On a recent vacation to Argentina, my brother picked up a couple of Argentinian comics for me. It's pretty interesting to see familiar heroes using such unfamiliar speech bubbles. This Marvel vs. DC ad that ran in "Las Historias Jamas Contadas de Spiderman" ("The Untold Stories of Spiderman") #1 caught my eye. (I thought it would be fun to also post the cover.)
Marvel Comics vs. DC was a comic series in the mid-1990's that definitively answered the age-old question "Which is more powerful: Marvel or DC heroes?" Okay... I'm sure the answer wasn't so definitive. I never read the series but I'll bet it didn't want to play favorites and depict the hero of one universe pwning another. I'm sure each battle was much like a pro-wrestling match between two super-popular opponents. There's always some sort of interference that keeps the match from a definite resolution.
It's weird that they only translate the names of a few of the heroes into Spanish. Only Wolverine ("Lobezno"), Storm ("Tormenta"), and Captain America (to a certain extent) have Spanish names. I wonder if it has to do with marketing. Maybe the Batman brand is known worldwide as "Batman" and not "Palo-hombre".
El Combate del siglo, indeed!
5 out of 5 - Simply incredible!
4 out of 5 - Pretty awesome!
3 out of 5 - Cool enough, I suppose.
2 out of 5 - Not quite good enough.
1 out of 5 - Pretty horrific!
0 out of 5 - No redeeming quality at all.
1 comments:
Well, I am from Argentina and let me add, if I may, a couple of things to your post. The name of the heroes changed over time. Now Spiderman is a big enough franchise that can sustain his original name even in translated comics, but when I was a kid Spiderman was "el hombre araña" and he still is in some dubbed cartoons.
As for Wolverine, "Lobezno" actually means Wolf cub, in a time where character names had to be translated, the literal translation of the animal "Wolverine" was "glotón", a word that can also be translated as "glutton" (and with a villain like the Blob why would Wolverine be called Glutton?), so they chose to go with "Lobezno" meaning he was fierce, but small (and cute, depending of who you ask). In the 90s Fox Kids cartoon, Wolverine was called "Guepardo", that's actually a translation for "Cheetah", perhaps the black and yellow costume didn't help.
Then you have tons of other translated names "Wonder Woman" was "Mujer Maravilla" and "Joker" was "Guasón", those are, more or less, literally translated names. Some of them never needed tranlation like Flash (since the word in Spanish is the same), Aquaman (same case, and the "man" is accepted in superhero names in Spanish thanks to Superman and Batman).
Those two almost from the begining kept the English names. By the way, Batman is not "Palo-hombre", that would be if by "Bat" you meant a baseball bat. The translated name for Batman was "Hombre Murciélago", too long for a name you say? That's because you never heard of the italian Batman (even today they translate the name), he's called "il Huomo Pipistrello".
Scary name, isn't it?
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