Cat of the Geek #72: Moulinsart's Cat

Name: Only known as Le chat de Moulinsart
Stomping Grounds: Tintin (comics); also as a resin statue
Side: Good
Breed: Siamese
Cat Powers: Beloved of both Captain Haddock and dog owner Tintin. Good relations with those of the canine persuasion.
Skills: Eat 3, Sleep 4, Mischief 5, Wit 2, Jumpy 8
Cat Weaknesses: Any noise will set kitty off running. Causes false endpage cliffhangers (Hergé red herrings).

Comments

Radagast said…
I had to wrack my brain on 'Moulinsart' until I finally realized you're using the original French.

I, naturally, think of it as Marlinspike...
Siskoid said…
The language I read them in.

I could never get my head around the English names for people and things.
LiamKav said…
We had a spanish student who went to university over here (Liverpool), who started laughing the first time she saw the Simpsons because she said that the voices and names were crazy and wrong. When she went back to Spain, not only could she no longer watch the Simpsons in Spanish, but she also couldn't watch dubbed TV anymore. The lip-syncing, which never used to bother her, was now a massive barrier to enjoying the shows.

I always enjoy watching people and companies trying to change names that have puns in them, wondering whether to stick with the original or go for more accurate names. An example is the Transformers character "Ramjet". He's called such because he's a jet who likes to ram into things. However, a ramjet is also a type of engine. Apparently his French name is based on the engine, but it then loses the original pun.

I bet the original dubbers of DragonBall were glad that pretty much all the name puns were in English. Although then you get the anal-types who insist that, for example, the character of Vegeta (who's name is supposed to sound like "vegetable") should be called "Bejita" because that's a technically more accurate translation, despite the original writer saying that it's a pun on vegetable, should be pronounced as such and actually writing "Vegeta" IN ENGLISH on some of the pages.

Wow, that was a long post about name changes.
Siskoid said…
Hahaha. Yes, I lived through that, albeit at a young age. I still have trouble not calling Space 1999 "Cosmos 1999" though.

As for good/bad pun translation, I think the Asterix books, which are filled with puns, were very well translated into English. When I found those in the public library, it was like discovering a new story with all new jokes.