Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilDossiers thématiquesLa bande dessinée en traductologi...2025Intralingual translation in the e...

2025

Intralingual translation in the early days of newspaper comic strips: Bulletje & Bolleke (& Boonestaak)

Elke Brems

Résumés

Cette étude explore le rôle de la traduction intralinguistique dans les débuts de l’histoire de la bande dessinée de journal, en se concentrant sur l’emblématique bande dessinée néerlandaise De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak (Le Voyage autour du monde de Bulletje et Boonestaak). Publiée pour la première fois dans le journal socialiste néerlandais Het Volk en 1922, cette bande dessinée est devenue un jalon culturel, avec 17 ans de diffusion. Créée par A.M. de Jong et George van Raemdonck, elle combine humour et critique sociale pour toucher son public. Ses thèmes comprenaient l’antimilitarisme, la critique du colonialisme et le rejet du conservatisme moral.
L’étude examine l’adaptation de la bande dessinée en néerlandais belge (flamand) pour le journal socialiste flamand De Volksgazet, en soulignant les modifications linguistiques et culturelles apportées pour convenir au lectorat flamand. Ces adaptations comprennent des changements dans les pronoms, les diminutifs, les expressions idiomatiques et les références culturelles, reflétant la divergence linguistique et culturelle entre le néerlandais belge et le néerlandais des Pays-Bas dans la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Malgré des idéaux socialistes communs, la traduction intralinguistique a comblé les lacunes en matière d’accessibilité linguistique et de familiarité culturelle, assurant ainsi le succès de la bande dessinée en Flandre.
Bien que Bulletje en Boonestaak n’ait pas atteint la renommée mondiale d’œuvres contemporaines telles que Tintin d’Hergé, elle reste un ouvrage phare de l’histoire de la bande dessinée néerlandaise et belge. L’étude conclut que le succès de la bande dessinée illustre l’importance d’adapter les produits culturels à des publics spécifiques, même au sein de communautés partageant la même langue, et souligne son influence durable sur la mémoire culturelle.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

The early days of Dutch newspaper comic strips

  • 1 I am grateful to Peter Flynn for thoroughly reviewing the English of this paper. He also came up wi (...)
  • 2 I consistently use the old spelling of the word Boonestaak (Beanstalk) here.
  • 3 There was a nine-month break in 1932 (Kooijman & Stoovelaar 1979, 30). Jan Kooijman and Hans Stoove (...)

1On 22 April 1922, the Dutch socialist newspaper Het Volk (The People) published an announcement addressed to the children of the newspaper’s readers,1 in which two boys, who signed their message with Bulletje and Boonestaak (Fatso and Beanstalk),2 called on the children (addressed as comrades) to come along on their journey around the world: if their father or mother had a subscription to the newspaper, they would be given a free ticket, the two world travelers said. The trip would consist of adventures in picture form: “each day, the paper will publish two pictures describing our adventures” (Jong 1922). The announcement was accompanied by a portrait of both boys with two ships in the background, as a reference to their future journey around the world. And on 2 May 1922 their adventure did indeed start: two pictures appeared, with ten lines of story under each picture. In other words, it was a text comic, as was common in European newspapers at the time (Knudde n.d.). The comic strip De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak (Fatso and Beanstalk’s World Travels), written by the Dutchman A.M. de Jong and drawn by the Belgian George van Raemdonck, became extremely popular and was important for Het Volk in keeping and winning subscribers (Knudde n.d.). It eventually ran for 17 years, with the last issue appearing on 17 November 1937.3 De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak was also very quickly published in book form and was often republished in different formats. The most recent reissue of the albums ran from 2001 to 2012 and was published in A4 format.

  • 4 De Laet writes: “After all, both Flanders and the Netherlands were at that time quite poor in the f (...)
  • 5 Later titled Tripje en Liezebertha, 1923-1946.

2More research is needed, but one can hypothesize that in the Netherlands, the newspaper comic genre emerged in the 1920s primarily through translations, due to a lack of native material. Foreign models and genres can easily enter into such a vacuum, thus allowing translated literature to take on a central role (Even-Zohar 1990, 48).4 The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf (The Telegraph) started in 1921 with the translated English newspaper comic strip Billie Bimbo and Peter Porker (translated as Jopie Slim en Dikkie Bigmans), about a boy and a pig in chequered trousers (Nas 2013). The comic was a huge success and non-translated Dutch language production in the Netherlands soon followed. For example, in 1921 Henk Backer published the Nieuwe Oostersche Sprookjes (New Oriental Fairytales) comic strip in Het Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad (The Rotterdam Newspaper), featuring the comics characters Yoebje and Achmed (Helden et al. 2013, 39-41). In the newspaper Voorwaarts (Forward), Backer published Hansje Teddybeer en Mimi Poezekat (Hansje Teddy Bear and Mimi Pussy Cat) and then he created the wildly popular comic strip De Wonderlijke Geschiedenis van Tripje (The Wonderful History of Tripje), also in Het Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad (The Rotterdam Newspaper),5 which even gave rise to merchandising, such as Tripje harmonicas, lollipops and chocolate bars (Lefèvre 2016, 429).

3This article will focus on the comic strip Bulletje and Boonestaak, which was among those pioneering Dutch-language newspaper comic strips in the 1920s. It will first give a brief introduction to the strip, then say a few words about the existing translations and finally look at the intralingual translation of this strip in the Flemish daily newspaper De Volksgazet (The People’s Gazette). This translation from Netherlandic Dutch to Belgian Dutch has never been studied before. The article will examine how and why the intralingual translation came into being, which translation strategies were applied and what insights this offers into the linguistic and cultural relationship between Belgium and the Netherlands during the interwar period.

A controversial comic strip

4De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak tells the story of two friends, one of whom is tall and thin (Boonestaak/Beanstalk) and the other smaller and rounder (Bulletje/Fatso). They travel around the world with their fathers on a ship called the Herkules (Hercules). They visit in London, New York City, California, Brazil, and China. Next to their own adventures, the comic also features stories told to the boys by old sailor Ouwe Hein (Old Hein), which adds plenty of fantasy and humour to the comic.

  • 6 The article will mostly use the abbreviated title Bulletje en Boonestaak instead of De wereldreis v (...)
  • 7 For a sample of critical responses, see Vuijsje & Vuijsje 1974. That article provides an excellent (...)
  • 8 Gedurende het verschijnen van de avonturen der wereldreizigers in Het Volk hebben ons meermalen pr (...)

5The drawings in Bulletje en Boonestaak6 were considered quite explicit in the way they illustrated the bodily slapstick humour: characters seen vomiting, naked characters, corpses, gruesome injuries (legs bitten off by a shark, a head transplant, ears bitten off), a turd in someone’s trousers, etc. The language was sometimes vulgar or non-standard, and swear words were used.7 The style and content prompted outrage among readers, which led A.M. de Jong to add a preface to the first album published in 1923. In the preface, he mocked the critics: “During the publication of the adventures of the world travelers in Het Volk, we repeatedly received protests from worried people in whom the urge to educate had taken on a fanatical character. They feared the two brats would prove dangerous to the glass house in which they honestly believed their own darlings should be raised to be exemplary, to be immaculate, to be true model people” (Jong 1923a). He wrote that he had contempt for “paedagogery.” According to him, Bulletje and Boonestaak were only meant to be “a pair of sturdy, healthy, natural boys. They were a reaction against the dreary and bland Billie Bimbo-ism”, by which he refers to the British comic from the rival newspaper De Telegraaf. In this preface, De Jong makes an amusing and satirical plea for stories, mocking people who raise moral objections to “the palpable lies of fantastical sailor storytelling” (Jong 1923a).8

  • 9 Although for the time the comic had a progressive character, from the 1980s readers began to take o (...)

6Apart from being morally controversial, the comic strip was also an icon of Dutch socialism: the comic strip was anti-militaristic, critical of European colonialism and imperialism, it advocated social justice and was critical of authority,9 but everything was wrapped up in adventures and jokes and gags; the comic strip, despite its ideological slant, was certainly not tendentious or explicitly political (Vuijsje and Vuijsje 1974). It is clear that Bulletje en Boonestaak had a dual audience in mind: although the editorial announcements clearly targeted children as potential readers and activities such as colouring competitions also indicated a desire to reach child readers for the comic strip, the ideological message was undoubtedly also intended for the adult co-reader (as is often the case with children’s literature, see e.g. Nodelman 2008). Children are not a target audience for newspapers, so if they are offered appealing reading material, it is undoubtedly intended to bind their parents to the newspaper.

7The socialist stance of the comic strip Bulletje en Boonestaak should not be surprising, as it was published in the Dutch socialist newspapers Het Volk and later also in Voorwaarts and was conceived and created by two socialist artists: the writer A.M. de Jong and the cartoonist George van Raemdonck. The Dutchman A.M. de Jong (1888-1943) grew up in poverty and was a teacher for a short time before becoming editor of the socialist daily Het Volk in 1919, where he was chief art editor and feuilleton editor from 1920 to 1925, among other positions (Jong 2001). He became very well known as a socialist writer in a variety of genres, his greatest success being eight books about the boy Merijntje Gijzen, regional novels about the Brabant peasant worker milieu of the early 20th century. De Jong was strongly opposed to Nazism and openly demonstrated this. In 1943, he was shot dead by two members of the Germaansche SS (Germanic SS) (Schrevel 1992). In May 1917, Dutchman A.M. de Jong met Belgian George van Raemdonck (1888-1966), a pharmacist’s son from Antwerp, who had studied drawing, painting, and music. Like many Belgians at the start of World War I, he fled from German-occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands. He stayed there until 1928. During that time, he forged a close friendship with de Jong, and after their first collaboration in the children’s book Vacantiedagen (1917), they started working together on De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak. Van Raemdonck produced a total of almost 9 000 drawings for this comic strip (Nas 2013). He was a versatile graphic artist, known as much for his political cartoons (fiercely anti-fascist, like De Jong’s work) as for his portrait paintings.

Bulletje en Boonestaak in translation

  • 10 The German volumes were published in 1924, 1925 and 1928 by the Fränkische Verlagsanstalt & Buchdru (...)

8While their contemporary Hergé’s Tintin has been translated into more than 100 languages, Bulletje en Boonestaak was not such a global success. Still, the latter was possibly the first Dutch comic strip to be translated. Four volumes appeared in German, under the title Dickerle und Bohnenstange auf der Weltreise and in 1926 a volume appeared in French translation, Fil-de-Fer et Boule-de-Gomme.10 The German translation (Übertragung aus den Holländischen) had first appeared from 1924 onwards in the supplement of the socialist German newspaper Fränkische Tagespost.

9In addition to these interlingual translations, there were also intralingual translations of Bulletje and Boonestaak. The term intralingual translation refers to any form of rewording of a text within the same language. According to Zethsen (2009), the most important factors for the creation of an intralingual translation are: “1) knowledge (the target group’s general ability to understand a text), 2) time (the temporal distance makes a new version necessary), 3) culture (the need to explain cultural references in a text), 4) space (the text is either reduced or extended)” (Zethsen 2009, 805-807). Brems has added other factors: 5) cultural-political reasons (Brems 2017), 6) change in norms and values “which cause the intralingual translator to produce a version that is more in tune with how people in the target culture think about certain ethical and aesthetic issues” and 7) preservation, “where intralingual translation is undertaken not in order to change the original but in order to keep it” (Brems 2024, 59).

  • 11 Denk u er in: gebraden zwembroek!
  • 12 Deze firma wou de boekjes gaarne als reclame-object hebben en heeft uiterst nauwgezet nagespeurd w (...)

10The secondary literature about this comic strip has paid attention to one specific intralingual translation of Bulletje en Boonestaak, namely the censored adaptation published by the coffee company Van Nelle in 1928 for their publication of Bulletje en Boonestaak as an advertising comic strip. Van Nelle’s intralingual translation stems mainly from differing values and norms. An entertaining reader’s letter from Het Volk of 26 September 1928, reproduced in Kooijman and Stuivelaar (1979, 31) lists the changes made for the Van Nelle version. These include the omission of swear words like ‘idioot’ (idiot), the removal of the word ‘duivel’ (devil) and the addition of swimming trunks when the boys are naked (including when Bulletje hangs on a skewer, which elicits the letter writer’s comment: “Think of it: roasted swimming trunks!”11). These changes were made by de Jong and van Raemdonck themselves, who reply to the reader’s letter that the changes were made by them “with an amused smile at the request of Van Nelle”: “This company was eager to have the booklets as an advertising item and has checked very carefully what would be less readily accepted in various circles and asked us to neutralize that”. The client requested “a slightly less unctuous vocabulary,” which they themselves labelled as “ethical anxiety” (Kooijman and Stuivelaar 1979, 31).12

  • 13 The article uses the term ‘Flemish’ here as the adjective for Flanders as a region. For the languag (...)

11While the Van Nelle version is repeatedly dug up as an amusing anecdote, hardly any attention has been given so far to another intralingual translation, namely the Flemish version, which translated Netherlandic Dutch into Belgian Dutch. It is mentioned only in passing, although it is an extensive intralingual translation (see e.g., Kooijman and Stuivelaar 1979, 29). The next part of the article discusses the context in which Bulletje en Boonestaak was translated intra-lingually into Belgian Dutch, firstly by examining the linguistic context and then the context of the socialist press.13

A new language for a new audience

12Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, and the Netherlands share the same language: Dutch. Without going too deeply into the development of the Dutch language in Flanders, it can be noted that “until 1930 Dutch hardly functioned as a national, cultivated language in Flanders. French was used by the upper classes. It dominated education, the administration, politics, and public life in general, although the vast majority of the population spoke Dutch, or, rather, regional varieties of Dutch. For a long time hardly any supra-regional variety of Dutch was used in Flanders, because French was omnipresent in those domains in which a supra-regional variety was needed” (Vandekerckhove 2005, 380). It was not until the language laws in 1932 that Dutch became the official language of Flanders. At that time, there was obviously a need for a standard language. The debate on this was between “the ‘particularistic movement,’ which wanted to give Flanders a standard language of its own, and the ‘integrationist movement,’ which wanted the Dutch language area to have one and the same standard language” (Vandekerckhove 2005, 380). The argument was won by the integrationists. “This implied that Flanders decided to adopt the Dutch standard language of the Netherlands. But it took many decades before one could speak of a more or less generalised command” (idem). This means that during the period when Bulletje en Boonestaak appeared in the Flemish socialist newspaper De Volksgazet, those debates were in full swing, and there was still much linguistic uncertainty and little standardization in Flanders. There was no clear policy on attitudes to Netherlandic Dutch at that time (Geeraerts et al. 1999). But that Netherlandic Dutch was perceived as ‘different’ is clear from looking at the Flemish version of the comic strip. Brems has argued that “the history of intralingual translation between Flanders and the Netherlands is mainly one of identity’ and that intralingual translation between the two regions is thus clearly a cultural-political issue” (Brems 2017, 22), linked to power relations: the Netherlands dominated Flanders in terms of language (and culture) until the last decades of the 20th century. Usually, Flemish people had to conform to the Netherlandic Dutch norm, as it was dominant for a long time, and so they were ‘translated’ if they wanted to gain a foothold in the Netherlands. This happened, for instance, with the comic strip Suske en Wiske (Meesters 2000 and Meesters 2010), or with a whole host of literary authors (Absillis 2009). For ideological or identity motives, it could also sometimes be the other way round: for example, some translations in Flanders during the Second World War turned away from the Netherlands as a cultural model country under the influence of pro-German sentiment and used a Belgian Dutch language variety to distinguish themselves from the Netherlands (for more examples, see Brems 2017). In the case of Bulletje en Boonestaak also, Netherlandic Dutch was translated into Belgian Dutch, but such cultural-political motives were absent here. It was not translated to oppose the Netherlands and claim a Flemish cultural identity of its own, but because the linguistic and cultural differences between the Netherlands and Flanders were too great for the newspaper’s readers to understand and enjoy Bulletje en Boonestaak in their original form, as will be demonstrated in what follows.

The two comrades in a Flemish newspaper

  • 14 Het Frans is de taal van Wallonië, het Nederlands de taal van Vlaanderen.”
  • 15 A distinction is made between cultural and cultural-political because they point to different thing (...)

13De Volksgazet (The People’s Gazette) was a socialist daily newspaper published from 3 June 1914 to 17 July 1978. The paper was founded by socialists Willem Eekelers and Camille Huysmans. It was a pro-Flemish socialist newspaper that helped push for the Dutchification of Flanders and the language laws of 1932 that would make Flanders monolingual. For the Flemish socialists, cultural autonomy for Flanders meant regional monolingualism: “French is the language of Wallonia, Dutch the language of Flanders” (Amsab-ISG 2023).14 De Volksgazet, through the collaboration of some Flemish writers such as Emmanuel de Bom and Lode Zielens, wanted to spread Dutch-language culture to support that cultural autonomy. In doing so, the newspaper did not oppose the view that Flanders and the Netherlands were one cultural space, and that Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch were one language. Huysmans did not advocate a distinct language for Flanders versus the language as spoken in the Netherlands. Emphasizing unity with the Netherlands helped to strengthen the Flemish cause vis-à-vis the French-speaking Belgians, who could otherwise scorn Flemish as a collection of dialects (Van Velthoven 2023). A possible hypothesis is that cultural transfers from the Netherlands—as in the comic strip Bulletje en Boonestaak—also took place for this reason: people looked to Dutch culture rather than French culture for cultural-political reasons: they sought help in the Netherlands to strengthen cultural autonomy and cultural richness. However, the comic was not just adopted in its original form, but translated intralingually, as I will demonstrate below. A gap was perceived between the intended readership (Flemish socialists) and the comic strip by the Dutch writer A.M. de Jong. The context gives us no reason to think that cultural-political factors alone led to this intralingual translation, so it can be assumed that other factors played a role, namely ‘knowledge’ (readers had to be able to understand the comic easily; it had to be a low-threshold genre to attract young and older readers) and ‘culture’ (readers preferred to be presented with familiar cultural references).15

  • 16 The paper’s archive can be found at the Amsab Institute of Social History, Ghent.
  • 17 De Volksgazet heeft de toelating gekregen van onze kameraden van het Volk van Nederland om de bero (...)

14No correspondence has been found about how Bulletje en Boonestaak got from one socialist newspaper to another, who was involved, if and how much was paid, and who took charge of the translations.16 The series cartoonist, George van Raemdonck, was a Belgian, so the contacts may have gone through him. In the announcement of the series in De Volksgazet on 17 November 1923, we read: “De Volksgazet has received permission from our comrades at the Volk of the Netherlands to publish the famous journey around the world of Bolleke and Boonestaak. The journey has been narrated by our party colleague A.M. de Jong.”17 The socialist network (“our comrades,” “our party colleague”) and not some Dutch-speaking network is emphasized here to explain the cultural transfer. It is also noticeable that the title is already rendered in Belgian Dutch (Bolleke), without mentioning the original title (Bulletje). There is also no mention anywhere of changes being made to the text.

  • 18 According to Stynen, de Jong invited Zielens to Blaricum in January 1940.

15It is not clear who the translator was, although the then famous Flemish author Lode Zielens comes to mind, as he started working at the socialist daily De Volksgazet in 1922, and from 1926 on, directed the weekly cultural supplement. He also knew de Jong (Stynen 2001, 307).18 But other Flemish authors also collaborated on the paper, and could have contributed to the translations, such as Fritz Francken, Raymond Herreman, and Emmanuel de Bom. And of course, it could also be the work of someone who was not a literary author, or different translators may have worked on it as well. Due to this lack of data, we cannot include the translator’s biography and poetics in our analysis of the translations.

  • 19 I use the table of contents of the series prepared by Jan Kooijman and Hans Stoovelaar. This story (...)
  • 20 Kooijman and Stoovelaar mention “an unknown number of episodes” of the Flemish series (Kooijman and (...)

16The first issue of Bolleke en Boonestaak, as the strip was called in Flanders, appeared in De Volksgazet on 19 November 1923 (as a reminder, the first issue of the original appeared in Het Volk on 2 May 1922). Contrary to claims elsewhere (Tromp 1992), the series in the Flemish newspaper did not run only until 1928. The last episode was published on Wednesday 13 April 1932. It contains the last two pictures of the story “Ouwe Hein’s avonturen onder de Barbarijsche zeeroovers in de Sargassozee” (“Old Hein’s adventures among the Barbaric pirates in the Sargasso Sea”).19 That means that 1664 episodes of Bolleke en Boonestaak appeared in De Volksgazet.20 A total of 4428 episodes exist, mostly comprising two pictures. Just over a third have thus been translated intralingually into Belgian Dutch. The last cartoon of the whole translated series demonstrates the ‘localization’ of the series into the Flemish context. It shows a newspaper with a portrait of Old Hein. This newspaper is called Het Volk in the Dutch version and De Volksgazet in the Flemish version. However, an adaptation of the drawing as shown here (and thus not only of the text underneath) rarely happened. See image 1a and 1b.

Fig. 1a: The last image of the story Ouwe Hein’s avonturen onder de Barbarijsche zeeroovers in de Sargassozee (Old Hein’s adventures among the Barbaric pirates in the Sargasso Sea). Dutch version, published on 28 October 1927 in Het Volk.

Fig. 1b: The last image of the story Ouwe Hein’s avonturen onder de Barbarijsche zeeroovers in de Sargassozee (Old Hein’s adventures among the Barbaric pirates in the Sargasso Sea). Flemish version, published on 13 April 1932 in De Volksgazet.

  • 21 The first picture was signed. In the Comiclopedia the comic ‘Verkeersagentje’ is situated much late (...)
  • 22 het lustige drietal hetwelk de vele lezers van De Volksgazet zoo menig genoeglijk oogenblik hebben (...)

17Originally the episodes of Bolleke en Boonestaak appeared three times a week with great regularity, but gradually that pace slowed down so that by the end of the publication there was not even an episode every week. It seems that another comic strip was increasingly replacing Bolleke en Boonestaak, namely De avonturen van een verkeersagentje (The Adventures of a Little Traffic Cop). Those adventures started in De Volksgazet on 21 April 1930. They are about a lucky doll (in the shape of a little traffic cop) who goes on a trip around the world with an aviator, and who, by doing so, experiences all kinds of adventures in exotic places. The strip seems very much inspired by Bulletje en Boonestaak. The author was the Dutchman Gerard Wildschut.21 On 8 December 1930, De Volksgazet reported on the real-life arrival of the three comic-strip heroes (Bolleke, Boonestaak and the traffic cop) together in Antwerp, “the merry threesome that has made the many readers of De Volksgazet spend so many an agreeable moment.”22

  • 23 Bolleke en Boonestaak zijn de twee beste vrienden geworden van al de kinderen, die De Volksgazet l (...)

18Bolleke en Boonestaak was a great success in Flanders, as it was in the Netherlands. On 24 May 1924 (so after six months), the newspaper wrote: “Bolleke and Boonestaak have become the two best friends of all the children, who read De Volksgazet. […] The cheeky pranks of these two rascals make people laugh heartily. At school and in the street, people often talk about the muscled guy called Boonestaak and the tub of fat called Bolleken.”23 They report that the children reading another newspaper are jealous and that the newspaper is “proud of this result obtained”: “Proud, but above all happy because it has been able to do something for its many children that has made them happy.” This should obviously be taken with a pinch of salt as the self-promotion it is, but it is clear that the series had certainly caught on.

The Flemish version

  • 24 Changing attitudes towards translation obviously also play a major role. Freer translations used to (...)

19An important dichotomy in translation is that between domestication and foreignization (Venuti 1995), from the onset of scholarly discourse on translation in the 1970s to today, still a much-studied theoretical and applied research topic (for a discussion see e.g. Kemppanen, Jänis & Belikova 2012). Briefly sketched, the question then concerns the extent to which a translation adapts to the target language and culture or the extent to which, on the contrary, a translation remains strongly rooted in the source language and culture. Of course, all translations can be located somewhere along that continuum. Perceptions of the status of the source text and its author influence translation strategies on that continuum. The prestige of the genre also plays a role. One can see, for instance, that children’s literature and popular literature are translated with more noticeable changes (omissions, additions etc.) than novels for adults by celebrated authors (Zlatnar Moe et al. 2016). Comics also seem more prone to all kinds of changes, because their status has long been lower than that of other literary genres (Zanettin 2008). This certainly seems to be the case with Bulletje en Boonestaak, all the more so because the comic appeared in a newspaper, which is a short-lived publishing medium (and in Flemish translation, the comic appeared only in the newspaper and not in book form), which did not enhance its prestige.24

20Actually, the concepts of domestication and foreignization could have been irrelevant here: after all, the text could have remained unchanged because it was already in Dutch. The fact that (intralingual) translation was undertaken indicates a perception of linguistic and cultural differences between Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch, which would have created a barrier for readers if not adapted. These changes were linguistic, not graphical. The Dutch language area was perceived as containing a source and a target culture in itself. The decision to opt for an intralingual translation is a form of domestication, an adaptation of ‘foreign elements’ from the Netherlands to the more familiar target language and culture in Flanders.

  • 25 I compared the Flemish version from De Volksgazet, which can be found via the digital version of th (...)

21The article now goes on to present the results of a translation comparison made between the first two volumes of the series. I read the source text next to the target text, indicated the differences and organized them into two categories: language and cultural references.25

  • 26 Er zijn veel groote schrijvers, die vele, dikke boeken voor groote menschen hebben geschreven en e (...)
  • 27 dezen nog jongen schrijver”; “voor de leutige manier waarop hij […] deze wereldreis zal verhalen”; (...)
  • 28 As Nas writes following van Raemdonck’s move to Belgium in 1928: “In the Netherlands he was a celeb (...)

22In the Flemish newspaper De Volksgazet, the series was introduced in the first episode by praising the writer and cartoonist: an editorial voice precedes the ‘real’ narrator of the rest of the series. In this first episode, one reads, among other things, that children don’t realize how difficult it is to write something for them: “There are many great writers who have written many, big books for grown-ups and have received a lot of acclaim for that and yet have not been able to strike the right tone that captivates and moves the children’s heart.”26 A distinction is made between writing for adults and writing for children (and not between writing a novel and writing a comic). It goes on to say that A.M. de Jong can do just that and that readers will be “grateful to this still young writer” “for the jolly way in which he […] will narrate this journey around the world.” The cartoonist is also praised, but without mentioning his name, merely pointing out “what a great artist the man is who made the little drawings above.”27 That George van Raemdonck is not mentioned by name seems surprising, as he is a Belgian and the cartoonist is of course a crucial actor in comic art. Perhaps the genre was not yet sufficiently well established to mention the cartoonist by name and, moreover, Van Raemdonck himself was still unknown in Belgium at the time.28

Linguistic changes

23The linguistic differences between Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch are well known. The main morphosyntactic differences are all applicable here. “For the pronominal paradigm for the 2nd person singular, there was and is an essential difference between endogenous colloquial Belgian Dutch and (northern-based or Netherlandic-based) Standard Dutch” (Vandekerckhove 383). In the interwar period, before the standardization process, subject ‘ge’ (‘you’, possessive ‘uw’ and object ‘u’) was used by Flemish people instead of ‘jij/je’, ‘jouw’ and ‘jou/je’ respectively. We see this translation shift repeatedly in Bulletje en Boonestaak, e.g., ‘Ziet ge’ (Volksgazet 24.11.23) instead of ‘Zie je’ (‘You see’; Jong 1923a, 8) or ‘Gij zult’ (Volksgazet 3.12.23) instead of ‘Jij zal’ (‘You will’; Jong 1923a, 12). Other verb forms also come with these different pronouns, as the examples show. The Dutch version, as mentioned above, also sometimes used colloquial language and so the personal pronoun ‘ie’ also appeared there, which was then translated as ‘he’ in De Volksgazet, making the Flemish version more standard Dutch than the Netherlandic Dutch in that respect.

24Another typical morphosyntactic difference is the diminutive. “The -ke-suffix is a typical exponent of colloquial Belgian Dutch, the -je suffix is the Standard Dutch realization” (Vandekerckhove 2005, 391). In our case too, the diminutive ‘-je’ is always replaced by ‘-ke’. In colloquial Netherlandic Dutch, there is also the diminutive suffix ‘-ie’. Since Bulletje en Boonestaak contains quite a bit of colloquial language, this ie-suffix also occurs, especially in the dialogues. In the Flemish version, this also changes to ‘-ke.’ An example: Netherlandic Dutch ‘pakkie’ (Jong 1923a, 8) becomes Belgian Dutch ‘paksken’ (‘little costume’; Volksgazet 24.11.2). Neither are standard.

  • 29 leutig en jolig boekje […] sappig verteld door onzen partijgenoot” (Volksgazet 17.11.1923).

25One also notices a lot of lexical differences between the two language variants. In these cases, you can most readily speak of a ‘translation’: words and expressions from Netherlandic Dutch that are not understood by or do not sound sufficiently familiar to Flemish readers were replaced by words and expressions from Belgian Dutch. De Volksgazet itself reported that Bulletje en Boonestaak was a “funny and jolly little book […] juicily told by our fellow party member.”29 It was therefore important to maintain that jolliness and juiciness. In order to create the same effect, a Flemish idiom had to be chosen. In Translation Studies, this is called ‘dynamic equivalence’: one chooses an equivalent that aims for the same effect in the target language. For example, ‘opschepper’ (Jong 1923a, 12) is replaced by ‘stoeffer’ (‘braggart’; Volksgazet 3.12.23), ‘gymnastiek’ (Jong 1923a, 30) is replaced by ‘turnles’ (‘gymnastics’; Volksgazet 14.1.24). The children do not go ‘een potje knikkeren’ (Jong 1923a, 18) but they go ‘met de marbollen spelen’ (‘play marbles’; Volksgazet 17.12.23) and they are ‘een paar lekkere deugnieten’ (Volksgazet 11.2.24) instead of ‘een paar lekkere jutteperen’ (‘a couple of little rascals’; Jong 1923a, 42). Exclamations and curse words are typical cases of idiomatic language use linked to a linguistic variant and are thus definitely translated: the Netherlandic Dutch curse ‘Jeminee (Jong 1923b, 23) becomes ‘Seeses van Marante’ (Volksgazet 30.7.24), a Flemish bastard curse.

26In A.M. de Jong’s original text, as mentioned above, there was a lot of colloquial and even vulgar language, for which he was also criticized, especially in the dialogues and stories told by Ouwe Hein. It is remarkable that the Belgian Dutch version is then usually less vulgar, or more neutral. About the sea-scouts they meet in London, the scullion says in colloquial Dutch: “die oefenen d’r eigen alvast tegen dat ze later in den oorlog d’r eigen in stukken maggen laten schieten” (Jong 1923b, 17), while in De Volksgazet it sounds more neutral: “die oefenen zich al, tegen dat ze later in den oorlog zich in stukken mogen laten schieten” (“They are already practicing, so they can get themselves shot to pieces later in the war”; Volksgazet 16.7.24). Note also the anti-war statements here.

Changes to cultural references

27Besides domesticating adaptations at the linguistic level, we also see domesticating adaptations in terms of cultural references in this intralingual translation. The research on translation strategies related to culture-specific items (CSIs) is very extensive, and several models have been developed for this purpose (see Brems 2022). Without going into these different models, I will here point out via some examples how the CSIs of Bulletje en Boonestaak are translated to the Belgian context. To begin with, there are the place names, which situate the comic in the Netherlands. These are changed to the Belgian context. About infamously swimming naked in Hyde Park, the boys say: “Zoiets zou je eens moeten probeeren in Holland” (Jong 1923b, 7), which in De Volksgazet becomes: “Zoiets zoudt ge eens moeten proberen in België” (“you wouldn’t want to try this in Holland/Belgium”; Volksgazet 23.6.24). See image 2a en image 2b.

Fig. 2a: Dutch version as published in Jong 1923b, 7.

Fig. 2b: Flemish version, published on 23 June 1924 in De Volksgazet.

28Holland (meaning the Netherlands) is replaced by Belgium, just as Amsterdam is replaced by Antwerp, for example in “et dak van de Bijenkorf in Amsterdam” (Jong 1923b, 24) which becomes “het dak van het Volksgebouw van Antwerpen” (“the roof of the Bijenkorf in Amsterdam—the roof of the People’s Building in Antwerp” ; Volksgazet 2.8.24). Thus, with the change of city, comes a change of buildings (Bijenkorf is a department store in Amsterdam, the Volksgebouw is a place for socialist meetings in Antwerp). Apart from the setting, references to people and historical events are also changed. When the boys encounter a war hero in London, they are shocked by his pathetic condition. They had imagined heroes differently: in the original version they then mention heroes such as Jan van Schaffelaar, De Ruyter, Napoleon, Van Speijk (Jong 1923b, 18), whereas in the Flemish newspaper these are changed to Jacob van Artevelde, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon (Volksgazet 19.7.24). See image 3a and image 3b.

Fig. 3a: Dutch version as published in Jong 1923b, 18.

Fig. 3b: Flemish version, published on 1 July 1924 in De Volksgazet.

29So, the boys refer to people who played a role in their own patriotic history, and whom they know from history lessons at school. The boys are thus given a different origin and education (Dutch vs Belgian). Incidentally, it is notable that with Jacob van Artevelde, the chosen hero is a figure who had gained an almost mythical status in the Flemish people’s struggle against Frenchification. We can also see from the adaptation of other CSIs that the whole cultural frame of reference has been translated to Belgium. When the original version mentions “a free Wednesday afternoon” (Jong 1923a, 8) at school, it becomes “a free Thursday afternoon” (Volksgazet 24.11.23) in the translation because in the Netherlands schoolchildren had Wednesday afternoons off and in Belgium they had Thursday afternoons off. When Bulletje and Boonestaak float through the air suspended on a hook, the bystanders sing a different song in each version: in the Netherlands, the sentimental Amsterdam song “Zwaluw, waarheen is uw vlucht (Jong 1923b, 32) and in Flanders, the children’s song “Vogeltje, gij zijt gevangen” (Volksgazet 20.8.24).

30To conclude this translation comparison, the article will take a closer look at the most famous scene in the comic series. At the end of the first story, Bulletje and Boonestaak are in London. There, in Fleet Street, they pass the building of the London Evening News. The newspaper published Harry Folkard’s comic strip Billy Bimbo and Peter Porker, which had been translated into Jopie Slim en Dikkie Bigmans in the rival right-wing conservative Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. According to Knudde, that ‘lame’ comic strip was one of the main reasons why de Jong started his own (Knudde n.d.). Bulletje, Boonestaak and their comrade the scullion come face-to-face with the two other cartoon characters, who are immediately frightened:

  • 30 Daar heb je die twee zwervers van Het Volk, zei Jopie angstig. […] Boonestaak kwam met een gezicht (...)

There are those two tramps from Het Volk, said Jopie anxiously. […] Boonestaak, with a face which suggested not much good, stopped right in front of the guys from the Telegraaf. Then he asked, “Aren’t you Billy Bimbo?” The two English misfits had bored the Dutch children long enough with their whining.30

31Bulletje and Boonestaak scold the British cartoon characters and give them a severe beating, cheered on by a British bobby and some bystanders (Jong 1923a, 92-93). In doing so, Bulletje and Boonestaak, as well as A.M. de Jong and George van Raemdonck, set the tone of their own comic strip, as an antidote to this British strip, which was ideologically opposite and was also considered mediocre in terms of plot and characters. That context was of course different for Flemish readers. They did not know Jopie Slijm and Dikkie Bigmans from De Telegraaf. De Volksgazet brought the CSIs to the Belgian context (Het Volk becomes De Volksgazet, Hollandsche jongens becomes Vlaamsche jongens, Holland becomes Belgium) and turned De Telegraaf into the ‘Frut.’ That is the nickname for the Catholic Flemish newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen, an imaginary source, as Jopie Slim and Dikkie Bigmans were not published in it. This scene at the end of the first story, which made a statement in the Dutch context, was much less meaningful for Flemish readers.

32As it happens, the ‘coloring contest’ organized by De Volksgazet in June 1924 related precisely to this scene: young readers had to color two pictures showing Bulletje and Boonestaak seeing Jopie Slim and Dikkie Bigmans coming out of the door of London Evening News, published on 7 June 1924. There were 598 contributions: “Certainly those who worked with watercolors acted most wisely. Their colors were generally more vivid and diligent than the pastel drawings. A few, however, have not been able to avoid the danger associated with it: making a mess” (Volksgazet 25.6.24).

Conclusion

33Bulletje en Boonestaak was among the pioneers of the comic strip genre in the Netherlands. It was created by a Belgian-Dutch duo: the writer A.M. de Jong and the artist George van Raemdonck. It was part of the socialist block through its publication in the newspaper Het Volk and through the political messages contained in the adventures and gags.

34This contribution has focused on the intralingual translation of the comic strip into Belgian Dutch. Indeed, the comic strip was soon published in a Flemish socialist newspaper. Research has not been able to identify the actors involved in this cultural transfer. However, this Flemish publication seems to have been successful, as De Volksgazet itself attests. As with Het Volk in the Netherlands, the strip proved to be an excellent way for De Volksgazet to retain subscribers. It ran in Flanders until 13 April 1932, publishing a total of 1664 episodes, after which De avonturen van een verkeersagentje took over.

  • 31 Random checks were made to see if feuilletons (a particularly popular genre at the time) were also (...)

35De Volksgazet was a pro-Flemish newspaper that wanted Flanders to be monolingually Dutch. It was not entirely clear what this Dutch should look like: a Flemish version of Dutch had not yet been sufficiently standardized. The standard Dutch of the Netherlands seemed the most obvious. In the years after the Second World War, campaigns in schools and in the media were indeed launched in Flanders to promote this standard among the Flemish, but in the interwar period there was a lot of linguistic uncertainty in Flanders about a written language standard. It is clear from my case study that Dutch was quite far removed from the Flemish reader, as substantial changes were made to make the cultural transfer successful. It should be noted that in Bulletje en Boonestaak the standard Dutch language was certainly not always the norm: de Jong also uses colloquial and vulgar expressions. These were even further removed from the Flemish reader than the standard language because of their localized nature. De Volksgazet therefore carried out an intralingual translation to bring the text as close as possible to the Flemish socialist readership. Interventions were made at the linguistic level and at the level of cultural references, as has been shown. If we refer back to the seven factors that lead to an intralingual translation as listed in Brems 2021 (based on Zethsen 2009), the factors of ‘knowledge’ and ‘culture’ are most relevant here: to make the text understood, the language had to be adapted and to make the text recognizable, the cultural references had to be altered. Cultural politics played only a minor and vague role: that Bulletje en Boonestaak appeared in Flanders at all—that this cultural transfer took place—was due to the transnational networks of the socialist block (so political-ideological reasons were also involved).31 And perhaps the fact that it was originally a Dutch comic also played a role for a pro-Flemish newspaper at the time, which saw a cultural alliance with the Netherlands as a dam against Frenchification. But there is no real cultural-political reason for the intralingual translation as such, i.e., for the adaptation of the text: there was no desire to distinguish oneself from the Netherlands, as is often the case with intralingual translation between Flanders and the Netherlands. The fact that they replaced the cultural references shows implicitly that the Dutch context was regarded as foreign, different, and unfamiliar. In the Van Nelle translation, other norms and values played a role as a reason for the intralingual translation, but this does not seem to be the case here: Bolleke also swims naked in Hyde Park, just like Bulletje.

  • 32 Note that the diminutive here was no longer Belgian Dutch (Bolletje instead of Bolleke): we are the (...)

36The proof that Bulletje en Boonestaak had taken root in Flanders and in Flemish cultural memory is shown by the fact that the very first youth series on Flemish public television was based on it (Camp 2021, 34-36). On 12 March 1955, the series Bolletje en Boonestaak32 was broadcast for 15 minutes every Saturday afternoon. It was performed live: the actors re-enacted some scenes, with a few props and costumes, such as a white sheet to represent the snowy landscape of the North Pole. Actor Jef Burm recalls: “Our dialogues could not be too long. After all, it was all live, and the longer our lines, the greater the chance of slips of the tongue” (Camp 2021, 36). Indeed, Bulletje and Boonestaak were pioneers not only of the comic strip genre in the 1920s, but also of the youth series genre in the 1950s. The adaptation to the Flemish context discussed in this article undoubtedly contributed to the impact made by Bulletje en Boonestaak. The comic’s success highlights the significance of translating cultural products to meet the needs of specific audiences, even within communities that share a common language.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Absillis, Kevin. 2009. “ ‘From now on we speak civilized Dutch’: the authors of Flanders, the language of the Netherlands, and the readers of A. Manteau.” Language and Literature 18 (3): 265-280.

Amsab-ISG. 2023. Volksgazet. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://encyclopedievlaamsebeweging.be

Boeckx, Bert. Inventaris van het archief van S.V. Ontwikkeling en Excelsior N.V. Uitgeverij en drukkerij van het dagblad Volksgazet (1906-1979) (S/1996/522). Gent: Amsab-Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis.

Brems, Elke. 2017. “Separated by the same language: Intralingual translation between Dutch and Dutch.” Perspectives 26 (4): 509-525. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1417455

Brems, Elke. 2022. Verander iets. Over vertaalstrategieën. https://literairvertalen.org/kennisbank/verander-iets-over-vertaalstrategieen

Brems, Elke. 2024. “Pinkeltje remains Pinkeltje: intralingual translations of a Dutch children’s icon.” In The Routledge Handbook of Intralingual Translation, edited by Linda Pillière and Özlem Berk Albachten, 48-63. New York: Routledge.

Camp, Peter van. 2021. Kinderen van Zeppos: de magische jeugdfeuilletons van de BRT. Leuven: Davidsfonds Uitgeverij.

Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1990. “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem”. Poetics Today 11 (1): 45-52.

Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers, and Dirk Speelman. 1999. Convergentie en divergentie in de Nederlandse woordenschat: een onderzoek naar kleding- en voetbaltermen. Amsterdam: Meertens instituut.

Helden, Willem van, Rob van Eijck, Jos van Waterschoot, and Joost Pollmann. 2013. Strips! 200 jaar Nederlands beeldverhaal. Eindhoven: Lecturis.

Jong, A.M. de 1922. “De Wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak Aan de kinderen van de abonnees. Waarde Kameraadjes!” Het volk: dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij. April 22. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:011082324:mpeg21:p002.

Jong, A.M. de 1923a. De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak. Verteld door A.M. de Jong. Met prentjes van G. van Raemdonck. Amsterdam: Boekhandel en Uitgeversmaatschappij. ‘Ontwikkeling’.

Jong A.M. de 1923b. De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak. Verteld door A.M. de Jong. Met prentjes van G. van Raemdonck. Tweede deel. Amsterdam: Boekhandel en Uitgeversmaatschappij. ‘Ontwikkeling’.

Jong, Mels de. 2001. A.M. de Jong, schrijver. Biografie. Amsterdam: Querido.

Kemppanen, Hannu, Marja Jänis, and Alexandra Belikova (eds.). 2012. Domestication and Foreignization in Translation Studies. Berlijn: Frank & Timme.

Knudde, Kjell. N.d., last updated on 2025.01.01. George van Raemdonck. https://www.lambiek.net/artists/r/raemdonck.htmt

Kooijman, Jan, and Hans Stovelaar. 1977. In de ban van Bulletje en Boonestaak: George van Raemdonck & A.M. de Jong. Baijum: Noordermeer.

Kooijman, Jan, and Hans Stovelaar. 1979. Bulletje en Boonestaak: George van Raemdonck & A.M. de Jong. Amsterdam: D’Roodkoopren knoop.

Kooijman, Jan, and Hans Stovelaar. 2001. Bulletje en Boonestaak: feiten en verhalen / George van Raemdonck & A.M. de Jong. Amsterdam: D’Roodkoopren knoop.

Laet, Danny de. 1982. De Vlaamse stripauteurs. De Dageraad.

Lefèvre, Pascal. 2012. “Strips”. In Lexicon van de jeugdliteratuur, edited by Jan van Coillie, Wilma van der Pennen, Jos Staal en Herman Tromp. Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/coil001lexi01_01/lvdj00939.php?q=bulletje#hl1.

Lefèvre, Pascal. 2016. “Een wereld van verschil. Beeldverhalen in Nederland en Vlaanderen.” In Een land van waan en wijs. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse jeugdliteratuur, edited by Rita Ghesquiere, Vanessa Joosen and Helma van Lierop. Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas Contact. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/ghes002land01_01/ghes002land01_01_0015.php

Meesters, Gert. 2000. “Convergentie en divergentie in de standaardtaal: het stripverhaal Suske en Wiske als casus.” Nederlandse taalkunde 5 (2): 164-176.

Meesters, Gert. 2010. “Het Nederlands van Suske en Wiske. De taal is half het volk.” Knack, October 7.

N. a. George van  Raemdonck. 1979. In Wordt vervolgd. Stripleksikon der lage landen, edited by Evelyn & Kees Kousemaker. Utrecht: Het Spectrum.

Nas, Dik. 2013. “Raemdonck, Georgius Valentinus Augustinus van”. In Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging in Nederland. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://socialhistory.org

Nodelman, Perry. 2008. The Hidden Adult. Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Rampart, Jos. 1981. Een onderzoek naar de relatie tussen A.M. de Jong en George van Raemdonck. Deel 59. Zundert: Archivariaat “Nassau-Brabant”.

Schoenaers, Dirk, Theo Hermans, Inger Leemans, Cees Koster, and Ton Naaijkens. 2021. Vertalen in de Nederlanden. Een cultuurgeschiedenis. Amsterdam: Boom.

Schrevel, Margreet. 1992. Jong, Adrianus Michiel de. In Biografisch woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://socialhistory.org/

Schuddeboom, Bas. N.d., last updated September 7, 2024. Felix Hess. https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/hess_felix.htm

Tromp, Herman. 1992. “A.M. de Jong”. In Lexicon van de jeugdliteratuur, edited by Jan van Coillie, Wilma van der Pennen, Jos Staal and Herman Tromp. Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/coil001lexi01_01/lvdj00507.php?q=bulletje#hl1.

Vandekerckhove, Reinhild. 2005. “Belgian Dutch versus Netherlandic Dutch: New patterns of divergence? On pronouns of address and diminutives.” Multilingua 24 (4): 379-397. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.2005.24.4.379

Velthove, Harry van. 2023. Huysmans, Camille. Accessed January 20, 2025. https://encyclopedievlaamsebeweging.be

Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge.

Vries, Anne de. 2002. “A.M. de Jong, Bulletje en Bonestaak.” In Wonderland. De wereld van het kinderboek, edited by Marieke van Delft. Zwolle: Waanders.

Vuijsje, Herman, and Flip Vuijsje. 1974. “Het leuke socialistisch-realisme van Bulletje en Boonestaak.” De Haagse Post, June 22.

Vuijsje, Herman, and Hans Stoovelaar. Bulletje & Bonestaak bulletin. Amsterdam: D’Roodkoopren Knoop.

Zanettin, Federico (ed.). 2008. Comics in Translation. New York: Routledge.

Zethsen, Karen Korning. 2009. “Intralingual Translation: An Attempt at Description.” Meta: journal des traducteurs / Meta: Translators’ Journal, 54: 795-812.

Zlatnar Moe, Marija, Tanja Žigon, Luc van Doorslaer, Peter Flynn, and Joep Leerssen. 2016. “Comparing national images in translations of popular fiction.” In Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology, edited by Luc van Doorslaer, Peter Flynn, and Joep Leerssen, 145-161. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Haut de page

Notes

1 I am grateful to Peter Flynn for thoroughly reviewing the English of this paper. He also came up with the idea of calling Bulletje Fatso. My sincere thanks also go to Cathy Collet, the granddaughter of George van Raemdonck, for her permission to reproduce selected images in this article.

2 I consistently use the old spelling of the word Boonestaak (Beanstalk) here.

3 There was a nine-month break in 1932 (Kooijman & Stoovelaar 1979, 30). Jan Kooijman and Hans Stoovelaar published three versions of their book on Bulletje en Boonestaak: in 1977, 1979 and 2001. There is much overlap, but they are three different versions, each also containing information not found in the other volumes.

4 De Laet writes: “After all, both Flanders and the Netherlands were at that time quite poor in the field of youth magazines and comics, so inspiration came from abroad” (“Tenslotte waren Vlaanderen zowel als Nederland toen erg onmondig op het gebied van jeugdbladen en strips, waardoor de inspiratie uit het buitenland kwam”, Laet 1982, 49).—It is important to note that in the early comics period, ‘comics’ as an identified genre/medium did not exist as such, so the terminology used here is based on a contemporary point of view.

5 Later titled Tripje en Liezebertha, 1923-1946.

6 The article will mostly use the abbreviated title Bulletje en Boonestaak instead of De wereldreis van Bulletje en Boonestaak.

7 For a sample of critical responses, see Vuijsje & Vuijsje 1974. That article provides an excellent introduction to the stories of Bulletje en Boonestaak.

8 Gedurende het verschijnen van de avonturen der wereldreizigers in Het Volk hebben ons meermalen protesten bereikt van verontruste menschen, in wie de zucht tot opvoeden een fanatiek karakter heeft aangenomen. Zij waren bevreesd, dat de twee snaken gevaarlijk zouden blijken voor het glazen huisje, waarin zij eerlijk meenden, dat hun eigen lievelingen moesten worden opgekweekt tot voorbeeldige, tot smettelooze, tot ware model-menschen”; paedagogerij”; “een paar stevige, gezonde, natuurlijke jongens. Een reactie tegen de naargeestige en zoutelooze Jopie-Slimmerij” ; de tastbare leugens der fantastische zeemansverhaalkunst” (Jong 1923a). For longer citations, the original Dutch text will systematically be provided in the footnotes.

9 Although for the time the comic had a progressive character, from the 1980s readers began to take offense at the racism present in their adventures (Schrevel 1992).

10 The German volumes were published in 1924, 1925 and 1928 by the Fränkische Verlagsanstalt & Buchdruckerei in Nuremberg. The translator was Georg Gärtner (Kooijman and Stoovelaar 2001, 47). In 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany and that same year the archives of the social-democratic publishing house were destroyed by the Nazis. The French-language edition was published in Belgium by Maison nationale d’édition l’Églantine, “traduction du néerlandais” (Kooijman and Stoovelaar 1979, 29). Incidentally, de Jong and van Raemdonck corresponded with each other in French, so that language was certainly not foreign to them (Rampart 1981). Rather, it was Flemish (Belgian Dutch) that was foreign to van Raemdonck, especially as a written language. In an undated Dutch-language letter to the socialist writer Raymond Herreman, he wrote in the margin “Pardonnez-moi mon sacré mauvais flamand” (City of Antwerp Collection, Letterenhuis, Raymond Herreman Archive, Letter from George van Raemdonck to Raymond Herreman, tg:lhbr:119391). So, he certainly did not do the intralingual translation himself.

11 Denk u er in: gebraden zwembroek!

12 Deze firma wou de boekjes gaarne als reclame-object hebben en heeft uiterst nauwgezet nagespeurd wat in verschillende kringen minder vlot zou worden aanvaard en ons verzocht dat te neutraliseren”; “een iets minder smeuïg vocabulaire”; “ethische angstvalligheid” (Kooijman and Stuivelaar 1979, 31).

13 The article uses the term ‘Flemish’ here as the adjective for Flanders as a region. For the language the term ‘Belgian Dutch’ is used in contrast to ‘Netherlandic Dutch’, for the sake of clarity.

14 Het Frans is de taal van Wallonië, het Nederlands de taal van Vlaanderen.”

15 A distinction is made between cultural and cultural-political because they point to different things in Zethsen’s extended list of factors. Of course, you could also argue that the category of ‘culture’ should be expanded to include cultural-political factors.

16 The paper’s archive can be found at the Amsab Institute of Social History, Ghent.

17 De Volksgazet heeft de toelating gekregen van onze kameraden van het Volk van Nederland om de beroemde reis rond de wereld van Bolleke en Boonestaak af te drukken. De reis is verteld door onzen partijgenoot A.M. de Jong.

18 According to Stynen, de Jong invited Zielens to Blaricum in January 1940.

19 I use the table of contents of the series prepared by Jan Kooijman and Hans Stoovelaar. This story appeared in 1927 in Het Volk. So, the pace of appearance slowed down considerably in De Volksgazet, compared to the publication pace in Het Volk.

20 Kooijman and Stoovelaar mention “an unknown number of episodes” of the Flemish series (Kooijman and Stoovelaar 1979, 42-43).

21 The first picture was signed. In the Comiclopedia the comic ‘Verkeersagentje’ is situated much later. I didn’t find any trace of this comic strip in the Dutch press at the time when it was published in De Volksgazet.

22 het lustige drietal hetwelk de vele lezers van De Volksgazet zoo menig genoeglijk oogenblik hebben doen slijten.”

23 Bolleke en Boonestaak zijn de twee beste vrienden geworden van al de kinderen, die De Volksgazet lezen. […] met de guitenstreken van deze twee bengels wordt hartelijk gelachen. In de school en op de straat wordt er heel dikwijls gesproken over den spiering die Boonestaak heet, en het tonneken-vet dat Bolleken genoemd wordt”; “fier over dezen verkregen uitslag”; “Fier, maar vooral blij omdat ze iets heeft kunnen doen voor haar vele kinderen, dat hen gelukkig heeft gemaakt.”

24 Changing attitudes towards translation obviously also play a major role. Freer translations used to be much more common than now; extensive translation histories have been written about that. See e.g. Schoenaers et al. 2021.

25 I compared the Flemish version from De Volksgazet, which can be found via the digital version of the newspaper on Belgicapress (belgicapress.be), with the version of the books published in 1923, just after the newspaper’s publication in Het Volk. The first book can be found on DBNL (dbnl.org) and the second via Delpher (delpher.nl). They contain issues 1-90 (Jong 1923a) and 91-182 (Jong 1923b), respectively. It can be assumed that the newspaper publication in Flanders (which started in late 1923) in De Volksgazet was based on the books (published that same year). For example, at the newspaper launch of the series we read about “the funny and jolly little book […] juicily told by our fellow party member” (“het leutig en jolig boekje […] sappig verteld door onzen partijgenoot” [Volksgazet 17.11.23]). For my examples, I refer to Jong (1923a) and Jong (1923b) for the Dutch version, each time with page number, and to De Volksgazet for the Flemish version, each time with date.

26 Er zijn veel groote schrijvers, die vele, dikke boeken voor groote menschen hebben geschreven en er veel bijval mee hadden en die toch den rechten toon niet wisten te treffen, die het kinderhart boeit en meesleept.

27 dezen nog jongen schrijver”; “voor de leutige manier waarop hij […] deze wereldreis zal verhalen”; “wat een groot kunstenaar de man is die bovenstaande teekeningjes [sic] heeft gemaakt”.

28 As Nas writes following van Raemdonck’s move to Belgium in 1928: “In the Netherlands he was a celebrated (cartoonist), but in Flanders he was virtually unknown.” (Nas 2013). See also Laet 1982.

29 leutig en jolig boekje […] sappig verteld door onzen partijgenoot” (Volksgazet 17.11.1923).

30 Daar heb je die twee zwervers van Het Volk, zei Jopie angstig. […] Boonestaak kwam met een gezicht, dat niet veel goeds voorspelde vlak voor de gasten van de Telegraaf te staan. Toen vroeg hij: ‘Ben jij niet Jopie Slijm?’ De twee Engelsche misbaksels hadden de Hollandsche kinderen al lang genoeg met hun gezeur verveeld.

31 Random checks were made to see if feuilletons (a particularly popular genre at the time) were also passed between the two newspapers in question, but no evidence of this was found. Translated feuilletons were published daily in both, but no overlap was found in the 1920s.

32 Note that the diminutive here was no longer Belgian Dutch (Bolletje instead of Bolleke): we are then already well into the period when Belgian Dutch tried to conform to Netherlandic Dutch.

Haut de page

Table des illustrations

Légende Fig. 1a: The last image of the story Ouwe Hein’s avonturen onder de Barbarijsche zeeroovers in de Sargassozee (Old Hein’s adventures among the Barbaric pirates in the Sargasso Sea). Dutch version, published on 28 October 1927 in Het Volk.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/docannexe/image/11087/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 161k
Légende Fig. 1b: The last image of the story Ouwe Hein’s avonturen onder de Barbarijsche zeeroovers in de Sargassozee (Old Hein’s adventures among the Barbaric pirates in the Sargasso Sea). Flemish version, published on 13 April 1932 in De Volksgazet.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/docannexe/image/11087/img-2.png
Fichier image/png, 161k
Légende Fig. 2a: Dutch version as published in Jong 1923b, 7.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/docannexe/image/11087/img-3.png
Fichier image/png, 195k
Légende Fig. 2b: Flemish version, published on 23 June 1924 in De Volksgazet.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/docannexe/image/11087/img-4.png
Fichier image/png, 494k
Légende Fig. 3a: Dutch version as published in Jong 1923b, 18.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/docannexe/image/11087/img-5.png
Fichier image/png, 550k
Légende Fig. 3b: Flemish version, published on 1 July 1924 in De Volksgazet.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/docannexe/image/11087/img-6.png
Fichier image/png, 198k
Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Elke Brems, « Intralingual translation in the early days of newspaper comic strips: Bulletje & Bolleke (& Boonestaak) »Comicalités [En ligne], La bande dessinée en traductologie : approches sociologiques actuelles, mis en ligne le 15 octobre 2025, consulté le 14 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/11087 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/155vh

Haut de page

Auteur

Elke Brems

Elke Brems is associate professor at the Faculty of Arts KULeuven. She is the head of the Research Unit of Translation Studies at KULeuven. Her research interests include Dutch literature, Reception Studies and Translation Studies. She has published on contemporary Dutch poetry, literature and poetics during the interwar period, the relation between Dutch culture and other cultures, cultural identity and literature. She is a member of the Board of CETRA (Centre for Translation Studies). She is also a member of the editorial boards of Zacht Lawijd and of Poeziekrant.

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search