Tintin Forums

Money talks.
Well in this case it does...

Who am I talking about?

Think carefully about this.

Hello everyone,I've just joined this club.

The answer might be bolivar the currency of Venezuela.
(see Tintin in America page 60)I am from Finland and I don't have Tintin albums in English, so I hope that the pagenumbering is same in Finnish.

Tuhatkauno (Calculus in Finnish)

Hi again

I noticed you asked who?

He is strong man Bolivar (Hippolyte is his forename in Finnish album). Am I correct?

Tuhatkauno

Tuhatkauno has beaten me to it with his answer, so I'm certainly not after the point with my diferent answer (welcome to the forum & quiz, Tuhatkauno), but for the sake of extending the list of talking currency-named characters in Tintin, I'll give it anyway: Zloty the poet, from The Cigars of the Pharaoh, the Zloty being the currency of Poland (or have they joined the Euro now?)

Obviously both Bolivar and Zloty could be described as money which talks, since they're both speaking characters, but Zloty could also be described as money which doesn't quite manage to talk, if we're meaning "talk" in the sense of spilling the beans, since the poor poet gets hit by the fakir's dart before he's told Tintin the crucial information.

I wonder if there are any other currency-named Tintin characters. I seem to remember the man on the Peary with the rifle, from The Shooting Star, is called Frank, but that's not spelt quite right! Hey, but I've just remembered there's Mark Falconer in The Seven Crystal Balls (who also gets put out of action before he can tell Tintin everything he knows).

Hello Balthazar

These questions are rather difficult for me because the names of characters are very different in Finnish than in English. You are quite right about mark ( former Finnish currency) and zloty, I missed them

tuhatkauno

Hi Tuhatkauno

I didn't even know that the bolivar was the currency of Venezuala, nor that the mark was the former Finnish currency (I was thinking of the Deutchmark), so you're beating me on general knowledge as well as speed of answering Ranko's question!

Regarding different names in different translations: the strongman is called Billy Bolivar in the English translation of Tintin in America. Hippolyte sounds to me more likely to have been the forename in Hergé's French-language original, but I don't know. Anyway, I mention this merely out of interest, since clearly it's the man's surname - Bolivar - which is relevant to this question.

By the way, your mention that Professor Calculus is called Tuhatkauno in Finnish made me wonder, does tuhatkauno translate directly as calculus (the mathematical system)? Or does it translate as tournesol (sunflower), ie: a direct translation of the professor's original French name (as seems more likely). Or does tuhatkauno mean something else from either of these in Finnish?

Balthazar
does it translate as tournesol (sunflower), ie: a direct translation of the professor's original French name
I wonder if the meaning which might have been intended in the French is litmus paper, rather than sunflower, as although botanical it has a less scientific ring to it - although that meaning has been used in some translations.

Hi balthazar

Tuhatkauno has nothing to do with mathematics. It is a flower, some kind of rubbish flower, but not a sunflower. I don't know what it is in English but its latin name is bellis perennis. The names of characters in Finnish editions are mostly original French names, I suppose.

tuhatkauno

tuhatkauno wrote: I don't know what it is in English but its latin name is bellis perennis.

Ah, it's a daisy! :-)
Welcome to our community, tuhatkauno.

Well well, as usual with some of my questions I've opened up a slight can of worms!
Lets try and break this down. Balthazar answered correctly. My original answer was indeed Zloty as it is the currency of Poland (until at least 2010 I believe) and he does have a speaking part. However, tuhatkauno answered first with an example I didn't think existed (Bolivar? Currency? You learn something every day) This is a perfectly acceptable answer also.
Therefore I am inclined to give:
tuhatkauno - 1 point (A nice welcome to the forum!)
Balthazar - 1 point and the question setting duties for having the "correct" answer.

Ed and all, Are you ok with this?

Ranko.