We’re still talking about Asterix translations? Whenever Asterix comes up as a sub-topic, it always gets traction.
Can someone help me a bit with the French in the scene from Asterix in Switzerland that @DPRKposted in Post 22?
Although I don’t know much French, I can sort of figure out some of what they are saying. But I need help with:
Obélix devrait avancer à genoux.
… le chef se penche sur nos problèmes! (Is this some kind of French pun or idiom I’m not understanding?)
I got that Obelix is serving a half-pint, but the English adds the “mild and bitter” part. In the French, does the chief not say that he is a mild man but he feels bitter?
ETA: Okay, upon a second look, I see that the chief doesn’t say “I’m a mild man but this makes be feel bitter” in the French. Would that not have worked well if Uderzo and Goscinny had included that in the original?
Everybody loves Asterix ! (Plus, it’s a good case study, having been translated so many times.)
Makes me think of the pirate who only speaks in Classical Latin quotes. How does he talk in the Latin translations? And, to the extent there are foreign-language Asterix editions complete with footnotes/endnotes, are they consistently included (surely they would need to be; why would a random Chinese guy recognize excerpts from Julius Caesar any more than from Victor Hugo?)
Anyway… [rather than trying to post individual pages, just click here] this particular Latin translation has
No beer
“Obelix should get on his knees!” [i.e., supplicants bend the knee]
The chief is looking into [literally, leaning over] our problems
In French, a person can be bitter, and beer can be bitter (and there is even an aperitif called “amer bière”), but “amère” by itself does not mean a kind of drink (AFAIK)
At least early on, Tintin himself is described as working for the “Petit Vingtième”. As for the other guys, though, is Haddock even Belgian? It is revealed that his ancestor worked for Louis XIV, though that does not necessarily prove he is French. The Professor is supposed to be Swiss.
The English address given once was apparently just a translation error/overzealousness. And there is no Marlishire, England in any case.
An English person should at least realize that the local police are not English bobbies (as did this South African kid). Americans, maybe not, but I don’t know if the books are a thing in the US
I am in the U.S. I read them all. As a kid, I wouldn’t have recognized any of these indications as the setting of Marlinspike not being in England. For children’s comics, I think it’s too much to ask to recognize a setting just from non-textual visual clues. I mean, unless it’s like the Eiffel Tower or something glaringly obvious and universally recognizable.
And I think that Haddock was also getting misdirected phone calls for “Cutts the Butcher” and “Boots the Chemist.” That suggested to me that it had to be set in England.
I definitely knew the difference between bobbies and gendarmes at that point. At least in terms of headwear. I’d have more likely said Marlinspike was French than Belgian, at the time, though, as I knew gendarmes mostly from French TV (and Pink Panther films).
It’s another unintended side-effect of the translation. Originally, Moulinsart ↔Sart-Moulin, which Belgians might know. But Marlinspike Hall? A nautical reference where there wasn’t one, and Belgium is out of the picture.
They are, and we didn’t. Or at least, I didn’t. I definitely assumed the books were set in the UK somewhere when I was a kid. Everyone spoke English, and it clearly wasn’t in the US, so where else could it possibly be set? Hell, to this day, I still have a subconscious assumption that British police detectives dress like someone in a Rene Magritte painting.
If you look at the last page of Tintin in the Soviet Union, you can see him come back to Brussels to a huge public reception in front of the Royal Palace. I guess later, they just assumed the readers knew who he was? I’m looking at The Pharaoh’s Cigars, and he starts on board a ship and spends the entire adventure in various countries abroad.
What is bizarre is that if you look at, e.g., the detectives Dupond/t, in some (all?) English editions they “translated” their names as Thom(p)son! I guess otherwise someone might make the mistake of thinking they were Belgian? I wonder how people feel about Hercule Poirot…
As a kid, I knew where they were set: Europe! If pinned down, I’d have added “A small village in Europe.” (Which would include Eastern Europe, the entire UK and Scandinavia).
Part of it, I think, is that Tintin books usually involved a lot of international travel, and were pretty densely plotted. As a young kid, I often wasn’t really following the plot terribly well, so it wouldn’t always have been clear to me which parts of a book were meant to be “at home,” and which were “abroad.” Despite knowing what a British policeman was supposed to look like, seeing Tintin interact with a gendarme instead of a Bobby wouldn’t necessarily have clued me in to it not being in the UK, because I could have easily missed the part where he was supposed to still be in his home country.
I’d guess at least part of that is that an English speaker might not get that Dupond and Dupont are meant to be pronounced the same, whereas Thompson and Thomson would be more obvious. But, also, I think they were deliberately trying to obfuscate where the action was set for international audiences.
How often does the adventure take place at home, rather than in Tibet, the Congo, India, North or South America, or wherever? Tintin and Alph-Art is one.
Thinking about it, I remember reading The Castafiore Emerald as a kid, and being confused how the Roma got their wagons across the English Channel.
Also, my dad (who introduced me to Tintin) absolutely loved Bianca Castafiore, and thought she was completely hilarious. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’m pretty sure it’s because she was almost a perfect caricature of his sister-in-law, in terms of looks, attitude, and most particularly, volume.
