Tintin Forums

Hi,

Of late I have been reading Tintin's adventures in Bengali.The following are my observations :-

1. As noted in English books they are published by Ananda publications,Calcutta

2. Of the five books (paperbacks) I have , 4 costs RS. 75/- i.e. less than a Pound.The 5th ; Soviets costs Rs 125. In comparison , Egmont English paperbacks cost about RS 275 - 300.

3. Due to obvious cost cutting , the paper quality is poor.It is thin and not glossy ; in fact it feels like a fine blotting paper on touching,hence some of the colours have crossed the line of the images.
The print is dull and hazy due to which some of the near shades seem to merge.

4. MOST of the titles literally translate to the same as the English versions. But a FEW are different to a smaller or greater extent .Of the 5 Titles which I possess the ones which are different are :-
a)Ottokar's Royal rod (though Sceptre means Royal rod - note the absence of 'King' preceding Ottokar )
b)The Prisoners of the Sun King (note the additional 'king' after Sun)

I have also ordered 5 more titles and the ones with different translations are :-
a)Where is the Emerald ?? (The Castafiore Emerald)
b)The secret of the Black Island (The Black island)
c)The strange/amazing meteorite (The shooting star)
d)The curse of the Mummy (The Seven crystal balls)

5. Some of the books are numbered in English and some in Bengali

6. The size of the books vary by half a centimeter here and there.

7. The Thomsons are called Johnson and Ronson.
I would be very keen to know what they are called in other languages.

8. The plates have surely been used from the English books , since the speech bubbles are more often than not, either too big or too small for the Bengali translation, with on one instance the alphabets overflowing from the speech bubble.Also once I found that the lines-dialogue have been swapped when two bubbles are present in one frame.
Again I would like to have other's observation on books in different languages specially if the script is anything other than the Phoenecian one.

But at the end at the price I am getting to read my favourite Tintin in my mother tongue , I am very content and happy.