Gaul Britannia!
Eran Almagor salutes the English version of Asterix which, after a troubled start, grew into a witty, pun-filled triumph
“It was the year 43 AD…
All England came under Roman rule – except for one small village... Try as they might, the Romans could not force these British hardnuts to surrender.” Hard to believe as it may be, Asterix was initially presented to the English-speaking readership as a Briton, fighting against the Roman invaders of the island.
Sixty years ago, in November 1963, Asterix appeared for the first time in the Uin the weekly comics periodical Valiant, as ‘Little Fred’, together with his friend ‘Big Ed’, the name chosen for Obelix. The album Asterix le Gaulois was Britonised into Little Fred, the Ancient Brit with Bags of Grit.
Little Fred hardly took Britain by storm. In fact, it was terminated after just a few months. But that didn’t stop Asterix being introduced again as a Briton – this time in September 1965, in the British magazine for boys Ranger. Asterix was now ‘Beric the Bold’, Obelix became ‘Son of Boadicea’, and the album Le Combat des Chef (The Big Fight) was adapted into a strip called Britons Never, Never, Never Shall Be Slaves! Despite this tub-thumping title, Beric the Bold also failed to capture the imagination of its British audience.
Disaster
now appeared to beckon for the comic strip’s British adventure. Yet Asterix’s fortunes began to change in 1969 when the task of producing English translations was handed over to Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge. Their take on Uderzo and Goscinny’s creation was witty and irreverent. Above all, it rendered its lead characters as they were always meant to be: Gauls. British readers were soon smitten.
One of the reasons that Bell and Hockridge’s translation was such a success was that it kept the humorous spirit of the original, while innovating with great freedom. This is perhaps most obvious in the naming of its characters. All Gauls’ names end in -ix, yet in the English version, some of these have been changed for comic effect: the dog Idéfix becomes Dogmatix, while Panoramix, the druid who administers a potion as a drug, is now Getafix. Roman characters, all ending in -us, also get new monikers – none more memorable than
Sendervictorius and Appianglorius from Asterix the Gladiator.
Bell and Hockridge also inserted puns where the original had none. In Asterix in Corsica, the character Boneyw as a warrior way ay ix asks if a Corsican can come on board the pirates’ ship, and receives the answer “course he can”.
In the French Chez les Bretons, the British characters speak in French, yet use English grammatical practices (such as forwarding the adjective before the noun) that distinguish them from the Gauls. Bell and Hockridge could not repeat this, and so had to turn to another technique to differentiate between Britons and non-Britons. All the figures speak 'nglish, but their translation gives the Britons the style of ‘upper-class twits’ using expressions such as ‘jolly good, eh, what?’. Consequently, new puns find their way into the text. When a vendor asks angrily whether the melon he is selling is bad, a customer replies “rather old fruit”.
Bell and Hockridge had landed upon a winning formula. Over the following four decades, the pair would go on to produce 33 English translations – securing the comic strip’s position in the affections of a nation. Asterix’s campaign to conquer Britain almost ended in ignominy. Yet, after a number of false starts, he triumphed once more.