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Comment by matthewaveryusa | Hacker News Reader

asterix heros are kind of brilliant like that. asterix is like superman but superman has superpowers that can be thwarted by kryptonite while asterix is simply the cleverest gauleois that makes the most out of getafix’s potion (wait, get a fix?? is that a pun I just discovered after 20 years?) On the other hand obelix is a big dummy that always has the potion superpowers (by virtue of falling in a coldron of it when he was young) and is terrible at using his superpowers without the help of the cunning asterix.

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I grew up on Asterix, but translated to Spanish. The names were all different, but usually good puns too. Admirable that they made that work in every language they translated them to!

The English translators did a great job. This page always stuck in my head for the wordplay: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/ZRlllWCKGjl9aKUy7F_WhgF4-B9fo74LY9...

Most of the joke is the same as the original, but the 'mild and bitter' part is an addition by the translators. Here's a blog post on them with a comparison of this and a few other pages https://auntymuriel.com/2012/12/23/asterix-in-translation-th...

I knew it would be this page before I clicked. Was not disappointed. This is the most amazing wordplay ever.

As a kid discovering the puns over time was a delight. I still remember revisiting an issue after I had fractured my arm, and doing a happy double-take coming across a couple called Ulna and Radius (these are the bones in the forearm [1])!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radius_(bone)

> getafix

Half the names are like this. My favourites are Dogmatix, Vitalstatistix and Impedimenta.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asterix_characters

Note that the names of many characters are changed from the original French, with different plays on words.

And sometimes the English ones are better! And I say it as a French who grew up on Asterix. In my opinion, the original names are good, but not great, and the translators did an outstanding job.

For example, the original French name for Dogmatix is Idéfix, which conveys the same idea, but without the "dog" pun.

> wait, get a fix?? is that a pun I just discovered after 20 years?

If it's like in the French original (where Getafix is Assurancetourix, i.e. assurance tous-risques, full-coverage insurance), every single character name is a pun; so keep searching if you're missing some ;)

> where Getafix is Assurancetourix

Panoramix*

Geez, you're right :/

Welp, here is my excuse to binge the whole serie once again.

Assurancetourix is the bard.

Who in the English became Cacofonix

All the names are puns, even the translated ones. They're also super funny if you finally get it.

A podcast on this topic that I enjoyed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06txxmq

Warning : you may spend several hours here...

http://asterix.openscroll.org/

There are annotations which explain all the name puns, Latin translations etc.

Eg, in Asterix and the Big Fight, the character Cassius Ceramix - Ceramics: baked clay, earthenware. Cassius is a Roman name. Also a play on Cassius Clay, which was Mohammed Ali's given name

After growing up with Astérix and learning half my French from it (the other half from Tintin) there was a pun that I finally got only now, many years later, thanks to a French colleague.

In "Le Domaine des Dieux" (The Manions of the Gods) there is a character called "Oursenplus". This always registered to me as saying "And a bear" ("ours" is "bear" and "en plus" is like "one more" or "on top of that").

Then I asked my colleague: "I don't get this Oursenplus pun from Astérix, can you tell what it means?".

My colleague hadn't read the issue so he didn't immediately catch what I said, but he replied "Comment? Ours en peluche?"

Which, said quickly with a French accent sounds very much like "oursenplush" (with a "shh") and means ... "teddy bear" ("peluche" is "felt"; a plushy).

I have this kind of epiphany regularly with pop songs that I've known since childhood. I hear them again and my English is so much better now than it was back then that I realize I completely misunderstood the lyrics.

> wait, get a fix?? is that a pun I just discovered after 20 years?

You must be kidding ! Readymix just doesnt cut it. My favourites are dubbelosix, squareonthehypothenus and dogmatix.

Dogmatix is an especially brilliant one, since the original is Idéafix (stubborn, single-minded, literally "of fixed ideas"), and the translation not only manages to preserve that meaning but also add "Dog" to it :)

Exactly! The translators did such a fantastic job over all. I would have imagined that kind of humor to be untranslatable.

Same with the Muppets, whoever translated that show was doing an amazing job.

Yup, even as a kid I could tell the translators also had to be comedic geniuses too. I would constantly be marveling at the names, and how they were only a joke that made sense in English.

The original name would work in English too though. In the Danish translation the dog is is just idéfix which works just as well in Danish.

English does have the loanword https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/id%C3%A9e_fixe#English but I think this is often considered technical vocabulary (per Wiktionary, in psychology and music composition) that most native speakers would probably not recognize.

I meant that idea and fixed are both English words, so it should be possible to associate ideafix with "fixed idea" - a bit more obscure though than the original.

Idéfix, not Idéafix! "Idea" is "idée" in French. It comes from "idée fixte" which means fixed idea, like you say, or in other words, an obsession.

Oops, you're right! I was mislead since in my native language, in which I read the books as a child, he is called Ideafix :)

Not to mention Lucretia, the young woman who married the wealthy old man (Lucre)

Good find ! had missed that one.

He even looks like Sean Connery!

There's much much more. Hope you enjoy some of these below.

https://www.everythingasterix.com/news-and-views-content/201...

You will find Paul McCartney too. When I read them as a kid in India I missed many of these, not the Beatles or Dubbelosix.

I have read every one of the 'originals' (Goscinny and Uderzo ones) so many times, but even now when I re-read them in my late 40s I discover something that I had missed before. Usually something happening in the background -- mark of stellar writing and drawing.

Dubbleosix is "zerozerosix" in the original. Maps one-to-one, I'd say.

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