100 %.

[thadwell]

In almost all cases, the original language-as-published is used. Interesting comment about differences between Casty and Artibani. I find that their work is so tight to begin with that it doesn't need much help from me. I'm curious as to where you guys stand on the American comic books being translated into other languages, and the work of Barks being stripped of some of its sheen in the process. Doesn't really bother me. Do you think everyone who's translated a Barks or Gottfredson story had a firm grasp of mid-century American culture and linguistics? Does anyone really care? Are we sure this is not just a nostalgia-"the way I read it is the only way"-issue... or ego?

[RobbK1]

Jul 22, 2017 13:59:11 GMT thadwell said:

In almost all cases, the original language-as-published is used. Interesting comment about differences between Casty and Artibani. I find that their work is so tight to begin with that it doesn't need much help from me. I'm curious as to where you guys stand on the American comic books being translated into other languages, and the work of Barks being stripped of some of its sheen in the process. Doesn't really bother me. Do you think everyone who's translated a Barks or Gottfredson story had a firm grasp of mid-century American culture and linguistics? Does anyone really care? Are we sure this is not just a nostalgia-"the way I read it is the only way"-issue... or ego?

I doubt that any young American translators would be able to have a good feel for what things were like, and the way people spoke in both Barks' and Gottfredson's times, and both those writers used an old fashioned American English even older than the average during their young years.  Certainly a foreigner would have quite a bit less feel than that. 

Erika Fuchs made the dialogue in Barks' stories a very German experience.  I'm guessing that the German fans probably love Barks' stories with Fuchs' translations infinitely better than they'd have liked Barks' stories written in his own English wording, EVEN if they'd have been well-schooled in English at a young age, and were completely fluent in that tongue.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

We should make a difference between reading and translating. I think that you need to know some cultural aspects of the origin country to get some stories, or to enjoy the (otherwise weird) humour. But not for translation, since a Disney story too tide to the culture of the coutry of the writer does not deserve to be published elsewhere, or it deserves to be rewrittren with new dialogues. Clearly that's not the case for the stories that David and the others at IDW are picking, as far as I can see from the inducks.


About Thad's question on how Got and Barks were translated.
Italian translators of Gottfredson since the 30s respected the meaning of the lines, but completely changed the dialectical thone into a very correct Italian. Comics written with orthografical errors or slang or dialects were inconcivable, especially in an age where most of the population could not speak any Italian, and teaching the official language of the young nation was still a priority (television solved the problem in the end, but Mickey Mouse helped too I guess ). Since then, Topolino keeps this prerogative of teaching good Italian to the younger audience, and possibly enlarge their vocabulary.

Barks was translated for Topolino mainly by Guido Martina, who provided the stories with his typical (often impressive) immaginific lingustic verve, but took many liberties. Perfectly respectfull translations of Barks' stories came only in the 90's, with the magazine Zio Paperone, I think (but I am not completely sure, as there were many hardcover publications of Barks's material in the previous two decades).

[sirtao]

Generally speaking, a lot gets lost in the ENG->ITA translation of many comics, due the grammatical and lexical differences.

Kirby loses A LOT when translated, for example. But the alternatives are either "reinvent" the dialogues, something comic books translators learned to NOT do(unlike books, TV and Movies translators) or try to adapt them with local dialects and inflexions, something that has been tried a few times and is nowadays deemed ineffective at best and making things less intelligible at worst.

[drakeborough]

Jul 21, 2017 13:31:17 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

I don't know how names on the cover work in the US. Maybe this is how they use to do.

I can't remember any comic in which the translator/localizator is credited on the front cover in addition to the inside of the comic.

The translator of a book may be credited on the front cover, but not on the same line as the main author, and not with a name as big; plus, a note is used to clarify the role of the translator. For example, in this book...



... we have the big name "CONAN DOYLE" above all, and a few lines later by have a much smaller "Traduzione di Nicoletta Rosati Bizzotto". No editor would do otherwise.

Jul 21, 2017 18:52:40 GMT The KKM said:

I think it's good. They go beyond translating, which I'm still not very happy or comfortable with. The more they admit it, including having the localiser credited on the cover, the better, to me. It's a clear warning of "this is not just a translation, someone's altered it enough they deserve further credit".

I'm also not happy nor comfortable with the way dialogues are rewritten even when it's not necessary, but in my opinion giving excessive importance to the localizator is a case of two wrongs not making a right.

Jul 22, 2017 3:18:03 GMT thadwell said:

I'm not sure what exactly you guys are expecting these to read like. Straight and direct translations which sap all the characterization?

Where does that image come from?

Jul 22, 2017 4:08:12 GMT thadwell said:

Jul 22, 2017 3:49:27 GMT The KKM said:

I know and it's understandable why you feel slighted when we complain about it, but in the same way you're used to localisations, I personally grew up with more faithful translating instead. I already acknowledge I'm not the audience for these anyway.

Examples of these "more faithful" translations? With the exception of a few howlers, the IDW comics are very faithful to the originals. It's mandated that they be. I'm at a loss how an Italian comic translated in another language—let's say French—is comparable to the same comic translated in American English anyway. They're completely different cultures with different cadences. Other than Igor's one complaint, there is no specificity to any of this grousing.

I base myself on online images from IDW that obviously don't include complete stories, but from what I have seen the translations took many liberties: some of them were understandable, other were not in my opinion. But I guess it's better if the discussion focuses on comparison of single stories, since general discourses often lead to nowhere.

Jul 22, 2017 13:59:11 GMT thadwell said:

In almost all cases, the original language-as-published is used. Interesting comment about differences between Casty and Artibani. I find that their work is so tight to begin with that it doesn't need much help from me. I'm curious as to where you guys stand on the American comic books being translated into other languages, and the work of Barks being stripped of some of its sheen in the process. Doesn't really bother me. Do you think everyone who's translated a Barks or Gottfredson story had a firm grasp of mid-century American culture and linguistics? Does anyone really care? Are we sure this is not just a nostalgia-"the way I read it is the only way"-issue... or ego?

For me, the translation of a foreign story is also a way to learn more about a different culture.

Jul 22, 2017 16:05:25 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

About Thad's question on how Got and Barks were translated.
Italian translators of Gottfredson since the 30s respected the meaning of the lines, but completely changed the dialectical thone into a very correct Italian. Comics written with orthografical errors or slang or dialects were inconcivable, especially in an age where most of the population could not speak any Italian, and teaching the official language of the young nation was still a priority (television solved the problem in the end, but Mickey Mouse helped too I guess ). Since then, Topolino keeps this prerogative of teaching good Italian to the younger audience, and possibly enlarge their vocabulary.

Barks was translated for Topolino mainly by Guido Martina, who provided the stories with his typical (often impressive) immaginific lingustic verve, but took many liberties. Perfectly respectfull translations of Barks' stories came only in the 90's, with the magazine Zio Paperone, I think (but I am not completely sure, as there were many hardcover publications of Barks's material in the previous two decades).

Removing the dialectical sentences was a good thing, since I often find them painful when trying to read an old story in English, especially when Goofy is speaking. Of course, some characters quirks should remain, like Arpin Lusene's French accent which is part of his charme and thankfully was kept in the Italian translation of Rosa's stories.

Anyway, I find old Italian translations of Barks stories more faithful to the originals than an average Italian-to English translation of a duck or mouse comic.

[thadwell]

Monkey_Feyerabend, thanks for the informative, evenhanded posts. I did know Martina translated Barks, but I wasn't aware of how much he did to them. Martina does lose a certain zeal when translated by anyone, but I find him to be the Ducks' version of John Stanley and someone I'd love to see more of here. And you're right on the money in more ways than I care to say in public... 

So the rest of you, let me get this straight: Guido Martina and Erika Fuchs did whatever they pleased to Carl Barks's work to make it more suitable for Italian and German readers. That's fine and respectable and "faithful."

Whereas anyone who does a translation and dialogue job to an Italian story for American publication is a hack because they failed to capture the genius of an untouchable masterpiece; despite the fact it's mandated that the writer follow the Italian original faithfully, otherwise it'll get sent back for changes.

Frankly, "genius" is a label I almost never use for any writer, and it most certainly only applies to Carl Barks in the world of Disney comics. Martina and Fuchs certainly didn't think all of his cadences were worthy of following to the letter for their audiences, and who can blame them?

And some of those European printings massacred those stories in other ways to localize them (turkey dinner becoming a cake?)

But this is all OK. Because most Americans making characters like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse sound like their American selves don't know the culture of other countries or the history of their own. By the way, what country do you think Duckburg is in, anyway?

It's obvious some of you would prefer these comics to read like the banal Comixology translations fishpillow cited and that you'd also prefer trashing something you haven't even read in its entirety. This isn't about anyone doing a good job or being "faithful" - it's strictly ego. Whatever.

[Ramapith]

Jul 23, 2017 5:19:07 GMT thadwell said:

So the rest of you, let me get this straight: Guido Martina and Erika Fuchs did whatever they pleased to Carl Barks's work to make it more suitable for Italian and German readers. That's fine and respectable and "faithful."

Whereas anyone who does a [less than 100% faithful] translation and dialogue job to an Italian story for American publication is a hack because they failed to capture the genius of an untouchable masterpiece [...]

An important point to throw in here:

When Gladstone I in the 1980s got ready to publish its first Italian story, Scarpa's/Martina's "The Blot's Double Mystery," they couldn't actually acquire it in Italian at that moment, due to (at the time) the poor communication between various publishers. Though it seems hard to fathom in today's Internet-connected world, Gladstone acquired a version of the art with blank voice balloons; didn't know which issue of Topolino it was actually from, and initially weren't sure how to find out, or how to acquire that version.

Joe Torcivia—who first recommended the story for use in the USA—and the Gladstone staff had acquired various other foreign printings, but never an Italian one.

So: the Gladstone English version of "The Blot's Double Mystery" that was well-done enough to launch Scarpa fandom in the USA—but that, nevertheless, has been criticized these past few months for some changes from Martina's original—was actually translated into English from a German version, localized in the Fuchs tradition by Gudrun Penndorf. That's the secret that explains a lot of its differences.

And it's that same beloved Fuchs tradition—with numerous local literary, filmic, and cultural references added to the stories—that heavily influenced Geoff Blum, Byron Erickson, Gary Leach, and Don Markstein in developing the original "culture" of Americanized European Disney comics in the late 1980s, and that Jon, Thad, Joe, Maura, and myself have tried to keep up more recently. Was it always *absolutely* authentic to the originals? No; but it was no less valid than anything Fuchs and her team did—or were celebrated for. And, I'd argue, it *did* keep a huge amount of what made the originals great; even if, like Fuchs, it added local color that became part of the package for us.

How far should localization go? Disney (understandably!) expects our team to keep plot points pretty close to the originals. Ten years ago, we might have altered some a little more than we do today.

But those who would claim we're disrespectful for not producing rigid, absolutely 100% faithful ports—or that we don't have a Disney comics culture to justify anything else—isn't being fair. We do have a Disney comics culture, and I'd argue that it's the culture of Erika Fuchs.

Are you a Donaldist?

[The KKM]

I don't quite see how it's meant to be relevant to me to constantly see Fuchs mentioned, or Martina, considering they never translated to my language.

I said already. I don't like the amount of liberties taken (and don't quite like the association of "no liberties" with "it's rigid"- there's certainly a halfway between machine translation and Captain Retro Duck). I'm also not in the US buying these issues as part of a fandom readership with decades of this being tradition, like, as Mr. Gerstein points out, the Germans did with Fuchs, for an example.

So I don't like it, but I also think that's perfectly ok since I'm not the audience anyway; but I think that like the localisations or not, it's undeniable that there's enough change that a specific cover credit for localiser is warranted.

I'd thank Mr. Thadwell to be a little less incensed- I didn't call you a hack, and if you feel I did, I apologise.

[Horace]

Jul 22, 2017 14:49:23 GMT RobbK1 said:

Erika Fuchs made the dialogue in Barks' stories a very German experience.  I'm guessing that the German fans probably love Barks' stories with Fuchs' translations infinitely better than they'd have liked Barks' stories written in his own English wording, EVEN if they'd have been well-schooled in English at a young age, and were completely fluent in that tongue.

I guess that's true for most of the German fans. For example the self-called Donaldists only except the Barks stories in the translations by Fuchs. But one has to say that some/many of the Fuchs versions really don't have much to do with Barks' originals, they are totally different stories (with the same pictures). It's not only turkey becoming a cake but also boy scout leaders becoming math teachers, hamburgers becoming stew or halloween becoming mardi gras (German "Rosenmontag"). So it's often more a reimagination than a translation.

With regard to the IDW comics I sometimes would prefer that not every character would speak in some kind of dia- or sociolect, 'cause that's really a little exausting for me as a non-native reader (but I understand that I'm not in the main target group).

[squeakyboots]

Jul 22, 2017 22:05:33 GMT drakeborough said:

Jul 22, 2017 3:18:03 GMT thadwell said:

I'm not sure what exactly you guys are expecting these to read like. Straight and direct translations which sap all the characterization?

Where does that image come from?

It's from a Kingdom Hearts manga.

I'm not sure if it doesn't make sense because it's a bad translation or because it's Kingdom Hearts. It could be either one.

[The KKM]

because of the latter. from the context of kingdom hearts, it actually makes sense. it's just overly verbose, fittingly with kh.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 23, 2017 13:53:06 GMT squeakyboots said:

I'm not sure if it doesn't make sense because it's a bad translation or because it's Kingdom Hearts. It could be either one.

Oh yes. That series has some of the most confusing, tangled-up worldbuilding out there, and the very confusing names chosen for the various concepts don't help. (For one of the most egregious examples, "Heartless" are actually hearts without bodies, and "Nobodies" are, in fact, nothing more than bodies, because they have no heart.) Donald's synatx is a bit backwards, but there's no "great mistake" in there that could make it all clear as crystal.

[drakeborough]

Jul 23, 2017 5:19:07 GMT thadwell said:

Monkey_Feyerabend, thanks for the informative, evenhanded posts. I did know Martina translated Barks, but I wasn't aware of how much he did to them. Martina does lose a certain zeal when translated by anyone, but I find him to be the Ducks' version of John Stanley and someone I'd love to see more of here. And you're right on the money in more ways than I care to say in public... 

So the rest of you, let me get this straight: Guido Martina and Erika Fuchs did whatever they pleased to Carl Barks's work to make it more suitable for Italian and German readers. That's fine and respectable and "faithful."

The only changes I can recall at the moment in Martina's translations are the replacement of words that were unknown to the Italian readers of the time, like zombie or Halloween. Beside these things, I have always find them more faithful than an average IDW localization.

Jul 23, 2017 5:19:07 GMT thadwell said:

Whereas anyone who does a translation and dialogue job to an Italian story for American publication is a hack because they failed to capture the genius of an untouchable masterpiece; despite the fact it's mandated that the writer follow the Italian original faithfully, otherwise it'll get sent back for changes.

Frankly, "genius" is a label I almost never use for any writer, and it most certainly only applies to Carl Barks in the world of Disney comics. Martina and Fuchs certainly didn't think all of his cadences were worthy of following to the letter for their audiences, and who can blame them?

And some of those European printings massacred those stories in other ways to localize them (turkey dinner becoming a cake?)

But this is all OK. Because most Americans making characters like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse sound like their American selves don't know the culture of other countries or the history of their own. By the way, what country do you think Duckburg is in, anyway?

I never said American localizators are hacks or people who failed to capture the spirit of the stories. And about your last question, one thing I like about Italian translations is that they kept the fact that Duckburg is in the Usa.

There are many changes done in localizations that I think are good and even necessary. For example, the plot hole in the original version of "The Perfect Calm" in which Donald walks from Duckburg to Tibet (despite the fact that the story places Duckburg in the USA as usual) was solved in the localization by saying that Donald walked the lenght of the ship, and I think that was a good move. But other things are pointless, like having lines that are over the top even when it's not necessary, like the "Jumpin' Jailbirds..." part below:


Or like when a subtler dialogue was made more explicit to the point of being didactic, like in the image below:

Jul 23, 2017 5:19:07 GMT thadwell said:

It's obvious some of you would prefer these comics to read like the banal Comixology translations fishpillow cited and that you'd also prefer trashing something you haven't even read in its entirety. This isn't about anyone doing a good job or being "faithful" - it's strictly ego. Whatever.

I think that it's really unfair to say people are trashing the localizations, as it calling "banal" the more faithful translations, since they can often be as spry as the looser localizations. Or, in many cases, even more that them, like when the classic line "disgustosa ostentazione di plutocratica sicumera" in the first Duck Avenger story became a bland "You never let me forget that! It's disgusting!".

If anything, and I'm hesitant to say this since it may generate controversies that I don't want to, ego is what may indirectly and subconsciously be fueled by unfaithful translations, since localizators' blogs focusing on IDW comics often focus almost more on the added puns/pop culture references/continuity references than to the stories themselves, not to mention localizators get credits on the covers as big as the original creators.

I repeat that this was meant as a throwaway remark that I came up with just because I was answering a message talking about "it's strictly ego", not because I want to generate any controversy, as I found my discussion with IDW localizators to have always been interesting.

Jul 23, 2017 6:07:37 GMT Ramapith said:

Jul 23, 2017 5:19:07 GMT thadwell said:

So the rest of you, let me get this straight: Guido Martina and Erika Fuchs did whatever they pleased to Carl Barks's work to make it more suitable for Italian and German readers. That's fine and respectable and "faithful."

Whereas anyone who does a [less than 100% faithful] translation and dialogue job to an Italian story for American publication is a hack because they failed to capture the genius of an untouchable masterpiece [...]

An important point to throw in here:

When Gladstone I in the 1980s got ready to publish its first Italian story, Scarpa's/Martina's "The Blot's Double Mystery," they couldn't actually acquire it in Italian at that moment, due to (at the time) the poor communication between various publishers. Though it seems hard to fathom in today's Internet-connected world, Gladstone acquired a version of the art with blank voice balloons; didn't know which issue of Topolino it was actually from, and initially weren't sure how to find out, or how to acquire that version.

Joe Torcivia—who first recommended the story for use in the USA—and the Gladstone staff had acquired various other foreign printings, but never an Italian one.

So: the Gladstone English version of "The Blot's Double Mystery" that was well-done enough to launch Scarpa fandom in the USA—but that, nevertheless, has been criticized these past few months for some changes from Martina's original—was actually translated into English from a German version, localized in the Fuchs tradition by Gudrun Penndorf. That's the secret that explains a lot of its differences.

So, the American version of "The Blot's Double Mystery" (first Italian story to be published in the States?) is based on the German version translated by Erika Fuchs? If that's true, I apologize to the American translator for putting the blame on him for the changes, though of course this has nothing to do with IDW.

Still, if the American version was faithfully translated from the German version, then the German version must be really bad, and this is something I hope we can all agree upon. It's not just a matter of fidelty for fidelty's sake, it's a fact that the translated version completely changed the characters' motivations (like the Blot's idea to have Mickey kill O'Hara so that the former gets executed on the electric chair, and his later plot to bring O'Hara to suicide) to the point of creating plot holes. For example, in the localized version we are led to believe that the Blot warned O'Hara of the upcoming attempt to his life, which is degrading both for the former character (whose desire of revenge gets downplayed) and for the latter (not only it wasn't his merit that he saved himself from the attempted murder, but he was made to be an idiot who received an "anonymous tip" in a castle owned by the Blot and didn't even wonder about who wrote it).

This is one case in which the localization really vandalized a story.

Jul 23, 2017 6:07:37 GMT Ramapith said:

And it's that same beloved Fuchs tradition—with numerous local literary, filmic, and cultural references added to the stories—that heavily influenced Geoff Blum, Byron Erickson, Gary Leach, and Don Markstein in developing the original "culture" of Americanized European Disney comics in the late 1980s, and that Jon, Thad, Joe, Maura, and myself have tried to keep up more recently. Was it always *absolutely* authentic to the originals? No; but it was no less valid than anything Fuchs and her team did—or were celebrated for. And, I'd argue, it *did* keep a huge amount of what made the originals great; even if, like Fuchs, it added local color that became part of the package for us.

How far should localization go? Disney (understandably!) expects our team to keep plot points pretty close to the originals. Ten years ago, we might have altered some a little more than we do today.

But those who would claim we're disrespectful for not producing rigid, absolutely 100% faithful ports—or that we don't have a Disney comics culture to justify anything else—isn't being fair. We do have a Disney comics culture, and I'd argue that it's the culture of Erika Fuchs.

Too bad that "culture" was born in the first place, though id it's true that today the stories are closer to the originals theen it's a good thinks.

I don't think localizators don't have a Disney comics culture, since most of them are among the most expert scholars of this comics: my criticism was of the localization process itself, not the people behind it

Jul 23, 2017 9:50:12 GMT Horace said:

Jul 22, 2017 14:49:23 GMT RobbK1 said:

Erika Fuchs made the dialogue in Barks' stories a very German experience.  I'm guessing that the German fans probably love Barks' stories with Fuchs' translations infinitely better than they'd have liked Barks' stories written in his own English wording, EVEN if they'd have been well-schooled in English at a young age, and were completely fluent in that tongue.

I guess that's true for most of the German fans. For example the self-called Donaldists only except the Barks stories in the translations by Fuchs. But one has to say that some/many of the Fuchs versions really don't have much to do with Barks' originals, they are totally different stories (with the same pictures). It's not only turkey becoming a cake but also boy scout leaders becoming math teachers, hamburgers becoming stew or halloween becoming mardi gras (German "Rosenmontag"). So it's often more a reimagination than a translation.

That's really sad. Not accepting a Barks stoy just because it wasn't translated by Fuchs? Insane.

Jul 23, 2017 9:50:12 GMT Horace said:

With regard to the IDW comics I sometimes would prefer that not every character would speak in some kind of dia- or sociolect, 'cause that's really a little exausting for me as a non-native reader

Same for me.

At any rate, we may have different ideas on how stories should be translated, but I think we can all agree to the fact that Disney comis being still published in the Usa is a good thing.