

In another example: Hiccups are written onomatopoeically in French as hips, but in English as 'hic', allowing Roman legionaries in more than one of the English translations to decline their hiccups absurdly in Latin ( hic, haec, hoc). Some translations have actually added local humour: In the Italian translation, the Roman legionaries are made to speak in 20th-century Roman dialect, and Obelix's famous Ils sont fous ces romains ('These Romans are crazy') is translated as Sono pazzi questi romani, humourously alluding to the Roman abbreviation SPQR. Much of the humour in the initial Asterix books was French-specific, which delayed the translation of the books into other languages for fear of losing the jokes and the spirit of the story. The humour encountered in the Asterix comics often centers around puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheekstereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions.


