professorxst1.jpgYears ago, in 1991 to be specific, I picked up a copy of Jim Lee’s X-Men # 1. The comic itself was brilliant and the ones that followed it were equally amazing, but I did have one complaint… In the first few pages, Charles Xavier tries to wow Jean Grey by speaking in French and ends up making himself look like a complete fool. Actually, it was the writers that looked like fools with their poor French translation. I’ve seen similar cases here and there for a few more years after that, but I did take a break from reading comic books several years ago (with the exception of the Exiles) and have only restarted reading recently.

You’d think that 17 years later Marvel would get their act together especially after the internet saw widespread use, effectively making our great planet that much smaller. Unfortunately that was not the case as I recently found out after I picked up a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man 567. In it, the supposed daughter of the long dead Kraven the Hunter speaks the same dialect of French that Professor Xavier does. She says: “Ou allez-vous? Je ne suis pas masscre fait vous encore.” Which roughly translates as: “Where are you going? I have not massacre did you yet.”

Don’t believe me? Here it is in all it’s glory:

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I can’t help but wonder why Marvel doesn’t just get outsourced translations. It’s not like they have a money shortage recently. I also wonder how often this happens when characters “speak” other languages that I’m not familiar to.

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