Translating Tintin

I was just browsing for some information on who did the lettering in the Tintin albums and came across this article on the history of the English versions and the translation process.

The Land of Black Gold also presented problems. The translators felt that children would not understand the original allusions to the Irgun in nascent Israel at the end of the British Palestine Mandate. (Hergé started the book in 1939, was interrupted by the war, and completed it in 1948-50.) In the original version, Tintin was arrested by the British authorities in Haifa, and subsequently kidnapped by Jews and then by Arabs. Hergé reillustrated and rewrote part of the book, eliminating all references to the British and Jews, and setting the story instead in his imaginary emirate of the Khemed. The result was a simplified plot with which he was even more pleased. The delay in publishing this volume forced British readers to wait ten years for an explanation to the Thompsons’ strange growth of multicolored hair during the lunar adventure, which stemmed from a mishap in the Arabian desert.

From: A History of the Anglo-American Editions. Note: The actual page seems to be down at the moment but you can find it in Google’s Cache.