{"id":271926,"date":"2009-06-16T14:30:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-16T14:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/06\/16\/the-german-donald-duck-or-the-power-of-a-translator\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:19:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:19:51","slug":"the-german-donald-duck-or-the-power-of-a-translator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/06\/16\/the-german-donald-duck-or-the-power-of-a-translator\/","title":{"rendered":"The German Donald Duck, or, The Power of a Translator"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a couple weeks old now, but star translator Susan Bernofsky wrote an excellent article for the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a> about the immense popularity of the German version of the Donald Duck comic book:<\/p>\n

\n

Comics featuring Donald are available at most German newsstands and the national weekly \u201cMicky Maus\u201d\u2014which features the titular mouse, Goofy and, most prominently, Donald Duck\u2014sells an average of 250,000 copies each week, outselling even \u201cSuperman.\u201d A lavish 8,000-page German Donald Duck collector\u2019s edition has just come out, and despite the nearly $1,900 price tag, the publisher, Egmont Horizont, says the edition of 3,333 copies is almost completely sold out. Last month the fan group D.O.N.A.L.D (the German acronym stands for \u201cGerman Organization for Non-commercial Followers of Pure Donaldism\u201d), hosted its 32nd annual congress at the Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, with trivia and trinkets galore, along with lectures devoted to \u201cnephew studies\u201d and Duckburg\u2019s solar system.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u201cDonald is so popular because almost everyone can identify with him,\u201d says Christian Pfeiler, president of D.O.N.A.L.D. \u201cHe has strengths and weaknesses, he lacks polish but is also very cultured and well-read.\u201d But much of the appeal of the hapless, happy-go-lucky duck lies in the translations. Donald quotes from German literature, speaks in grammatically complex sentences and is prone to philosophical musings, while the stories often take a more political tone than their American counterparts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Disney—not necessarily known for allowing much creative freedom with its properties—actually did something right for once, allowing translator Dr. Erika Fuchs to create a version of Donald Duck that’s a bit more complex than the American one, and that has truly become a cult figure in Germany.<\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Fuchs\u2019s Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald\u2019s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller\u2019s play \u201cWilliam Tell\u201d; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, \u201cThe Bell,\u201d in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, H\u00f6lderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, \u201cReading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bernofsky points out two different ways in which Fuchs has created a radically different version of Donald Ducks: through altered speech patterns (especially alliteration), and by adding more political depth to the stories. <\/p>\n

In terms of alliteration, she uses this example from “Lifeguard Daze”:<\/p>\n

\n

In the English comic, he says: \u201cI\u2019d do anything to break this monotony!\u201d The \u00fcber-gloomy German version: \u201cHow dull, dismal and deathly sad! I\u2019d do anything to make something happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What’s really interesting though is the difference between the German version of “The Golden Helmet” and the American one:<\/p>\n

\n

Take, for example, the classic Duck tale \u201cThe Golden Helmet,\u201d a story about the search for a lost Viking helmet that entitles its wearer to claim ownership of America. In Dr. Fuchs\u2019s rendition, Donald, his nephews and a museum curator race against a sinister figure who claims the helmet as his birthright without any proof\u2014but each person who comes into contact with the helmet gets a \u201ccold glitter\u201d in his eyes, infected by the \u201cbacteria of power,\u201d and soon declares his intention to \u201cseize power\u201d and exert his \u201cclaim to rule.\u201d Dr. Fuchs uses language that in German (\u201cdie Macht ergreifen\u201d; \u201cHerrscheranspruch\u201d) strongly recalls standard phrases used to describe Hitler\u2019s ascent to power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The original English says nothing about glittering eyes or power but merely notes, \u201cAs the minutes drag past, a change comes over the tired curator.\u201d Even the helmet itself, which in German Donald describes as a masterpiece of \u201cTeutonic goldsmithery,\u201d is anything but nationalistic in English: \u201cBoys, isn\u2019t this helmet a beauty?\u201d is all he says. In an interview, Dr. Fuchs said she hoped that a child who \u201csees what power can do to people and how crazy it makes them\u201d would be less susceptible to its siren song in later life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is one of the most direct examples of how much power a translator can have in presenting a text to a new readership. And in this particular case, the effects have been long lasting and dramatic. Right from the start, Donald Duck went from being a comic for kids to something more:<\/p>\n

\n

Micky Maus became popular entertainment among a newly politicized generation who saw the comics as illustrations of the classic Marxist class struggle. A nationally distributed newsletter put out by left-leaning high school students in 1969 described Dagobert (Scrooge) as the \u201cprototype of the monocapitalist,\u201d Donald as a member of the proletariat, and Tick, Trick and Track as \u201csocialist youth\u201d well on their way to becoming \u201cproper Communists.\u201d Even Frankfurt School philosopher Max Horkheimer admitted to enjoying reading Donald Duck comics before bed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Susan Bernofsky was also on the BBC<\/span>’s World Update the other day to talk about this, but unfortunately the link is no longer working today and I can’t find an archive . . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a couple weeks old now, but star translator Susan Bernofsky wrote an excellent article for the Wall Street Journal about the immense popularity of the German version of the Donald Duck comic book: Comics featuring Donald are available at most German newsstands and the national weekly \u201cMicky Maus\u201d\u2014which features the titular mouse, Goofy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[1836,24946,24956,23836],"class_list":["post-271926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-cwp","tag-donald-duck","tag-erika-fuchs","tag-susan-bernofsky"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352276,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271926\/revisions\/352276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}