Giles Getoffyourhighhos
SIR: I much enjoyed Giles Coren’s article about Astérix, and certainly agree that the English rendering of his adventures over many years has been most skilfully contrived – not least in the hilarious inventiveness of the characters’ names. However, I can’t agree that the French versions – ‘Rubbish,’ he says – were less clever and funny than the English.
The first Astérix book I read – in French, in 1966 when it appeared – was Astérix chez les Bretons, and is a case in point. The basis of much of its fun is the unusual French of the natives. Exclamations like ‘ Ma bonté!’, ‘ Bonté gracieuse!’, ‘ Mon mot!’, ‘ Plutôt’, ‘ Je dis! Ceci est choquant!’ and ‘ S’il vous plaît, faites [Please do!]’ accompany the Britons’ egregious pursuits of drinking warm beer, boiling wild boar in mint sauce (‘ Pauvre bête,’ comments Obélix) or observing l’heure de l’eau chaude (because tea has not yet been discovered). It is an equally sheer loss to turn back into English ‘ C’était grand de vous avoir ici! C’était!’, ‘ Gardez votre lèvre supérieure rigide!’, ‘ Foyer doux foyer’ or ‘ Joyeuse bonne idée!’.
The English version also has the British speaking in Wodehousian upper-class (‘A jolly rum thing, what?’): good, but surely still funnier in French? And the British chief has become Mykingdomforanos. Fine, but still a pity to lose his French counterpart, Zebigbos. I’m glad Astérix and Obélix themselves are left as they were. Yours faithfully, Adam Fergusson, Kensington, London