Category / (Not a Cidu)

by Kilby

Sometimes “translation” means moving to a different place

Here are two more instances of creative translation in “Macanudo”.

The Spanish dialog means: “I wish the leaves had eyes.” – “Ha ha ha! The things you say!“

In both cases the gag is a simple (auditory) pun: in English twofold on “leave(s)” (noun/verb); in Spanish threefold on “ojalá“=”wish”, “hojas“=”leaves”, and “ojos“=”eyes” (one verb and two nouns; all three words sound very similar).

In this second case the difference between the two language versions is more extreme:

In Spanish: “Do you like it when I call you a lunatic?” – “Yup.“

Perhaps the translator did not trust English-speaking readers to recognize the “lunar” etymology of “lunatic”, or maybe she simply loved the song lyrics more.

P.S. Several months ago I looked up the meaning of the name “macanudo“, discovering that it meant “a person or thing considered admirable or excellent because of its positive qualities“. Besides being an eminently appropriate name for the comic strip, this also explains why it is the name of a cigar brand. I was in Copenhagen (on vacation) just a few days before I created this post, and just happened to run into this shop:

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, August 18th, 2024

This is close to a CIDU, as there doesn’t seem to be a single best / obvious answer to the question.

Tim Harrod sends this in: “Whether you laugh or not, Jim Davis is historically reliable at coming up with a punchline. But here, the joke is apparently that the eggs are really spicy… and a lot of people ordered them. It could have been a scheme to sell a lot of milk, but then Irma should have more of a sly grin in the last panel.”

The gag seems straightforward, but Tim’s right: she should have a sly, knowing grin on her face.

On Monday, will we see Irma’s lasagna?

Probably more of an Awww than strictly an LOL.

by Kilby

Tundra links go ice cold

Boise Ed attempted to submit a Tundra comic, using a link from The Seattle Times. Reading between the lines of his comment (see below), the comic he meant was probably all or part of this one:

Here’s what Boise Ed wrote: He says “a while ago,” but I think the walrus joke appeared just a couple of days earlier. There doesn’t seem to be an accessible archive where I can check on that…. Is there any other source to see the Tundra strip?

The answer is (probably) “No, there isn’t.” The problem is that both The Seattle Times and the official Tundra website provide only the strip for the current day. Past Tundra archives are only available on a pay-to-view basis (to Patreon members). This means that any Tundra link sent to CIDU has an expiration limit of (at most) 24 hours, which renders those links useless for all practical purposes. Therefore, if you want to submit a Tundra comic, don’t depend on the link: send a screenshot, or attach a graphic file.

P.S. The same problem exists for all Arcamax comics. The Arcamax links are not quite so ephemeral, but they do expire after just a couple of weeks, so it’s not a good idea to use them for submitting CIDUs, nor for embedding any images in comments.

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, August 11th, 2024

Keeping hydrated??

Here’s a LOL/semi-CIDU courtesy of Dale Eltoft – and thanks for the intro to Ryan Mason / At Random Comics.

I had trouble with the premises of the original Topper TV series because I didn’t understand the distinction between when the ghosts would “dematerialize” and when they were simply invisible.

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, August 04th, 2024

Back in May, Mark H. wrote that “This [Shoe] caught me completely off guard“.
Perhaps it will do so again in August?

Wait a minute! Doesn’t the “you had me at” trope use something the other party said *early* in their dialogue turn?
Here’s the same comic in single-panel format. These get published under the name “Reply All Lite” and have become re-arrangements (sometimes radical) of the same day’s horizontal-format and usually multi-panel strip. The single-panel “Lite” series used to be somewhat more separate, with a less verbatim relationship to the strip version. The new approach strikes me as sensible. Note that it pretty much coincides with her move to distribution via Counterpoint.

Nope, I’m not sure I would have recognized the title characters if they weren’t named.

And it’s remarkable that they were able to hire domestic services from Amazon even way back then!

by multipleciduers

Saturday Morning OYs – August 03rd, 2024

I had been familiar with the Çedille Records label out of Chicago for quite some time before noticing that one reason for the name is that it would be pronounced much like “CD”.

by multipleciduers

Sunday Funnies – LOLs, July 28th, 2024

Just a touch of CIDU perhaps…

CIDU note: So what was their plan? Or is it merely a non-coordination mixup. The usual TV story would be that they planned to go to town and do something wild.