In Finland, an album of “Asterix” published in a rare Nordic translation to preserve the language

The Adventures of Asterix, which celebrates its 65th anniversary this year, is already available in four small Finnish dialects.

An Asterix album has just been published in a rare Swedish dialect, spoken by only a few thousand people in western Finland, the project manager explained to AFP. The Great Crossingpublished in 1975, has been available since Monday November 4, 2024 in grondspraatsi, a new 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 grondspraatsi edition is “the first official translation into a Swedish dialect in the Nordic countries”John Hagnas, director of the project, told AFP. Finnish and Swedish are the two official languages ​​in Finland.

Finnish is the mother tongue 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.

“We want to strengthen the self-esteem of people who still speak the dialect,” added John Hagnas. 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. Titled Travel across the Atlanticthe 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. “We added our own colorful words and expressions to the album, but the story remains true to the original”John Hagnas said.

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. Throughout the world, the adventures of the famous Gaul, who celebrates his 65th birthday this year, have been translated into more than a hundred languages ​​and dialects.