An unexpected translation. An album of Asterix and Obelix has just been published this Monday, November 4 in a rare Swedish dialect, spoken by only a few thousand people in western Finland, grondsprååtsi. “La Grande Traversée”, published in 1975, has been available since Monday as part of a new local initiative to keep this dialect alive.
If the first translation into Swedish of an album of the adventures of the cunning Gaul and his friends dates back to 1970, this edition in grondspraatsi is “the first official translation into a Swedish dialect in the Nordic countries”, declared John Hagnäs, director of the project. “I probably have to admit that I am somewhat proud,” he admitted to Finnish public television YLE.
“We fight valiantly against the vast linguistic majority”
Finnish and Swedish are the two official languages in Finland. Finnish is the native language of the majority of the country’s approximately 5.5 million inhabitants, with Swedish being the main language for just over 5% of the population.
Swedish-speaking Finns, who mostly live in the southern and western coastal regions of the country, speak several ancient local dialects, some of which are unintelligible even to other Swedish speakers in Finland due to their uniqueness, the grondsprååtsi is one of them.
“We want to strengthen the self-esteem of people who still speak the dialect,” added John Hagnäs. Passionate about comics and a long-time collector, he had the idea in 2018 to translate this Asterix album into this Swedish dialect spoken in his hometown of Kokkola, in western Finland. “We are fighting valiantly against the vast linguistic majority, just as the Gauls fought against the Romans,” he insisted to YLE.
A dialect spoken only in one region
Titled “Reiså yvi Atlanten,” the album was translated by local experts Bror Hagstrom and Ragny Mutka to help preserve the local dialect, spoken by only an estimated 7,000 people in the Kokkola region. To do this, they relied on the Swedish, Finnish and English language versions. “We added our own colorful words and expressions to the album, but the story remains true to the original,” said John Hagnäs.
Very popular with the Finns, the adventures of Asterix have already been translated into four small Finnish dialects – Karelian, Rauma, Savo and Stadi – in addition to Finnish. In total, the adventures of the famous Gaul have been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects around the world.
