• Tintin: Mistranslation in "Secret of the Unicorn"

    From Timothy Chow@21:1/5 to All on Sat Nov 4 13:26:32 2023
    For many years, I was puzzled by a sentence in "The Secret of
    the Unicorn" that appears on page 37. Tintin's captor says,
    "That night when I had your flat searched..." which made me think
    of the scene early on in the book (on page 9) where Tintin finds
    that his flat has been ransacked. But if you follow the plot
    closely, you'll find that this interpretation makes no sense.

    Recently, I finally figured out what was going on. In French, it
    actually says, "Cette nuit," which in context means "Last night"
    and not "That night." With this corrected translation, everything
    makes sense.

    Funny how such a seemingly trivial issue in translation can cause
    so much confusion (for me at least, and perhaps for some other readers).

    ---
    Tim Chow

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  • From Your Name@21:1/5 to Timothy Chow on Sun Nov 5 09:36:35 2023
    On 2023-11-04 17:26:32 +0000, Timothy Chow said:

    For many years, I was puzzled by a sentence in "The Secret of
    the Unicorn" that appears on page 37. Tintin's captor says,
    "That night when I had your flat searched..." which made me think
    of the scene early on in the book (on page 9) where Tintin finds
    that his flat has been ransacked. But if you follow the plot
    closely, you'll find that this interpretation makes no sense.

    Recently, I finally figured out what was going on. In French, it
    actually says, "Cette nuit," which in context means "Last night"
    and not "That night." With this corrected translation, everything
    makes sense.

    Funny how such a seemingly trivial issue in translation can cause
    so much confusion (for me at least, and perhaps for some other readers).

    ---
    Tim Chow

    99.9% of readers probably never even noticed it.

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