I grew up on Asterix comics in English. The main humour is around puns. The authors are French (or Belgian, not sure). So did they write puns in French and someone translated them and made sure the comic was still funny in English? Or did they write it in English?
I always assumed the translators were simply doing a heroic job. Getting puns and wordplay to work across languages is hard. I would not be surprised if some jokes had to be significantly changed for different languages or countries.
I love that his name is O.G. San (Ojiisan, Grandpa in Japanese)
There’s a legendary blog post about this:
https://auntymuriel.com/2012/12/23/asterix-in-translation-the-genius-of-anthea-bell-and-derek-hockridge/
Also a rare chance to plug my community, which has posted a fair share of Asterix and other BD goodies: https://piefed.social/c/eurographicnovels
EDIT: As a matter of fact, I’ll be posting the first three pages of Asterix’ new Lusitania adventure in a few minutes… EDIT2: Done! :D
There’s a legendary German translater fir Disney stuff (which I was more into as a kid):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_Fuchs
Do you know if she tended to do more of the Euro-Disney or American-Disney stuff?
I still hate that example. The adaptation example uses phrasing that is absolutely ambiguous in a way none of the others are but is presented as the most developed product.
Thanks. I think you’re right. And I like that illustration.