Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/24/asterix-co-creator-albert-uder.html
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I went to the Lycee Francais de New-York (graduated in 74) and loved, loved, loved Asterix & Obelix. Later, I discovered the English translations, which are quite amazing, totally capturing the wit and humor. If you want to practice your French, I recommend Asterix chez les bretons; read it side-by-side with the translation, Asterix in Britain. Brilliant!
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There is also a translation into Latin, which is unusual but rather fitting.
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When my family spent a year in Thailand, regularly going to an English-language bookstore was one of the ways my parents made up for no friends and no school. There was always at least one Asterix comic in my haul. Even at that age (11) the challenge of translating humor that was basically all puns impressed me.
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That includes “Asterix chez les Goths”, surely the North Face of all translation. Asterix gives the magic potion to a deposed Gothic chief in a dungeon, and he bursts his chains and rushes off to confront the one who deposed him. And Asterix says " il est déchainé ! " which is a lame pun: he is unchained (literal) and he is furious (colloq). Obelix gets the untranslatable pun after a page thinking about it, then spends the rest of the book laughing at it, and repeating it to others…
Obélix : Et alors, hi,hi,hi ! Alors Astérix a dit : il est…hi,hi,hi ! il est déchainé ! Hi,Hi,Hi,Hi,Hi !
Astérix : Donnez lui un autre sanglier sinon il va nous la raconter de nouveau !
They came up with something, but it wasn’t great. No-one else has come up with anything better since.
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“Die Westgoten. Von uns aus gesehen leben sie im Osten.”
Nope. Can you come up with anything better? I can’t.
NB: My elder brother was taught French by Derek Hockridge.
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Visi Goths? Why the past tense?
I can’t have opened that book for 50 years, but it all comes back.
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What past tense?
yeah in english, fury can be unleashed, but the character was in chains, so…
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Thats some sad news. Now he can join his friend René in the afterlife. Its a good thing that he passed the torch a few years ago, the new wrriters and artists are pretty good.
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Weird the celebrity deaths that make me sad. Dr. John and this guy.
I’m learning french and have a few Asterix books and 3 book English compilation. The French is surprisingly tricky but it’s good for me. They are just fun.
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A funny list of curiosities and easter eggs. It is in spanish, but I could read with a little help from Google Translate.
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266139307_SPQT_Those_Translators_Are_Fool
“S.P.Q.T.! (Those Translators Are Fool!)” figures as the Appendix of Michela Canepari’s book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis and Translation Studies. In his paper, Enrico Martines analyses the strategies adopted in the British, American and Italian versions of Asterix, offering an in-depth application of the theories approached in the remaining of the book. The aim of Enrico Martines’ work is to point out some specific problems in the translation of the French-Belgian comic series of Asterix. After some preliminary remarks on the characteristics of comics as a paraliterary kind of fiction, which integrates in one system of communication both a visual and a verbal code, the attention briefly focuses on puns, a linguistic feature that constitutes a fundamental element of humour in comic books in general, and particularly in Asterix, therefore being the main problem faced by translators in their task of transferring the original message not only into a new language, but also into a new cultural system. The attention is focused on the work of English translators of Asterix, initially drawing a brief history of Asterix’s introduction into the United Kingdom and the USA and of its rendition into the language of Shakespeare, then highlighting the major difficulties with which translators are confronted in this specific case and the solutions they have found.
The title may seem a bad omen-- but the paper’s quite interesting.
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“While I like all that we have made, I have a little preference for Asterix et Les Bretons, for the way that René made the British speak with the structure of the English language transformed into French. I found it an extraordinary idea,” he says. “For René, who knew English perfectly, it was like a child’s game”.
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For the uninitiated – both of you – Asterix books were set during Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
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