Keskustelujen arkisto

Oog. I want to try to mind my own business, and very little of that, these
days. I spare you these ungodly blocks of text that I send. But I can't let
this whopper get away...

From: dcml-bounces at nafsk.se [mailto:dcml-bounces at nafsk.se]
>>>>>I hate to get all elitist on you guys, but it does seem to boil down to
a professional's point of view versus that of those who don't work in the
field and therefore have only a hazy knowledge of how the field itself
works. Many people have creative input; and while the story is primarily the
writer's, his "vision", if you will, is only one of those that affect what
you read on the page.

This and the rest is so wrong on so many levels... and I think I can show
that at least one fairly "elite" "professional" does not agree that this is
how it works at all. I can tell you that my stories are produced and
finalized just as I intend them to be with a few always-good suggestions
from Byron, but never any that I don't agree with, and that the final script
and art that becomes the publisher's "official version" is strictly my
creative vision, good or bad, and no one else's. And even if I usually am
not totally satisfied, all evidence seems to suggest that readers, young &
old, are pretty happy with my stuff just as it is, and especially happiest
when they read Gladstone's/Gemstone's versions where my scripts are used
word for word as written.
Furthermore, though I always interject into every interview I give that what
I do is definitely *not* "art" and I maintain it is only "entertainment", I,
as one "professional", still do not consider what I do to be "casual
entertainment for children". I try to make it "intelligent entertainment for
adults (and if children enjoy it, too, good for them)". In truth, the
average reader of these stories in Europe is a teenager or young adult, say
10-20... *not* the same "children" who are reading BAMSE there. Meanwhile,
the average age of the reader of Gladstone/Gemstone comics in America, from
what I can tell from my stateside personal appearances and fanmail, are
"children" about 40-60 years old... but that's another unrelated matter
altogether. Whatever the case, the main readership is composed of
intelligent hoomin beans, not toddlers. I give them my best effort at all
times... I do not think I am providing "raw material" to be altered at the
whim of some unknown functionary whom I do not have any contact with or
knowledge of, and who may not have the slightest idea (or desire in having
the slightest idea) as to what my intention is in what I have the characters
say or *not* say. In some countries like Sweden or Finland, the translators
are very diligent, very knowledgeable (important!), and very careful to
preserve the authors' intentions. But, yes, I know that in other instances,
in other countries, most of which I mercifully never even know about, the
translators have no interest in what the original intention of the dialogue
may have been.

OBVIOUSLY (this seems to need to be repeated, eh?), when a play-on-words is
used in a script (which shouldn't happen in the first place in international
scripts), the translator needs to be clever and think up a different pun for
his target language or some other bit of business to fill the void. But if I
carry on for a page or two with NO gags whatsoever, or perhaps very limited
dialogue, or a specific type of dry humor, I certainly expect that a
translator would know enough about what he's doing NOT to decide to start
inserting one-liners or topical references or wordy jabber into every other
panel, breaking up the flow of timing and mood, just because what I am doing
does not match his personal sense of humor or lack thereof. That is not a
translator's job. If a translator thinks he is so much more clever than the
writers of the stories, why is he only a translator in the first place? Let
him write his own stories and express himself in the proper way... not
practice his creativity on someone else's dialogue, changing it, "punching
it up" for the audience and for the type of humor that *he* personally wants
to write for.

Are we saying that all these Disney comics are originally written by hacks
whose work is dull and who deserve to have no control over how people change
their intentions? Are we? If so, sure, rewrite the @#$& out of every page,
every panel. If the writers don't give a flying @#$% about their own work,
sure, give them no respect. But I don't think that's what we think nor is
that the case. So their work should be used as they intended it, or passed
over in favor of something deemed better. Why try to use a weak script in
the first place? Find another story -- there are thousands of Disney stories
to pick from, after all.

But in this specific instance we are not really talking about translators.
You knew that the scripts are all provided to Gemstone already in English,
eh? But that English has been (not in my case, but otherwise almost always)
already translated from another language into a rather awkward English... in
a form that doesn't sound quite right as dialogue. What we are actually
discussing when it comes to Disney comics from Gladstone/Gemstone are not
translators but "dialogue reworders". The reworder has a difficult enough
job to rework that clumsy English into flowing dialogue *without* changing
or adding anything of his own. That's why good reworders are as essential as
actual translators who deserve all the credit they receive in helping to
present everything from comics to Voltaire or Dumas and everything in
between (or the Arsene Lupin book I was reading just last night, translated
as usual by LeBlanc's cohort, the great Alexander Tiexiera de Mattos).

(I can just imagine what Howard Roark would think of this conversation. I
wish I could conjure him up from the trial scene of THE FOUNTAINHEAD for
some choice words about this type of attitude toward an author (architect)
and an audience... this "art by committee". As an Ayn Rand fan, I'm already
not sure how I lasted 20 years in this field!)

But wait... Spreafico, Stajano, Rosa... izzit only us Italians with this
attitude? Are we creative/artistic stereotypes? Nonetheless, I was pleased
to see this wise summation come from my scholarly countryman in Cambridge --
he is defining "translator", but it also applies to "dialogue reworder"

From: Frank Stajano <fms27 at cam.ac.uk>
>>>>>A good translator is
- one who lets the original author shine through
- one who understands all the nuances of what the original author meant
- one capable of carrying as much of that as possible to the target language
- one who is humble enough to recognize that he is NOT THE AUTHOR and that
the original creation deserves faithful respect

I admit that the above seemed to drag a bit down around the 3rd line, but I
easily resisted punching it up with my own sidegag or jolly reference to
last night's AMERICAN IDOL* TV show. I think that if the author felt that
something like that was needed, he would have inserted it himself. (But
thank gosh I didn't hafta translate from his Italian!)

* (I've never seen AMERICAN IDOL and have no idea if it was actually on last
night, but from what I hear on Letterman it's always good for a cheap
topical laff.)
And with that, I again disappear. Lucky you.

Hello Everyone!
As someone who has translated things into various languages from and into English, I can assure you it is a real trick, and that "rewriting" is sometimes the only way to handle the problem.
An example:
In Germany I once watched an episode of "The Simpsons" where Marge becomes famous through a pie recipe. In German the pie was "Pfefferminzfleischtorte" which struck me extremely odd - even for The Simpsons" - because it translates as "peppermint meat pie" which sounds fairly disgusting.
It immediately struck me this was a severely incompetent translation of the English "mince-meat" pie, where "mince" (chop or cut) was mistaken for "mints" as in peppermint, and the translator was unaware that there is NO meat in mince-meat: it is all chopped, sugared, and spiced fruits (raisins, dates, etc.), but because it looks rather dark and "meaty", you get the name "mince-meat."
Still, to the German ear "Pfefferminzfleischtorte" must sound rather oddly comical!

Although I understand the practical constraints on time, budget and
staff of a small publishing house...

Gary Leach wrote:
> Maybe not, but the English scripts that we wind up with for Scarpa's
> stories haven't always measured up. I don't recollect offhand if he was
> facile with English, but I remember a couple of stories of his back in
> the Gladstone days that came to us with English scripts that read like
> painfully literal translations. That approach can crush the life out of
> a story, dialogue-wise.

...I agree up to here...

> In cases like that it almost makes more sense to
> write a whole fresh script just based on what can be perceived in the
> art. (That's not something we actually ever did, but sometimes the
> temptation was very strong. The same holds true today.)

...but not here.

Gemstone (and Gladstone before it) cares about the comics it publishes.
It shows. Good.

If a careful publisher wants to publish a good story and receives a poor
translation of it, the correct solution is not to reinvent some random
new dialogue for it (particularly if written by someone who can't even
read and appreciate the original story) but to commission a better
*translation*.

Competent translators exist and would be much more appropriate for this
job than self-important monoglot gag-men---though they might cost more.

--

Frank Stajano http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/fms27/

P.S.:
I reread my Tuesday submission, and I find it rambling and espousing ideas
that were already stated and didn't need repeating by the likes of me. But
no apologies. I saw that some people's opinions were being dismissed
summarily because they were termed unprofessional and ignorant, and that
riled me somewhat. I knew that at least one (if not several) of those folks
could write in his *second* language of English better than I can or than
can any other native Americans on this ML can in *our own* language. And he
also knows more about international comics in general, and certainly
international Disney comics in particular, and probably (like most Italian
comic fans) also American comics than I or any other American here does. And
he has also written or contributed to books dealing with the creation and
presentation of comics. And I knew he was far too polite to mention any of
this in defense of his own worthy ideas. So when I saw his and others'
opinions dismissed so cavalierly, I felt moved to try to alleviate some
American arrogance cast toward them.

Carry on..............................

> "Disney in Deutschland"
>
> For those wondering what all this is about; please check out Michael
> Barrier's website - www.michaelbarrier.com and
> www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/disney-in-deutschland for further
> information.
And just for the record; Walt Disney neither met Adolf Hitler nor being
an anti-Semitic!

> Are Myklebust
>

Frank:

> If a careful publisher wants to publish a good story and receives a
> poor translation of it, the correct solution is not to reinvent
> some random new dialogue for it (particularly if written by someone
> who can't even read and appreciate the original story) but to
> commission a better *translation*.

This, however, is precisely what is restricted by the constraints on
time, budget and staff of a small publishing house. And quite a lot
of scripts we get, particularly these days, are not translations, but
English scripts by the writers themselves, so there's nothing from
which to get anything "better".

We don't just "Americanize" scripts of non-American writers, either.
Even American writers have to strive for a degree of idiomatic
neutrality when writing for Egmont and Disney Italy, and this can
result in as flat a dialogue script as anything from a non-American.
While these rarely call for a full-scale rewrite (in fact, I don't
recall any that required it), the editing that has to be done on some
of them can come fairly close.

Gary

We're talking about a book featuring full frontal nudity (both male and
female) and explicit discussion of sexual acts being given to a 9-year-old
boy and/or his 6-year-old brother... personally, I look forward to the CBLDF
losing this one.

// Travis Seitler

On 6/21/07, fabio blanco <blankfabio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just when I was seeing the new Gemstone Comic Book for give in Halloween,
> I receive that newsletter. For me, in Argentina is very difficult help with
> something, but I hope some of you guys can make something. Thanks!
> FABIO
> ----------------
>
> For nearly three years the Fund has defended Georgia retailer Gordon Lee,
> seeing him through multiple arraignments and procedures, and racking up $80,000
> in legal bills. The charges stem from a Halloween 2004 incident in which
> Lee handed out, among other free comics, an anthology featuring an excerpt from
> the critically acclaimed graphic novel The Salon. The segment depicted a
> historically accurate meeting between 20th Century art icons Georges Braque and
> Pablo Picasso, the latter depicted in the nude.
>
>