Tintin Forums

For UK viewers BBC iPlayer is now showing The Adventures of Tintin in Gaelic.

The adventures currently air Tuesdays at 6pm on BBC Alba.

Is the Gaelic voice dub a new recording?.

That's interesting, thanks number1fan.

I would assume it's a new recording. And it doesn't appear to be based on the Dalen Books Scottish Gaelic translation. Snowy's name is the same as in the Dalen books - Dìleas, meaning 'Loyal'. And, despite my extremely limited knowledge of Gaelic, by comparing the BBC Alba webpage and the Dalen Books site I managed to work out that the other character names were slightly different, and some of the adventure titles too. So it does look to be a new translation.

I've watched a few of these out of curiosity (my Gaelic being almost non-existent). One interesting thing I noticed is that they're edited versions, with some instances of smoking and drinking removed.

In some cases it's simply a case of cutting bits out – the exploding cigars from Land of Black Gold were cut from Tir An Òr Dhuibh. And the dripping whisky from Haddock's rucksack – and Snowy's subsequent moral dilemma – are absent from Tintin Ann An Tibet. This means some of the episodes run shorter; those currently available on BBC iPlayer are between 18–22 minutes in length.

What's more interesting is that there are some instances where things like cigarettes and pipes have been digitally removed from the footage: Mark Falconer's pipe and the flying boat steward's cigarette in The Seven Crystal Balls are absent. The change is subtle and it's been done quite well – although I'm curious how they'll tackle Cigars of the Pharaoh...