This thread reminded me of this Calvin and Hobbes strip. Does anybody know if this strip was translated into other languages? If it was, was the name of the language changed in the translation to match, or was Calvin shown ranting in (say) Norwegian about how everybody should speak English or shut up?
Considering that some places don’t call it “grade 8”, and some places have different rules about how long a person must attend school (if at all).
I suspect the local translator would do something like “Why doesn’t everyone learn to speak the same language as me?!” etc.
OTOH, maybe most readers overseas know its set in America and the ugly-American aspect of the English-please rant just adds spice to the humour.
No idea about this particular strip, but Calvin and Hobbes was translated into dozens of languages.
I’m wondering how translators of comic strips handle things like this, where the humor is dependent on some aspect of the originating culture. Or where wordplay or puns are used, that wouldn’t necessarily translate into another language. Like this Calvin and Hobbes strip.
From reading a bunch of translated comics, the usual solution seems to be to try to translate the joke in some way that retains the funny, with the results varying a great deal. I often try to figure out what the original joke was when reading them.
For that particular strip, I think any lame pun would work - the punchline isn’t related to the pun as such, all it needs to show Calvin’s puns are bad and the comic works. Comic strips where the visual is directly tied to some sort of linguistic pun that only works in one language would be a lot trickier to translate.
Translation of puns is always troublesome.
This was always an issue with Asterix comics, which were heavily pun-based, including visual “puns”. Asterix was translated into dozens of languages, no doubt including Romulan, Elvish, and whatever the language of the Voynich Manuscript was.
From the Wikipedia article on Asterix and Obelix:
Generally, the puns in Asterix (often involving long multi-panel elaborate build-ups) were simply totally re-written in other languages, replaced by whatever other puns or text the translators could imagine.
In Asterix and Cleopatra, there are “visual puns” in pseudo-hieroglyphics, and a group of workers, once dosed on magic potions, happily pursue their labors in mirth and hieroglyphic jokes, described as being “untranslatable”.
Asterix has French puns too? I thought all the French knew were fart jokes?
I can’t see a translation as working in places where there’s not one language, I think leaving it as English would work better. You’d just add Calvin saying “I’m an American” and it would be the common jab that everyone makes towards America.
In Quebec, it would work a lot better, though.
“Grade eight” sounds like a stereotypical Canadian construction. Americans say “eighth grade.”
Not C&H, but IIRC the Simpsons or something changed a character’s nationality. Like if they translate it for France and a scene makes fun of French people, they will change them to Belgians in the speech.
They’re not making me learn Norwegian Nynorsk! If Norwegian Bokmål is good enough for me, then by golly, it’s good enough for the rest of Norway!
Yes it would work elsewhere. The joke is about the kid not wanting to learn foreign languages just because he’s self-centered (he says “if it’s good enough for ME”). So yeah:
“¡No me pueden obligar a aprender otros idiomas! ¡Si el Español me basta a MI, que sea el resto del mundo el que aprenda Español si tienen algo que decir, o que se callen!”