Tintin Forums

I have the 10 stories as adapted by Simon Eastwood for BBC Radio (and issued on two double-cassette sets) which are interesting and generally smart renderings… but I was astonished to learn recently just how many Tintin stories have been adapted for "ear theatre." There is a preponderance of LP titles, I discovered, from various labels in various languages, from all over the Western world.

Does anybody know anything about any of these recordings? History? Casts? Quality?

(I just bid on, and won, a French adaptation of Prisoners of the Sun, from a Canadian eBay seller, on the RCA label. At this point I know the story so well, I feel I can get it even without knowing word-for-word what's being said! Plus I'm very curious… )

Our Sweden Correspondent, Anders Karlsson, has a good collection of Tintin vinyl records. I'll find out if he has any information to add.

Hi there

I am new to this forum and was wondering if someone could help.

Firstly, I hope that I am posting this in the correct section.

At the present time I am learning to speak French. A few months ago when I was in Paris I bought some French language Tintin books.

What I would LOVE to get hold of is the books being read out in French, i.e. the speech matches what is written in the book.

Does this exist anywhere? Do the DVD's released by Anchor Bay do this???

Any help would be most appreciated:)

Jools

PS I notice someone posted about finding Tintin book in Paris. I got mine from one of the booksellers that line the Seine near Hotel De Ville. Cost about 5 - 6 euros each

Following from a tip by member quiestce, about the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA) [French National Audio-Visual Institute], I had found that you could listen to extracts from an early sixties adaptation of the Tintin Moon books, first broadcast between 17/11/60 and 28/02/61 on the Chaîne Parisienne station.

Even with my fairly rusty French skills (anybody subjected to some of my attempts at translation on here will be aware of them!) it was an entertaining listen, and quite easy to follow, given that it appeared to stick closely to the books. The bit I listened to was a section with the bubble-blowing hairy-mutated Thom(p)sons, and it evoked the situation very well (a nice “popping” sound effect for the bubbles…).

Anyway, Tintin.com has published an announcement that these serials are being released on MP3-CD by Moulinsart S.A., in conjunction with the INA and Radio France, as Tintin: Aventures lunaires.

Comprising both Objectif Lune and On a marché sur la Lune (Destination and Explorers), and running 6 hours 23 minutes, it must rate as one of the most comprehensive adaptations of Hergé ever done (if only in duration) - the BBC adaptations would appear to be whistle-stop by comparison.

The announcement does say that there will be additional material supplied by CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales/ National Centre for Space Studies), so perhaps some of the running time will be given over to that, but it still sounds like an appealing package, and well worth getting, especially if you want to improve your aural comprehension of French!

No release date as far as I can see, but one to watch out for! You can see the discs on the INA site here.

Sadly it would appear that you now can’t listen to the sample that I did on the INA site- but that may be because of the CD coming out, or it could be that I’ve just missed it (it’s quite a big site with many sections). But take a look - you can search for Tintin and Hergé items, and see and hear lots of interesting stuff!

The disc is out and in the shops in Paris.

That’s good to know! Have you got it or heard it?
I’ve just seen it listed on both amazon.fr and fnac.com, and it seems to be around the 25€ mark.

No,not yet, I had many other items to purchase !

It looks like a very handsome production.

A brief review (in French) can be found here.

I was lucky enough to be given the CD of Tintin: Aventures lunaires for Christmas, and it has to be said that it is very nice indeed! The episodes (and additional space-themed material) are in .mp3 format, so they all fit onto one disc, and they come in a card slip-cover, with a handsome booklet containing some nice examples of original artwork, colouring work and work-in-progress pages of the books.

The one fly in the ointment is that (at least when I imported them) the information in the files didn’t match the information in the booklet, so episodes had the wrong numbers, duplicate numbers, or lacked the proper titles, and only some of the early epsiodes are dated. I’ve seen this slightly slap-dash information happen with U.K. .mp3 releases (some of the Terry Pratchett books come to mind), and wish that they would take more care. A minor problem, and reasonably simple to fix, but one to watch - if you don’t understand what’s going on, it may be because the story is out of order.

That aside, well worth getting, if the French language isn’t a barrier to you.

I just came across a radio adaptation of Tim und Struppi - Tim im Kongo (Tintin in the Congo) in German. Unfortunately I can't speak German.

All I know is this radio adaptation was made in the 1980s. Does anyone have this on cassette?

It would be really interesting to understand and listen to this.

I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but there was a series of twenty audio-dramas, made available around that time, with Lutz Schnell as Tim/ Tintin, and Wolfgang Buresch as Struppi/ Snowy. I don’t know if they were done for radio, but Ariola released them, and although I don’t know if they were on cassette, they were on CD, so you could probably buy them (maybe on eBay) if you are keen to hear them.

The titles in the series, in the order they were released, were as follows:

01: Die Krabbe mit den goldenen Scheren (Crab with the Golden Claws)
02: Das Geheimnis der Einhorn (The Secret of The Unicorn)
03: Der Schatz Rackhams des Roten (Red Rackham’s Treasure)
04: Reiseziel Mond (Destination Moon)
05: Der Fall Bienlein (The Calculus Affair)
06: Die Juwelen der Sängerin (The Castafiore Emerald)
07: Die sieben Kristallkugeln (The Seven Crystal Balls)
08: Flug 714 nach Sydney (Flight 714 to Sydney)
09: Kohle an Bord (The Red Sea Sharks)
10: Tim und die Picaros (Tintin and the Picaros)
11: Tim in Tibet (Tintin in Tibet)
12: Der geheimnisvolle Stern (The Shooting Star)
13: Die Zigarren des Pharao (The Cigars of the Pharaoh)
14: Der blaue Lotus (The Blue Lotus)
15: König Ottokars Zepter (King Ottokar’s Sceptre)
16: Das Geheimnis des schwarzen Goldes (The Land of Black Gold)
17: Tim im Kongo (Tintin in the Congo)
18: Tim in Amerika (Tintin in America)
19: Der Arumbaya Fetish (The Broken Ear)
20: Die Schwarze Insel (The Black Island)

Update: Yes, they were on cassette, and yes they are to be found on eBay, if you search for “tim struppi hoerspiel”.
Strangely, eBay seems to have problems with umlauts. If you search using “höerspiel”, it doesn’t find them; if you put “hoerspiel”, it finds them, even though the listings use “höerspiel”. Anyway, they’re there.