The Many languages of Asterix

Asterix the Gaul has not only been fighting Romans since his creation in 1959, he has also been fighting to save numerous minority languages.

Asterix, the village of Gauls with their chieftain Vitalstatistix and the "crazy" Romans surrounding them, were created by artist Mr Uderzo and writer Rene Goscinny. Since the death of his writing partner, 30 years ago next month, Mr Uderzo has taken on the words as well.

Since 1959, 325 million copies of the 33 Asterix Albums have been sold. Incredibly, the Albums have been translated into 112 languages and dialects ranging from Arabic to Vietnamese. Minority languages such as Frisian, Scots Gaelic, Breton, Basque, Greenlandic and Corsican have also been published. Notably, albums have been published in numerous German, French and Dutch dialects such as Plattdeutsch, Alsation, Twents, Schwäbisch and Bayerisch. Importantly, They have shown that there is a real market for minority language publishing – the first Picard version of Asterix sold over 100,000 copies according to its publisher Albert René.

So what has attracted linguists and students of minority languages to Asterix? In part, it could be to do with the central theme of the Asterix stories; that of a small village in Gaul defending their culture against assimilation under Roman hegemony. To speakers of languages such as Breton, Gaelic and Welsh, the similarities in their fight against the seemingly unstoppable tide of English and French are obvious.

Part of the appeal could also be that Asterix transcends borders. Each Album usually sees Asterix travel to a new country which lends itself well to local language versions. So we have, for example, a Welsh version of Asterix in Britain, a Cypriot version of Asterix at the Olympic games and a Corsican version of …Asterix in Corsica.

Another aspect to consider is the linguistic fun that can be had when translating the character names and Gallic humour. The translations for some books have been described as 'works of genius', successfully turning almost every French pun and cultural reference into one in the target language.

Above all, the Asterix series is fun and appeals to young and old. It has helped give a voice via the written word to many minority languages and dialects, many of which had never had a mainstream publisher to promote them before.

Even with 112 languages and dialects under his belt, Asterix has still not appeared in such minority languages as Manx, Jerriais, Cornish, Faroese or British dialects. Hopefully, the mighty Gaul will not be hanging up his sword any time soon!

The below site has extensive information on all the languages in which Asterix has been published.
http://www.asterix-obelix.nl/manylanguages/








The copyright of Asterix books, associated publications and images thereof is the property of Editions Albert René