The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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8 The Linguist Vol/57 No/5 2018 ciol.org.uk/tl FEATURES I n January 2017, Adriana Hunter was approached "very discreetly" by Hachette Children's Books about the possibility of translating the next Asterix book. Anthea Bell, who had worked on the previous 37 books (with Derek Hockridge until his death in 2013), had retired due to ill health. Following in the footsteps of such a renowned translator, negotiating the many pitfalls of the pun-laden text and doing justice to a French classic with dedicated fans across the world was a daunting prospect, despite Hunter's many years of experience. Although she had more than 60 novels under her belt, and a number of accolades, including the 2013 French-American Foundation's Annual Translation Prize, this was set to be a job like no other – with a complicated editing process, a rigid six-week schedule and "industrial espionage" level security. She sent off a test translation with an outline of relevant work, and waited to see if she would get the call. Hunter had learnt French as a child when her family spent four years in Switzerland (where she became familiar with Asterix in French), and studied French and Drama at university. Starting out in film publicity and copywriting, she fell into translation "by accident" after being so "blown away" by Geneviève Jurgensen's La Disparition that she made a sample translation, which was picked up by Flamingo Books in 1999. Although she had met Bell on several occasions – and had even looked at an English-language version of Asterix just to see the translator's talent at work – they had never discussed the series by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Instead, Hunter used existing translations as a guide, honouring Bell's work by making the transition to new translator as seamless as she could. "Anthea had done such a great job, I knew these were big boots to fill. I wanted to be completely invisible, not only in terms of the original text but also in terms of the previous translations. At first, I was concerned that I had never worked on a graphic novel, but when I looked back at my previous work, I realised that I had prepared for this. I love the challenge of word games, I'm obsessed with cryptic crosswords and I've worked on various books that rely on punning. 99 Francs by Frédéric Beigbeder has an enormous number of puns; the central character is a copywriter, so I had to invent advertising slogans for him that worked in English. Security on Asterix and the Chariot Race was so tight that the publishers supplied me with a dedicated laptop and kept changing the access codes. There was a tight schedule because the French text was available only shortly before the planned publication date for the English edition. I was apprehensive about that, as I thought I would have to agonise over every pun, but once I started, the work came very quickly. Usually a book is published about a year after the translation is finished, but I worked on Asterix in May (with editing in June) and it came out in October. Before I started translating, I did a fair amount of research. Characters from previous albums can reappear and Anthea had come up with wonderful names for them, and there are jokes that are repeated through the series. Geriatrix, for example, is incredibly old and always saying 'I'm too young to die'. I was terrified that I might miss a blindingly obvious joke. You wouldn't, for example, expect people all over the world to recognise the words 'We shall fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender', but an English person would know them instantly. Fortunately, the editorial team were aware that it would be difficult for one person to pick up on every detail and offered a lot of support. I didn't have any contact with the writer, Jean-Yves Ferri (who took over from Uderzo in 2011), because the book was being translated into 17 languages, and taking queries from all the translators would have been exhausting. Instead, there were extensive footnotes to help the translators identify any gags that might otherwise have slipped under the radar. I had thought that the comic-strip format would mean strict space constraints, and I looked forward to that challenge. However, the publishers told me not to worry about this, as they could change the size of the text. PUBLISHERS' POWER OF VETO Normally I work for English-language publishers, but this was a collaborative process between me as the translator, the English- language publishers and the French publishers (Les Éditions Albert René), who had a strong power of veto. So the text went through several phases of editing and approval. I was slightly anxious about this, as I thought it was going to be quite heavy handed, but it was actually very supportive and helpful. The story is about a chariot race across Italy, home to the 'Italic' (not 'Italian') people, and the French publishers wanted to call it 'Asterix and the Race across Italy'. I didn't think that was very catchy and wanted to recreate the pun of the French title, Astérix et la TransItalique, as I thought 'Asterix and the Trans-Italic Race' worked perfectly in English. When that was rejected, I suggested 'Asterix in Italy', which has precedents such as Asterix in Britain. In the end I was given various options to choose from and thought 'Asterix and the Chariot Race' was the most succinct. There's a conceit in the books that all the characters from a particular place have names that end in a particular suffix: the Gauls end in '-ix' (e.g. Asterix, Obelix); the ASTERIX®-O BELIX®-D OGMATIX®/©2018 LES ÉDITIONS ALBERT RENÉ