Max Porter

Oh, for these two people, it's about the Gaulish resistance to the Romans and it's a little, you don't know Asterix, my God!

But I hate when people are like, oh my God, you haven't read Asterix, I hate that.

So, you're totally cool.

Anyway, one of the challenges of the translation, it's really interesting if you look up Asterix in Wikipedia, it's a gorgeous thing to do, because they tell you how the names of the characters are translated into many, many languages, because Asterix is one of the most translated books of all time.

And so it's so interesting.

So say...

All the names are puns.

Asterix is the most pun-heavy material on Earth.

It's like an absolute swamp of puns, and that's the joy of it.

And when I read it now, I'm looking back, and it's really highly sophisticated geopolitical satire, brilliantly done and very generous and very nuanced, in ways that could possibly help us now, when satire has become rather blunter, given the kind of...

debasing of language in the public sphere.

But like, for example, the chief being called Vital Statistics, that's a very accomplished piece of translation into English.

And you look what he's called in Hindi and, you know, in Latin, they translate it into Latin.

And it's so, so interesting the different choices people make to make that joke land right in the language it's being, because that's entirely culturally bespoke translation.

The other reason I read it is pure nostalgia.

My granny gave me Asterix.

Actually, around about the time my dad died, I think we went to stay with my granny, and she just panicked and thought, how to... So we just went into our room, and I remember there was like 50 Asterix on the bed.

You know, before we'd been sold like one per holiday.

And she just panicked and thought, I'll buy them just a shitload of Asterix.

LAUGHTER