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(edward@ordman.net)
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This story has appeared in the Christian
Science
Monitor.
Merci,
Oncle
Picsou (thanks, Uncle Scrooge)
May 17, 2004
I have, for as long as I remember, been a fan of comic books.
Not the "adventure" or "super hero" comics, but the funny
ones - Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and so on. My
parents didn't
discourage these when I was young, but I knew that some of my
friends' parents
didn't like them. Perhaps that created a sense of protest
which fueled my
desire to read them and contributed to making me an
enthusiastic reader later
in life.
I still have some of those old comic books
around - the age is
evident by the cover price, 10 cents each for the oldest I
have. They are not
valuable collectors' items, they are much too torn and
dog-eared. But they are
still enjoyed not only by me but by my grandchildren.
By my 20s, I'd found another way to enjoy them.
When I was
trying to learn foreign languages, I discovered that comic
books existed in
translation and were a wonderful way to get started in a
foreign language. On
any trip abroad, I'd seek out a used book store and hope to
find cheap torn
copies of the adventures of "Oncle Picsou" (Uncle Scrooge, in
French), "Dagobert Duck" (in German), or even "Zio
Paparone" (the same elderly gentleman - rather, duck - in
Italian). I
won't normally pick up a serious book in French or German for
15 minutes, just
to stay in practice. But I do enjoy rereading a comic book for
a few minutes,
and it helps keep the language in mind.
In fact, comic books have an advantage - they
actually show
examples of the spoken language, as opposed to the more formal
or impersonal
language of books and newspapers. And if I'm not sure of a
word, the pictures
help.
Donald Duck and his "Oncle Picsou" are a
wonderful
place to start - I know many of the stories, and have a good
idea of how the
characters will react to a particular situation. But one
needn't stop at
translations of American comic books. An entire school of
comic books exists,
the Franco-Belgian school, in which many of the books have
been widely
translated.
The many volumes of Asterix the Gaul may be
better known
internationally than Donald Duck. Certainly I've found
languages where I could
find translations of Asterix but not of Donald. Asterix,
however, has a wide
vocabulary and a strong current of multilingual puns, so it
may have to wait
until one is pretty comfortable with the language. As an
English speaker, I get
the pun when a tribal leader is named Vitalstatistix or a
somewhat sluggish
Roman soldier is named Crismus Bonus, but I suspect I'm
missing many more puns
in other languages.
Another perennial Franco-Belgian favorite - one
I've collected
in several languages - is Lucky Luke, the American cowboy. I
wonder how many
foreign children get their early impressions of American
history from Lucky
Luke's adventures exploring the West? He chases bandits,
protects wagon trains
from Indians, and Indians from slick confidence men. Many of
the stories have
an interesting bit of real history or folklore in them,
although they take
considerable comic-book license. In "The Bridge Over the
Mississippi," men building the first bridge at St. Louis have
to deal with
alligators in the river.
And I'm entranced with the political and
economic spoofs in
Achille Talon, again available in most European languages,
though I've never seen
it in English. I would love to see how the whimsical foreign
accents
represented there would be translated.
As my wife and I have traveled in Europe, we
frequently have
been invited into people's homes. We've been amazed at how
well American comic
books have been received as hostess gifts.
Some years ago we were walking on a local
hiking trail in Gif, a
suburb south of Paris. A family was in their backyard,
gardening, and my wife
struck up a conversation through the back fence. Soon we found
ourselves invited
to dinner, and the comic books were an enormous hit. The
parents wanted their
children to study English, but rather disapproved of comic
books. The kids
loved comic books, but had little interest in reading English.
English-language
comic books seemed the perfect solution, as comic books had
been when I was a
child.
We became such good friends that I exhausted my
supply of comic
books and went out to search for more. Seeking English-
language comic books in
Paris is not an everyday task. I did find a store on the West
Bank that had
them - the French ones translated into English, rather than
untranslated
American ones, but that met the need.
Now, of course, the Internet has changed the
whole enterprise. I
can easily order a new Asterix, Lucky Luke, or Achille Talon
from my own home
without even having to go to a large city's foreign-language
bookstore or a
large university bookstore.
But it is more expensive this way, and I still treasure the cheap, dog-eared and torn copies I found years ago in used-book stores. Now that I think of it, maybe that's why I'm such a fan of Oncle Picsou.