Tintin Forums

On a couple of other threads in these forums, and elsewhere, I've seen the statement that the Arabic in The Land of Black Gold and other books was "fake."

My son asked a member of the Arabic for Text program at Swarthmore College to check out the Arabic in The Land of Black Gold. I scanned every frame that had Arabic in it and sent it along.

Turns out to be perfectly good Arabic, and perfectly translatable. Perhaps the best line is p20f8:
"God cursed you.. you son of a dog. He curses your father, by thunder" to which Snowy replies "Such language. Don't listen to him Tintin, even in Arabic."

In the Bengali edition, all of the Arabic in this frame is replaced by exclamation points and question marks.

I will make a feature page with scans and translations for The Tintin Trivia Quiz.

I believe that they may sometimes be refering to in the original edition where the wording Au pays de l'or noir on the cover was written in French, but using calligraphy to make it look like Arabic on first glance.

Just a suggestion, Tintin Quiz: why not contribute to what we have already started - Land of Black Gold Trivia pages :-)

My father has profound knowledge in Arabic. When i asked him and a few other of his friends and my teacher at school, they all said it was fake.
Ali

Michael Farr, in Tintin The Complete Companion, explains the apparent discrepancy:
"When a bundle of leaflets knocks Bab El Ehr down, his Arab invective is in the later version improved into actual Arabic rather than fanciful Arabic script." ... "Real Arabic is also introduced onto the adventure's cover and title page in the later version..." "The use of Arabic in the earlier versions had been based on the look of the characters rather than their actual sense."

It's still probable that the Arabic is a translation from French, rather than dialectic Arabic.

Update:
I've posted a visual guide to Arabic in Land of Black Gold on The Tintin Trivia Quiz. Enjoy!
http://tintin.eugraph.com/tqsect/feature/lobg

Hi, I went through the pictures, and some of the Arabic written is in Classical Arabic (Fus-ha) while some is in local dialects, though perfectly understandable by any arabic speaker…

I also noticed a translation mistake: in the first frame where he is being cursed, the last word is not "by thunder", it is actually "badawy" meaning "bedouin".