I recently came into possession of the original Swedish version of "A False Ancestor", and I realized that there are a lot of differences between the Swedish and German versions of the comic (the most notable being the name the old lion calls himself). As far as I know, only the Swedish version has been completely translated into English, but since a lot of people tend to lump the Swedish and German versions together without realizing just how different they are, I decided to try translating the German version (called "A Gift from the Heavens") into English.
Unfortunately, I've had to rely almost solely on Google Translate, which apparently doesn't know German very well. I've run all the text from the comic through it, and there have been several spots where there has been an unrecognizable word, or the words in a sentence were jumbled so badly that I had to guess what the meaning was.
If there are any users on this forum that understand German, could you please help me with some of these "word problems"?
Page 1:
I had no problems with this page except for what Simba says in the second-to-last panel ("Tschühüs"). He says the same thing on page 4, and the context makes me think that it means "good-bye".
Page 2:
The exchange between Simba and the strange lion proved to be pretty difficult. The original text is this:
[quote]SIMBA: Das glaubt mir bestimmt wieder niemand!
STRANGER: Ich muss was futtern!
STRANGER: Toller Empfang! Muss ich schon sagen! Achz! Da kommt man von weit, weit her...
SIMBA: Du...ah...Ihr...Eure Majestat! Ihr seid ein toter Lowenkonig und vom Himmel herabgekommen, stimmt's!
STRANGER: Bist 'n bissi balla-balla, was?[/quote]
And this is what I came up with:
[quote]SIMBA: Nobody will believe me!
STRANGER: I need to eat something!
STRANGER: Just don't go! I must say that! Ack! I've come from so far, far away...
SIMBA: You...ah...you...Your Majesty! You're a dead Lion King that came down here from heaven, right?
STRANGER: Huh? Are you crazy or something?[/quote]
Page 3:
I had some problems with the strange lion's first speech and thought balloons. Here's the original text:
[quote]STRANGER: Tsts! Erstaunliche Fantasie! Zu erstaunlich! Wenn die alle so sind hier, dann...
...ich verdrück mich lieber![/quote]
And here's what I ended up with:
[quote]STRANGER: Tsk! Amazing imagination! Too amazing! If everyone here is like this, then...
...I'd prefer to slip away![/quote]
The stranger seems to claim to be much, much older than his Swedish counterpart. He tells Simba that he is "Ich bin der Opa vom Opa vom Urururopa deines...deines königlichen Urururururururopas!" This seems to translate to "I am the grandfather of the grandfather of your great-great-great-grandfather...your royal great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather!" Is this translation correct?
The lines that follow this one were also a little problematic:
[quote]STRANGER: Aber wehe! Wehe! Wehe dir, winziger Erdenlöwe! Wenn du auch nur daran denkst...
STRANGER: Rülps! Ganz einfach: Verrate keinem, dass ich da bin! Ich bin nämlich obergeheim hier![/quote]
This is the best translation I came up with:
[quote]STRANGER: But alas! Woe! Woe to you, little earth lion! If you only knew...
STRANGER: *Burp!* It's simple: I'm here for a top secret reason! Tell no one that I am here![/quote] (I thought the lion's next line -- "Especially not your father, King Mufasa!" -- would make more sense if the order of the previous two sentences was reversed.)
Page 4:
On this page, the stranger says that he was once known as "König Furchtlos" (King Fearless), but after saving his subjects from some vicious hyenas, he became known as "König Gutus Kämpfus" "King Great Fighter". This isn't an exact translation, since "Gutus Kämpfus" has no meaning in German, but as I found out some time ago, it is most likely a mangled version of "Guter Kämpfer", which means "great fighter".
This dialog proved to be pretty challenging:
[quote]STRANGER: Die hießen zu meiner Zeit, vor elftausendvierundachtzig Jahren...
STRANGER: ...und sechs Tagen noch "Hyänus Riesusgroßus", weil sie saumäßig riesig waren! Aber trotzdem hab ich sie alle im Pfotenumdrehen...[/quote]
My translation:
[quote]STRANGER: In my day, eleven thousand and eighty-four years...
STRANGER: ...and six days ago, they were called "Hyänus Riesusgrossus", because they were bloody huge! But still, I had every one of them beneath my paws...[/quote]
The name the stranger calls the hyenas seems like it might be more jumbled words, since Google Translate didn't recognize it. It sounds like a scientific name that hints at the hyenas' large size. Also, the stranger's line in panel 6 seems to be "Okay! Let's search for some hyenas!", but the translation wasn't the tidiest, so I figured that I'd make sure there was nothing wrong with it.
Page 5:
The text on this page is considerably different than the dialog in the Swedish version. One of the parrots claims that the so-called king was a survivor of "Lachmalaria". This seems to translate to "laughing malaria", which sounds like a made-up disease (which it turns out to be in the actual story), since I haven't found that word anywhere except a journal entry on DevART referring to the German version of this comic.
The stranger's internal monologue looks like this in the original German:
[quote]STRANGER: Verflixt! Mit ihrem Geschwatz lassen die beiden mich schneller auffliegen, als ich...
STRANGER: ...verduften kann! Wenn Simba seinen Papi, den echten Konig, holt...huh![/quote]
And this is the best English translation I could manage:
[quote]STRANGER: Whoops! With their chatter, these two will break me up more quickly than I...
STRANGER: ...can run away! When Simba's dad, the real king, gets here...![/quote]
Page 6:
I couldn't make any sense out of the stranger's last line:
[quote]"Jetzt bin ich den Kleinen los! Wetten der Fluss ist ihm zu breit und zu gefahrlich!"[/quote]
Then there's this last bit of narration:
[quote]Da die Papageien ohnehin alles weiterplappern, kann Simba von der geheimnisvollen Mission erzählen...[/quote]
Translation:
[quote]Because the parrots everything anyway weiterplappern can tell Simba of the mysterious mission ...[/quote]
I couldn't find a translation for "weiterplappern". It seems to be the words "weiter" (more, continued) and "plappern" (babble, chatter) combined. Also, the mention of a "mission" puzzled me. In the Swedish version of the comic, the lion claims to be on a secret mission on page 3, but I didn't see him mentioning a mission in the German version. Mufasa's next sentence ("Die bestand sicher darin, die das Leben zu retten!") also had some problems ("Which was certainly the fact that to save your life!")
Any help with this little project would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to add links to the actual pages I was talking about!
