The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Un Lavoro Bello


I got a very nice email today from Diego Ceresa, the translator who's doing a beautiful job of making Cul de Sac comprehensible in Italian so it can appear in the comic magazine Linus. I've wished for years that I'd learned Italian at some point as it's the language of Art, Music and Food, and it sounds like fun to speak. As it is, the only Italian I know is that provided by babelfish.altavista.com, where I just typed in "cul de sac" and got it translated into Italian as "cul de sac". So it's universal, which is a relief. "Bottom of the bag", the literal English translation of "cul de sac", translates as "parte inferiore de sacchetto", which sounds delicious and reminds me it's lunchtime.

Molto grazie, Diego!

And now, thanks to babelfish-

Ho ottenuto oggi un email molto piacevole da Diego Ceresa, il traduttore che ha fare un lavoro bello di rendere Cul de Sac comprensibile in italiano in modo da può comparire nello scomparto comic Linus. Ho desiderato per gli anni che italiano istruito ad un certo punto poichè è la lingua dell'arte, della musica e dell'alimento e suona come divertimento parlare. Mentre è, gli unici italiani che conosco sono che hanno fornito da babelfish.altavista.com, dove ho scritto appena "in cul de sac" ed ottenuto esso tradotto in italiano come "cul de sac". Così è universale, che è un rilievo. "la parte inferiore del sacchetto", la traduzione in inglese letterale "di cul de sac", traduce come "parte inferiore de sacchetto", che suona squisito e mi ricorda esso è l'ora di pranzo. Grazie di Molto, Diego!

7 comments:

arcticcircle said...

Damn, those kids sound even smarter in Italian.

Unknown said...

Wow! This is a wonderful news! Thanks Diego for your good work!

Bear said...

However you want to say it, Cul de Sac is just plain funny. Buona fortuna!

Kid Shay said...

Even the handwriting looks similar! I wonder, does your translator look like you except with a mustache or a hat? The Italian version of you.

randy said...

Kid Shay is right, Richard, it does look like your very distinctive lettering - except it's a computer font! Did you ask that the translated strips use your lettering style? Did you write out the alphabet for them to copy, or did some poor intern have to cut out tiny letters from your past strips as if they were composing a ransom note?

richardcthompson said...

I should've mentioned this in the post. Diego Ceresa created a font from my lettering and did such a nice job of it that I'd swear I can write in Italian. The words fit into the balloons a lot neater than when I hand-letter it, too.

paul bowman said...

That's cool. Still, I'm glad when I get it it's the authentic handscribbled thing.

But then in those latinate languages you need twice as many words to get some kinds of things said as you do in English, don't you? I wonder if in Italian, Spanish, &c. it could be consistently done by hand in fact.