For many years, I was puzzled by a sentence in "The Secret of
the Unicorn" that appears on page 37. Tintin's captor says,
"That night when I had your flat searched..." which made me think
of the scene early on in the book (on page 9) where Tintin finds
that his flat has been ransacked. But if you follow the plot
closely, you'll find that this interpretation makes no sense.

Recently, I finally figured out what was going on. In French, it
actually says, "Cette nuit," which in context means "Last night"
and not "That night." With this corrected translation, everything
makes sense.

Funny how such a seemingly trivial issue in translation can cause
so much confusion (for me at least, and perhaps for some other readers).

---
Tim Chow

On 2023-11-04 17:26:32 +0000, Timothy Chow said:
>
> For many years, I was puzzled by a sentence in "The Secret of
> the Unicorn" that appears on page 37. Tintin's captor says,
> "That night when I had your flat searched..." which made me think
> of the scene early on in the book (on page 9) where Tintin finds
> that his flat has been ransacked. But if you follow the plot
> closely, you'll find that this interpretation makes no sense.
>
> Recently, I finally figured out what was going on. In French, it
> actually says, "Cette nuit," which in context means "Last night"
> and not "That night." With this corrected translation, everything
> makes sense.
>
> Funny how such a seemingly trivial issue in translation can cause
> so much confusion (for me at least, and perhaps for some other readers).
>
> ---
> Tim Chow

99.9% of readers probably never even noticed it.