Asterix in Translation: The Genius of Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge | Hacker News Reader

Asterix in Translation: The Genius of Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge

auntymuriel.com

161 pointsDanBC70 comments

I grew up in Canada, and so was exposed to Asterix. As were people that I've met from France (of course), Australia, India, Spain, Germany, etc, etc, etc.

And yet in the United States the comics are almost non-existent. My best guess is that American publishers don't think that Americans will understand such sophisticated humor.

Whatever they think, kids that I expose to the comics consistently love them. At a younger age for the physical humor (such as Obelix accidentally walking through doors). At an older age, for all of the layers (many of which I know escape me).

The originals were excellent. The translations are excellent. I highly recommend them. Though I'd recommend starting with the ones written while Goscinny was still alive. The look of the latter ones is still the same, but there is more reference to repeated in jokes and the overall humor is not to the same quality.

America suffers from cultural not-invented-here syndrome. Eurocomics are generally thin on the ground here, and there are some great ones we're missing out on.

That, and they may contain material prudish Americans may find objectionable. The threat of having your sales scuppered or even being brought to court by religious groups on the right, feminist groups on the left, or helicopter parents' associations on either side, is very real. The Anselme Lanturlu comics (Archibald Higgins, in English) were released in many countries, but censored in only two: the United States and Iran. Anselme's girlfriend Sophie, a voluptuous blonde whose generous cleavage is almost always on display, is a bit more covered up to hide the cleavage in the U.S. release. In the Iranian publication, she is covered from head to toe and wears a hijab.

There was a magazine in France in the 70s (or even before) called Pif. I recently learned that it had highly politicized roots, partly funded by French communist party, and trying to fight American cultural imperialism (Disney invasion) through this publication.

As a kid I never suspected any of this.

I'd recommend starting and stopping with the ones written while Goscinny was still alive. I've read a few of the post-Goscinny books, and I found their emptiness creepy, and almost never funny. Though for the most recent books, the former author tried various successors, so there might be some success among those.

I'd even argue that Asterix was great in the 50s and 60s, but the authors (Goscinny and Uderzo) were less inspired in the 70s. Their best period was from "Astérix et les Goths" (the third one) to "Astérix et les Normands" (ninth one, my personal favorite). Goscinny suddenly died in 1977, but the Asterix series had become such an institution that millions of copies of each book were sold, whatever the quality.

(edit: typos)

That's a matter of taste.

I agree that the quality dropped, but it is up to the reader to decide whether a chance to revisit old friends is worth the fact that they aren't up to snuff. For me it was marginally worthwhile a couple of times. For others it is not. But I won't tell others not to do what I did.

Black Gold comes to mind as the best of the later books. Asterix and the Class Act I've meant to read for a while as the stories were written by Goscinny.

Of course the English translations rely a lot on Bell and Hockridge. They are absolutely masters of the pun.

The quality definitely took a dip after Goscinny wasn't writing anymore. It went from "constantly great" to "hit and miss". Kind of like the Simpsons post season 8-ish.

It was even worse for Lucky Luke after Goscinny.

Iznogood on the other hand, while it did change in character, it went even crazier and funnier when it went 100% Tabary.

I read both Asterix and Tintin growing up in the US, and love them, but I've never laid any claims to being normal.

Getafix the Druid will be high on the minds of Canadians nowadays!

I'm not Canadian, so I'm left wondering. What do you mean?

I guess Canada recently legalised cannabis. People could turn Getafix into a drug reference.

> My best guess is that American publishers don't think that Americans will understand such sophisticated humor.

I must admit I too feel as tempted as always to go "dense Americans and their superhero comics", but here the reason is probably simply that a big part of the humour is done by poking fun of European national stereotypes, and also regional stereotypes of France. None of that translates really well to an American audience.

Yet it translated well to a Canadian audience (Canadians really aren't THAT different from Americans), and was understood by every American child that I tried showing it to.

Yes, there are jokes that get missed. But so many are understood that it was still funny.

Wouldn't Canada be more receptive to Franco-Belgian comics due to the large number of French speakers?

America had its own influential comic book industry since the early twentieth century, so it never got into importing them. For most of Europe (and beyond) the comics made in France and Belgium and translated in the vernacular were the absolute cornerstone of comics for most of the previous century.

A lot of European kids who grew up in the twentieth century know about the American Old West through reading a cowboy comic (Lucky Luke) made by a Belgian, and first heard of Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire through Asterix.

I don't know, they were massively popular in India too, with local translations of most of the names. I still remember Getafix as Etashetamix (lit. "mix of this and that") first and foremost.

I grew up in Victoria, BC. There were a lot of Asterix fans, and relatively few French speakers.

You don't need to be familiar with the actual stereotypes to get jokes about them. As a kid in New Zealand I understood "Hey these people are all the same in this funny way, and the puns about it are great!".

Asterix is incredibly dense with jokes; you can miss lots and still find it hilarious.

Very popular pretty much all around the world... except the us.

when i was a kid many school libraries (do schools still have libraries?) had all the tintin and asterix books but no other comics.

As an American kid, Asterix was kind of amazing. At least to me. It was a comedic glimpse of a much wider world than US-centric stuff, plus a bunch of jokes about European history.

I probably missed a lot of the jokes. That’s fine. I got a bunch of them, and I laughed at the goofy drawings.

>I must admit I too feel as tempted as always to go "dense Americans and their superhero comics", but here the reason is probably simply that a big part of the humour is done by poking fun of European national stereotypes, and also regional stereotypes of France. None of that translates really well to an American audience.

It's read all over Europe (and other places, including Canada and Latin America), in countries who are not familiar with the "regional stereotypes of France" (nor do they have to be to appreciate it).

As for the references to "European national stereotypes", I don't see why they should pose a pose to Americans (if them being dense wasn't the problem). They are quite basic (doesn't require any intimate familiarity with the countries besides a basic knowledge), so if they weren't mostly ignorant when it comes to foreign cultures, they would have recognized those too.

I have vague memories of watching Asterix on TV as a child in the US. I think it was around for a while, but fell off the map in the 80's at some point. So there's a bit of a generational element at play.

Another nice example is the name of Obelix's little dog. In French it's Idéfix, a play on "idée fixe". In English it's Dogmatix, a play on "dogmatic" (preserving the French joke) and, obviously, "dog".

Chief Vitalstatistix has a wife called Influenza.

Vitalstatistix's wife is Impedimenta in English. There is an Influenza though. A fragment from Wikipedia: "Orthopaedix [...] and his family move to the village after buying the deeds from Tremensdelirius [...]. His wife Angina, after a major altercation with Impedimenta, pressures him into challenging Vitalstatistix for leadership. In the film Asterix and the Vikings his daughter Influenza [...]" [1].

The names are fantastic: Asterix the star of the series, Obelix who makes obelisks, Getafix the druid, Unhygienix the fishmonger (his wife is Bacteria), Fulliautomatix the blacksmith, Geriatrix the old guy, Cacofonix the bard, are main characters. Minor characters include Romans Crismus Bonus, Magnumopus and Gluteus Maximus, secret agent Doubleosix, Egyptians Artifis (who schemes) and Edifis (an architect), Phoenician merchant Ekonomikrisis, and on and on.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asterix_characters

And Sean Connery is Doubleosix's doppelganger! Who'd have thunked?

In German, it is Majestix for the chief and Gutemine for his wife.

Gutemine is a play on German saying "Gute Miene zu Bösem Spiel", meaning keeping a happy face in bad circumstances.

This is what I loved about the translations to English from the original French. It wasn't just a direct translation but they used the converted language humor injected into the narrative.

The druid is Miraculix in German. Miracoli is a brand of instant soups, noodles and sauce. Surely that's an allusion to the magic potion soup. Maggifix would have been a bit too ... I don't know, too much on the nose.

The name is related to miracle, italian miracolo. Now, -lo may appear like a diminutive, but ... well, I was looking for something that would relate colo- to the pot (correctly cauldron ... et voila) and found that colon kinda figures - but only after reading that Obelix might derive from obelus which is either a division sign which would be on par with asterisk as multiplication sign, or also a totem mark as used in footnotes. An obelisk may be a tomb stone, or could mark an areal division of sides. So, there's another parallel, with obelix as the side character. The greek root obelos (staff, rod; dividing line) is probably related to belos - weapon, dart, artillery; quickly moving - so obelix would be the damage dealer, as deal, part, share, divide are somewhat related. Obolus is from obeli, a small share of nails used for currency, so it all kind of checks out.

But in my humble opinion, he's become the main character, the face (Greek ops - eye, face, on the nose, blunt) of the series. Latin ops even means power, force and derives opulent. But in the sense eye, obelix watches over asterix.

I grew up with several classic Asterix stories on my bookshelves, and was always charmed by them in every way. There's no doubt that these translations have had a lasting effect on my sense of humour.

Not being a French speaker (at least not a good one), I have often wondered to what degree the original intent was lost. Certainly, we are very fortunate that the English translations are of such high quality, and give us similar humour, if not the same actual jokes. But I'd obviously worked out that in some scenarios the original joke would simply not work in English, and I've wondered what the differences were like.

So thanks for this article, which has shed some light on my wonderings.

That first example in particular, with Jericho / Gericault, ensures that, while we unfortunately can't make the same fairly direct reference as the french, there's still an in joke to be had there by those familiar with the parodied source scene (which I was not previously, and now am, and now further respect the translators)

In many cases, the English translation actually improved on the humor of the original.

One example of this is in the names of characters. The dog is named Idefix in French, but Dogmatix in English, which is more apropos since he is a dog. The druid is Panoramix in French, but Getafix in English because he's always supplying drugs.. I mean magic potions to the protagonist.

Plus, there are other hilarious names like Unhygienix, Vitalstatistix and Fulliautomatix.

"Assurancetourix" is just fantastic. It was several years after first reading that my child brain got it.

The druid is Miraculix in German.

"The year is 50 BC. The HN front page is entirely occupied by Silicon Valley posts. Entirely? Well, not entirely. One small post about indomitable Gauls still holds out..."

LOL

You just won that thread. Congratulations.

I learned to read because of Asterix & Obelix comics and my big sister's keen sense for an efficient bargain.

She and I had a chore roster. We complained bitterly. We loathed every second. We bickered over the exchange rate of dish washing and dish drying.

My sister struck on a brilliant scheme: in exchange for giving me the chores she didn't like, she would read me the comics that our father had collected.

Since I didn't like doing her chores, I started paying attention to what she said as she moved across the page. After a while I had grasped enough to do it without her.

I guess, looking back, this was a sign of my fate as software engineer: I worked hard to be lazy.

As an Indian who lives in the US, I am constantly amazed that Asterix is mostly unknown here. Works out well for me though - every two years I walk down to the closest public library, check out the entire series and play Getmyasterixfix for a week.

I'm French-speaking and Asterix is all my childhood. 20+ years later I still regularly say some jokes from the albums unconsciously.

Glad that our English-speaking friends benefit from such a high quality translation! It's also always interesting to understand our cultural differences through clichés, wordplay and jokes.

I loved the Asterix books growing up - and I still do. I proudly have all the Goscinny/Uderzo books on my shelves (alongside a complete set of Tintin). I’ve read a few articles like this and each reinforces what a masterful job Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge did.

Similarly, I once read something about how hard it was to translate the Discworld books into other languages, while maintaining a roughly comparable level of jokes.

>Similarly, I once read something about how hard it was to translate the Discworld books into other languages, while maintaining a roughly comparable level of jokes.

Yeah, I've read some of Pratchett's work translated into other languages, it was a huge let down.

Speaking of tricky conversions, the Finnish translation of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a heroic cultural treasure.

"Ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal", a word soup that in English is mix of gaggy and absurd, has been transformed into "traalilainen sontiaismolottaja". It's a rarity, a joke that ends up better after translation.

Apologies for anyone not fluent in Finnish to appreciate the work.

The Asterix comics have one truly endearing quality: they appeal to vastly different age groups.

In other words, it can be read as a child as well as later in life and still remain enjoyable.

Some of the jokes and drawings (eg Romans getting their a..es handout out to them by Obelix) will make a 6 year old laugh, while others like "je suis meduse" will strongly tickle adults catching the cultural reference.

A treasure, especially the ones written by Goscinny.

>Some of the jokes and drawings (eg Romans getting their a..es handout out to them by Obelix) will make a 6 year old laugh

For what's worth, they still do x) The casual nonchalant way he does it still makes me laugh. And the puns, obviously the puns.

Asterix is nice - that's just scratching the surface of Belgian/French cartoon though. In the same vein, I'd recommend you to dive into the work of masters like Franquin, I really recommended it - the Marcinelle school let emerge many great talents.

Asterix has humor on a variety of levels, some of which I completely missed as a child (one of my favorite jokes as an adult: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x67wk1z). The English translation seems to be quite good at capturing that.

A different style of genius in translation was by Erika Fuchs, the German translator of Walt Disney cartoons. It has been argued that she added MORE nuance to the translated language than there was in the original.

So great to see Astérix mentioned here. They were a big part of my childhood (along with other staples of franco-belgian BD such as Tintin), and I expect also part of the childhoods of millions of people across Europe and beyond.

I was fortunate enough to read them in a translation to a Romance language, so many jokes carried over easily, and the overall sound and rhythm and "feel" (maybe there's a better word) of the dialogue was preserved as well. To achieve that across such a different language family deserves even more praise!

With noting that the cartoons are also very good. Several are available on YouTube, for those looking for some trips down memory lane.

asterix' 12 tasks : the place that sends you mad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtEkUmYecnk

Tout a fait!

I grew up with Tintin and Asterix. In fact, my first job was for the house of edition of Tintin, Casterman, in the late 90ies.

I love them to bits.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Tintin, albeit in English, on Netflix!

The Tintin CGI movie was in theaters in the US. It was fun. :)

What I find amazing about Astérix comic translations is how consistently good they seem to be in every language. I don't think I've ever come across anyone who said the translation to their native language was anything less than good, and nearly all the translations localize things like character names and do it well.

I don't know if it was fed through to all translations but the Latin bits in the English version had me near wetting myself.

Handily, I studied Latin whilst in school.

Hic, haec, hoc hic (If you don't get this then try drinking a few large ones and have another go.)

The publishers really worked hard to find good translators it seems. I had the English and French ones as a kid, and read them both (missed most of the jokes which meant reading them as I got older continued to be novel and exciting). My kid read them in German, and then had the same amazement in reading them in English, which got me to go read the German ones -- hilarious!

The translations are much better than the more workmanlike translations of Tintin (though Hergé's text never reached the madcap level of Asterix).

I've wondered if many of the other translations were likewise locally funny.

In the early 90s Australia, I worked with a Frenchman who was employed as an English⇔Japanese translator (go figure).

I remember us reminiscing over Asterix one day and his mentioning what a marvelous job was done translating it from French to English.

To be honest, in my ignorance I think that was when I discovered that English was not the original language of the material!

I’m French and grew up on Asterix (in french). This article is wonderfully weird to me. I love it.

I’m really glad the translation is that great. I’ll definitely recommend Asterix to english-speaking friends in the future.

For context: Anthea Bell recently died.

That's sad news. It was only yesterday!

Also after listening to "history of Rome" podcast and then re reading asterix it quite amazing how the authors have maintained historical accuracy in a children's comic

Asterix: "You make me sick talking about boars"

Obelix: "And you bore me talking about sickles"

(inexact quote from memory, Asterix and the Golden Sickle)

Absolutely priceless translation!

If you did like the comics, the movie "ASTÉRIX & OBÉLIX: MISSION CLÉOPÂTRE"[1] is quite funny. Alain Chabat was the director and a very famous humorist.

[1]https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/asterix_obelix_mission_cleo...?

I remember how the last one is translated to Portuguese (Romance language so an easier time, but still by no means a walk in the park)! It makes a pun of the word "fino", which can mean "posh, usually refers to someone trying really hard to look respectable" (which is what the chief is recurringly obsessed with w/ respect to his shield-bearers), and can also mean "a 33cl draught of beer" (same as the second meaning in the original French text).

I grew up reading Asterix in French and I think it allowed me to appreciate the language more than I would have if I had only been exposed to it in a classroom setting!

Asterix is the practical proof that comic is an art form, in an accessible, non high brow way. Besides being hilariously entertaining.

I'm met with a racist depiction of a black man when I click on that link. Is something wrong?

Asterix is full of charicatures of racial and other stereotypes. It can be a little uncomfortable to read today, but in the author's defense they were fairly evenhanded. Look at the noses of the Gauls and Britons!

It's interesting that only some of those charicatures are offensive to us today. (Not being critical of your comment, the portrayal of black people in Asterix makes me uncomfortable too.)

I don't think you deserve to be downvoted for this question.

Asterix was written between 1959 and 1977 (with other people taking over after the death in 1977 of René Goscinny).

Racist stereotypes were mainstream then. It's shocking today to see it.

But what do we do about the racism of the past? Do we hide it? Films about the Dambusters normally change the name of the dog. It had been called Nigger by the aircrews. Or do we stay accurate and provide a lot of context before presenting the material? This happens when teaching Huckleberry Finn.

I'm glad this blog post didn't try to hide the racist depiction.

I like this article about how to read a racist book to your children: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-to-read-a-ra...

Sure, cause the black guy is the only one drawn as a giant stereotype.

You will see a lot of caricatures and ethnic stereotypes in Asterix. Primarily of European and Mediterranean nationalities though. A lot of the stories are Asterix and Obelix traveling to some region and all the stereotypes of that region is played up. If you are uncomfortable with this form of comedy, Asterix is probably not for you.

> a racist depiction of a black man

The blackman looks like a racist? Well, I don't see it in that picture.

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