Fun with Language Barriers in "Asterix and Cleopatra"

When I was growing up, all I knew about the French was that they monopolized precious space on the cereal box, and they made the very best adventure comics. My nose was to be found in Asterix and Tintin long after my teachers and reading-level indicated I should apply my library card to more mature works. But these comics embodied many firsts for me, not least of which was my first subjection to the barrier of language.

It is extremely difficult for puns or similar language-based jokes to be translated into another language with their full meaning (or wit) intact; however, the medium of comics seems to allow the greatest chance of success in regards to such translation. Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, the writer and illustrator of the Asterix comics respectively, are adepts of using comics in this manner. In this post however, I will not so much be engaging with interspersed examples of the successful circumvention of language barriers throughout the Asterix series, but will instead be focusing on a particular comic (“Asterix and Cleopatra”), in which Goscinny and Uderzo employ sarcastic narration and pictorial representation to deliberately poke fun at language barriers.

 

Since the Asterix comics are comedic, and are translated into many other languages besides French, it is likely that the translators of Asterix experienced criticism from their readers regarding their translation of French puns. With the above three panels, Goscinny and Uderzo make light of this issue. The switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to legible text “for the convenience of [their] readers”, when explained narratively under the guise of “dubbing techniques” which “had not been perfected at this period”, readily achieves a nod to the nit-picking of foreign readers. The ludicrous authorial acknowledgment that “the movement of the lips does not synchronize very well with the words” simultaneously trivializes such nit-picking.

 

In this panel as well, sarcastic narration is so successfully married to the problematic representation of the Egyptian language that the comedic lamentation of jokes and puns which are “unfortunately untranslatable”, is easily accomplished.

 

This panel demonstrates Uderzo’s commitment to a visually realistic portrayal of language. The reader is placed at a distance from the encounter in the panel, and the hieroglyphic word bubble is scaled down to reflect this distance.  This choice by the artist allows the reader to recognize that the pictorial representation of the language is actually a part of the diegetic world. Even if the reader in question could in fact “read” hieroglyphs, or understand Egyptian, the distance makes such translation unlikely. It could be argued that Uderzo is illustrating the extent of a reader’s estrangement from a foreign language that is seen in its colloquial representation.

 This panel makes a joke about the representation of a language in light of different dialectics. The narrator sets up that those speaking are “of the rural districts of Egypt”, and the diction of the translation in the bottom right of the panel humorously confirms this. I actually think there is a majorly-missed opportunity with this panel, in regards to the stylized differences between the hieroglyphs. I realize that the stylized wonkiness of the lower bubble is a visual reflection of the labourer’s assertion that the captain is “crazy”, but if the country dialect had been attributed only to the speaker of the lower bubble, then the writer’s jest about dialect would have been better contrasted, and therefore more significant.    

 

Concerns about pictorial representation and language barriers aside, these are still my two favourite panels in the whole issue. But what’s interesting about these panels is that they demonstrate a pictorial representation of pictorial representation. The humor is derived entirely from Obelix’s terrible, shoddy adaption of the original pictogram. It is fascinating that the sum of the joke is conveyed instantly to the reader simply through a slight change in the stylized representation of a word the reader couldn’t read to begin with. At this point in the story, the reader is so experienced with the creators’ conveyance of meaning through symbols, that all it takes on the creators’ part is a bad stick figure to denote that Obelix is butchering the Egyptian language in his attempt to interrogate the riverboat captain.

 

See? There is so much fun to be had with language barriers.