Tintin Forums

I was just reading my English version of this volume this morning and I noticed a small translation error. On the first frame of page 10, the gentleman says to Tintin; "Road Hog! He couln't have been closer if he'd tried to run you down" To which the other man says, "Yes, he deliberately swerved to the left"

Now surely if the driver was a road hog who had deliberately crossed the road to hit Tintin, he would've swerved to the right? Presuming of course that Tintin lives in England in the English versions. Of course, I could be all wrong, but this possible error was just niggling at me. Any thoughts?

It's a fairly faithful translation of the original «Oui, il a carrément obliqué vers la gauche.» Yet it's true that if Tintin is indeed supposed to live in England in the English books, then it could have been adapted to swerving from the right ; however we see the car on the left of the road, so Alonso would have had to perform a U-turn to be on the left of the road if a) he has swerved and b) it was supposed to be in England.

Perhaps, if this is the case, then it could have been simplified to using a substitution for the phrase with something like "He pulled out deliberately to hit you" ?

I noticed that also. What about the part (same album) where Tintin is chasing the bad guys through the mountains and he says something to the effect of, "look! they're slowing up." Shouldn't that be "slowing down?" or is it only Aussies who say it like that?

I never thought Tintin lived in England in the English editions. I always thought Tintin was based in Belgium in all the translations. There are quite a few clues pointing to this throughout the books. In my opinion I don't think it is a mistake.

Hmm. I thought that the car approached so that Tintin would have been on its left side. I don't think there would have been any logical error...

Tintinrulz
"look! they're slowing up." Shouldn't that be "slowing down?"

You can say either in British English, although there may be a shade of difference between them: slow down is “to get slower, but to keep going”; slow up is “to get slower and come to a stop” (using “up” to mean stop, as in “pull up at the kerb”, or “let up”). It is a very small distinction though, and many people would use them as synonyms.

Fungry
I never thought Tintin lived in England in the English editions. I always thought Tintin was based in Belgium in all the translations.
No, in the translations by MT&LL-C, Tintin & Cº were moved lock, stock and Labrador Road to England - the backgrounds remained unchanged, of course, but the addresses on envelopes etc. were altered to show that the manor was in “Marlinshire”, for example. It leads to some oddities, but that’s what they did.

I've just been rereading The Broken Ear and had my attention caught by this same sequence. What we see (on page 9 of my edition) is Tintin stepping out onto the road looking to his left. That would make sense if he were in Belgium (or anywhere else in Europe) where cars drive on the right - any traffic approaching on the side of the road Tintin is about to step out onto would then be coming from his left, the side he is looking to.

The car that nearly hits him is approaching from Tintin's right. The bystander's accusation that the driver swerved to the left to hit Tintin again makes sense if the car was meant to be on the right hand side of the road - and a swerve to the left seems to be implied by the illustration in frame 13 on that page. If the car was meant to be driving on the left (as it would be if the action were set in England) then the driver wouldn't really have needed to swerve to hit Tintin, who would have stepped directly into the path of the vehicle.

However, if we turn over to page 10 we see that the car has the steering wheel on the right - as it would in Britain. In fact, all the vehicles in the book, even the ones in South America, are right-hand-drive (see pp. 37 - 41). But in South America everyone drives on the right hand side of the road - and all the cars are therefore left-hand-drive.

What is going on here? Were all the vehicles redrawn for the English-language translation, turning left-hand-drive into right-hand-drive to suit British driving customs? Or was this the result of some strange quirk on Herge's part, reversing left and right even in the original? Has anyone seen the original French version of this book? What does it show?

It's odd that the scenes in Belgium were drawn with cars driving on the left.

Some Latin American countries did drive on the left until the 1940s, when the Trans American Highway was built & driving on the right was standardised.

Herge did make the mistake in Tintin in America of drawing right hand drive cars.

There’s been talk of this before - here, for example.
In that thread, Harrock points out that Lancias were made left-hand drive even for the Italian market. One might also have to consider that the countries which currently drive on one side may have driven on the other in the past.

However, I wonder if there might be a technical reason arising from a drawing technique?
Hergé, and later his studio, used copious references for the vehicles in the books, yet seem to be out of step when it comes to cars.
It has also been pointed out that E.P. Jacobs has the British cars drive on the right in The Yellow ‘M’, even after a trip to London in which he made copious reference photos, and he was no slouch in the fastidiousness department.
One that always sticks out to me is the caravan in The Black Island, where the door is on the right hand side, opening onto the road - a British caravan like this actually should have the door on the left, so that a person wouldn’t walk into traffic.
This must have been known, as the brochure used for reference has it the correct way – and this has made me think…
In the days before digital scanning and computer graphics, and even before photocopiers, it wasn’t uncommon to use a simple glass screen to help reproduce images; one placed the image to be copied on one side of the glass, with a blank page on the other, then looking through the glass, traced the reflection where it fell on the paper. This produced an inverted image.
Only a glimmer of a theory, but I wonder if this was used in the production of so many reversed vehicles?