Albert Uderzo co-creator of Asterix died today of a heart attack
I have probably read all of the Asterix albums and though some of them are dated, they are still fun to read. I introduced my kids to them and they enjoyed them too.
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Asterix was never the same post-Goscinny 
I know Asterix is not that popular in America, but it is/was ridiculously popular in Germany. I grew up with the comics, and many quotes from it became common idioms (some even in Latin, like ‘Alea iacta est’). There were obituaries in all the major TV news magazines, and simultaneously two major German TV channels at prime time showed Asterix movies this night. RIP Uderzo, I don’t believe one second in it, but it’d be cool if you reunited with Goscinny and just carried on together like when Asterix still was the best comic to come out of Europe, and the most typical European comic.
When my family was stationed in Istanbul I read a ton of Asterix comics. I loved them. Tintin was OK, but I way preferred Asterix. RIP Albert, you made one kid’s childhood better.
RIP. *Asterix *is one of my favourites. Formative stuff.
I especially loved ***Asterix ***in the days before the books were Bowdlerized in the name of Political Correctness. :mad:
RIP, Albert.
I read many of the earlier Asterix books and thought they were great. The visual and verbal gags were top-notch. It’s amazing that the translators were able to translate these books into so many other languages.
I managed to get a copy of Asterix and the Golden Sickle in the original French, and I also got a copy of Asterix and Cleopatra in Hebrew. Comparing them with the English panel-for-panel, it’s clear that the translators had to invent a whole bunch of new puns of their own in place of the originals, as puns rarely translate well. The visual gags, however, required little-to-no translating.
These books contains a lot of good bona-fide history too. To be sure, the good history was seamlessy mixed in with a lot of good silly parody, so it could be hard to separate the real history from the parody. But if I were teaching a history class covering that era, I would definitely suggest that my students read Asterix!
Question: Are you referring to the later books? Or were some of the earlier books revised and re-issued to politically correctify them? If the former, that’s bad enough. If the latter, that’s awful. (The same could be said for some of the earlier Doctor Doolittle books.)
Here’s the article from Washington Post:
Albert Uderzo, co-creator of French comics series Asterix, dies at 92
Hey! I learned a new word too!
Am I the only one here who never heard of a luthier before? I had to look that one up.
It’s a person who makes or repairs bowed stringed instruments, like violin, viola, or cello for example. I gather that would exclude things like guitar, dulcimer, and piano.
As all Asterix fans are aware, these books were translated into dozens of languages.
One of those languages was Latin.
That would make them excellent reading for students taking Latin classes.
Has anyone here had that experience? Taking a Latin class and assigned to read Asterix in Latin?
I’m referring to the earlier books. I haven’t read many of the post-Goscinny books.
Yes, Bell and Hockridge did a brilliant job of translating, and I say this as a professional translator. Their puns were always as hilarious as the originals. I also learned a lot about British culture from reading their work.
I haven’t read any of the Latin translations, but I learned a lot of French and German from reading those.
I’d never heard of a luthier before, but I once knew a guy named Lutemaker. Honest!
It’s not so much that Asterix has been translated into Latin (though some of them have been), more that there is one elderly pirate with a cane and wooden leg who keeps declaiming citations in classical Latin.
I loved the Asterix books ever since I first learned about them in 1967. They were difficult to get, but I found copies anyway. I have a collection of them, including the post-Goscinny ones. I have three paperback-sized volumes from the UK.
It is, indeed, interesting to compare the different national versions. The english-language ones are from the UK, and I thus have to “translate” some of the jokes and puns that rely on a knowledge of UK culture.
One of the weird things is that, in Asterix in Britain* there’s a scene with drunken Roman soldiers. Amidst the chorus of "hic"s emanating from this bunch, there is (predictably, you’d think) a trio going “hic, haec, hoc”. If you’ve ever taken first-year Latin, this joke would be incredibly obvious and even inevitable. I was therefore surprised when I found an original French copy – and the joke wasn’t in there!
Asterix has been adapted for the screen numerous times. The early cartoons were pretty poor quality and forgettable (even though the original comics were excellent), but more recently they made a couple of live-action CGI-aided movies (with Gerard Depardieu, of all people, as Obelix) that were pretty good. The most rtecent version was a really excellent cartoon that puts the earlier ones to shame – Asterix and the Vikings, based on Asterix and the Normans. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen tthese released in the US either in theaters or on home video – I saw them at science fiction conventions. Definitely worth looking up.
So long, Albert Uderzo, and thanks for all the Gauls!
Maybe the most famous quote from Asterix was Obelix’ “Ils sont fous, les romains!”. In the German translation, that was “Die spinnen, die Römer!” What was the English translation?
I saw Asterix and the Vikings in Riga a few years back. It was in English with Latvian and Russian subtitles.
The live-action films with Depardieu were shown on Russian TV pretty often when I was living there full-time. I can’t remember if they were in French or English, but they always had Russian voiceovers.
“These Romans are crazy!”
Nitpick: It’s **ces **Romains.
Thank You!
It took me a while to realize that the English name of the Egyptian with the shaved head in Asterix and Cleopatra (“Krukut”) was pronounced “Crewcut,” but what was it in French (and German)?
One of the best exchanges ever came in that story after Asterix and Obelix beat the crap out of a Roman contingent that attacked them:
ROMAN A: Okay, men! Let’s form up for another charge!
**ROMAN B: ** One more charge like that and we’ll be driven into the Nile!
ROMAN C: We’ll be annihilated!
ROMAN D: One more pun like that and I desert!
If you are talking about the assistant to the main antagonist, then that is Tournevis, which means screwdriver, and the main antagonist names was Amonbofis which sounds like Ah, my good looking Son or alternatively Ah my son-in-law.
I have not read any of them in something other than French so I do not know how well all of the pun names translated, but I still get a kick out of the name of the Chief Abraracourcix which comes out of as something like with shortened hands and some of the other main characters, as well as all of the roman camp names that surround the village. I also found it amusing when Obélix found the names of other people to be funny because they did not end in “ix” like all of theirs.
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Huh! The significance of “Krukut” is apparent (the guy was bald as a billiard ball), but what’s that of “Tournevis,” other than it sounds funny? 
IIRC, he was a scribe by profession.
The names of the two competing architects were Edifis and Artifis (I don’t remember offhand who was who), which makes perfect sense.
The names given to Romans in the books were the best: Marcus Ginantonticus, Crismus Bonus, Nefarius Purpus, Dubius Status, Sendervictorius, Appianglorius, Obsequeus… My favorite was the olympic athlete Gluteus Maximus.
In the French version, Obelix says “Look, Asterix! That man has a melon* on his head!” when they’re riding in the cart over the bridge in Londinium. In the English one, he says “I say, Asterix! I think this bridge is falling down!”
I had to say the name of the Britons’ leader out loud a few times before I got the French pun: “Zebigbos.”
*The French word for a bowler. The previous panel had shown a street vendor and a customer arguing over a piece of fruit. Similarly, the French title for The Avengers (the series with John Steed and Emma Peel) was Chapeau melon et bottes de cuir (“Bowler Hat and Leather Boots”).