Fifteen years ago, I fell for an oddly-coiffed Belgian boy named Tintin. I was Anna-Johnny-come-lately; the object of my affection had been loved by people all over the world for 75 years. I met Tintin in India, where his English-language comic books have always been popular. Looks like the cub reporter who has starred in more than 120 million books 200 million books (Thanks, Avi) is about to make a whole new set of friends:
for the first time, DVDs and Video CDs (VCDs) of “Adventures of Tintin” have been launched in Hindi too…
Saibal Chatterjee, a media critic, says the move is driven by pure commercial sense.
“When you do something in English, you’re only reaching out to a certain number of people, a certain percentage of the audience,” he says.
Herge, the nom de plume of Georges Remi, Tintin’s creator, imagined up some charming friends for our boy with the unique hair. They included:
Tintin’s loyal dog and partner-in-adventure, Snowy, and Captain Haddock - famous for his love of whisky and colourful expletives
I guess some words just don’t translate well:
For the curious, Captain Haddock’s “blistering barnacles” translates unexpectedly as “bhadakte hue baingan” (literally, “angry aubergines”). “Thundering typhoons” comes out as “toofani lehren”.
It’s so strange, if Amazon.com were to compile a list of MY statistically improbable phrases, “barnacle” would be one of the anomalous words they’d notice— suddenly, I’m struck by one of those “eureka” moments which occurs when something I’ve always done has a new and logical explanation. ;)
The emerging markets of small towns and villages are hot:
Mr Rajesh Shukla, the NCAER’s principal economist, says: “The urban market has more or less reached the saturation level. The new customer is certainly in the smaller towns and villages.
“If you see the larger towns, of the 30% of the total urban areas, metros have hardly 15-16% of the total population. So the next target will be smaller towns which is another 15% and the next ones are the well-connected rural areas.”
So, a massive group of rural people who were once ignored because they lacked money and literacy are now a $30 billion market.
Mr Gurcharan Das, author of “India Unbound”, says India’s economic turnaround began in the early 1990s with the opening up of the economy and in the first instance it largely benefited the English-speaking middle classes.
“But a decade and a half later, the fruits of economic liberalisation are filtering down to smaller towns and villages.”
…and that’s why, judging by the number of VCDs sold, Tintin has 40,000 new friends in six weeks.
