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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

> The battle of Alesia marked the end of Gallic independence in France and Belgium.

Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.

The interesting bit about that is that "Alesia, and nobody knows where it is" as a theme in Asterix is actually biting satire on Vichy France. Very little in Asterix, until Goscinny died, is about Gauls and Romans, it's pretty much all about taking the mickey out of contemporary France.

Absolutely. But this was a surprise to me. I don't speak French and I read Asterix in my native Spanish as a young kid, I loved it to bits, and of course all modern and French-related jokes flew way over my head. Add to this that the Spanish (mis)translation got most of the jokes wrong, especially the puns. Some jokes were rendered nonsensical because the translator gave up and simply provided a literal translation.

That Asterix can be badly translated and still be loved by a kid who can't read French or understand politics is a testament to how good the comic was.

Good translators manage to bring in jokes of their own.

I know. I'm saying the Spanish translation of Asterix is known to be problematic, because the translator often made no effort (as in "this is too hard, I'll just translate this literally, even though it was a phonetic joke in French that gets lost in Spanish"). In recent years there was an attempt to provide a more idiomatic and careful translation to Latin American Spanish, but it was poorly received, because people like me who loved Asterix as kids were already used to the original nonsensical translations and were appalled when jokes and names of characters got "changed"! So it's a lose-lose situation at this point.

On the subject of Alesia: https://www.pipelinecomics.com/asterix-v11-asterix-and-the-c...

To my eternal shame [1], this is how I first learned about Vercingetorix. To this day I choose to believe he really dropped his shield on top of Caesar's feet.

[1] I'm actually proud of this!

Same, 90% of my knowledge about the Roman occupation of Gaul came from Asterix books.

And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium. [1]

[1] let's not get into this particular can of translating worms :P

Who?

This is a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix - the best selling French/Belgian comic, first published in 1959, translated into 111 languages, and adapted into 13 films.

"The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium"

https://www.asterix.com/en/

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