Turkish Snoopy

The AAUGH.com Reference Library now has the 1983 Turkish translation of 1958’s Snoopy, an early all-Snoopy strip collection. Now, this may be released on the 25th anniversary of its original release, but this abridged (3/4s the length) version is no fancy memorial edition. In fact, it’s rarely poorly produced, with weak reproduction and stray editing marks left on some strips.

So why reprint this book? I really don’t know. Not that it’s a bad book, but in 1983, if you want to publish a book on Snoopy, do you really want to focus solely on the strips before Woodstock, one which predates Joe Cool, the World War I Flying Ace, and all of Snoopy’s other personas? (Besides, if your publishing company is named “Kaktüs”, do you really want to forego Spike?)

The name of the translator appears on the cover in the same typeface and size as Schulz’s… but the translator gets ALL CAPS, for emphasis.

I did already have one Turkish book in the Library, but this actually solves a question which I had about the earlier one. That book was a Turkish translation of one of the British Snoopy Stars series, and on the cover it has “Snoopy” in embossed shiny gold letters – but on the spine, it says “Snopy”. I was never quite sure which one was the misspelling; I thought it possible that “Snopy” was actually the proper transliteration into Turkish, and that the front cover version was merely kept so that they could use the same embossing die used in British editions. But now I know, it’s just a sloppy error. Or maybe it’s slooppy.

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