Lakes International Comic Art Festival and VIP Brands Ltd. announce the new Sophie Castille Prize for Comics in Translation

New Prize for excellence in translation for European comics to celebrate the life of Sophie Castille.

Following the tragic and unexpected death of Sophie Castille, co-founder of Europe Comics and ambassador for bandes dessinées worldwide, The Lakes International Comic Art Festival and VIP Brands have created a new award for excellence in translation.

The inaugural award will be presented in partnership with Comica and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, at the annual Lakes Festival (Friday 29th September – Sunday 1st October 2023).

The Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation are for the best translation of graphic novels into a variety of languages around the world. This inaugural award will be for the best translation of a non-English graphic novel into English.

Sophie Castille’s work in comics since the late 1990s has been all about promoting and representing European comics, bandes dessinées, and their authors, as well as comics from around the world and promoting them for an English market. Always encouraging creativity and the exchange of ideas, her influence on European comics had grown and grown, becoming a key figure in the growth of translation of comics and graphic novels around the world.

Publishers around the world are being invited to submit for consideration graphic novels they have published that are translations of works into English. The jury will be comprised of three judges: Karen Green, Curator for Comics and Cartoons, Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library; comic creator and former British Comics Laurate, Charlie Adlard, who has been an advocate for the translation of world comics into English for many years; and former TV producer, Peter Kessler MBE, Chair of The Lakes International Comic Art Festival.

“Awards for excellence in comic translation are more than overdue. And it is only logical that these awards are named after Sophie Castille who loved comics – and even more, the idea of the exchange of cultures. In her role as Director of International Rights for Dargaud, Dupuis and Lombard, she was an ambassador for comics – making sure the whole world would get to know the treasures of the French and Belgian bandes dessinées.” – Sophie’s partner, Dirk Rehm.

Anyone who’s experienced the best of European comics will be well aware of how essential the translator is to enhance the comics experience. So many of us here in the UK remember the experiences of first finding Tintin and Asterix albums in libraries (I certainly did) and delighting at the language and vocabulary at play – all thanks to the skills of the translators involved.

That’s something that Julie Tait, director of the Lakes Festival, wholeheartedly agrees with that:

“Take Asterix, for example. When some Asterixstories, including the first story, were originally published in comics like Valiant and Rangerin Britain in the 1960s, the translation had none of the sparkle that Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge gave the series later, and made the English editions such a success.Good translation deserves wider recognition.”

The inaugural prize will be awarded at the Lakes International Festival in Bowness-on -Windermere in October 2023. More information on submissions can be found at the Lakes Festival and Sophie Castille Awards websites. Submissions need to be received by 1 June 2023.

And if you’re in any way interested in the way translation can enhance a work, the way that it’s so vital to have a translator who doesn’t merely slavishly translate literally, then I’d recommend this brilliant article from The Aunty Muriel blog that discusses specific examples of the rather magnificent translation work of Bell and Hockridge on Asterix. I’m going to show you one of the examples and paraphrase what’s said there, but it’s well worth reading the whole thing.

I’ll take their example of the melon gag in Asterix in Britain… here’s the original and the translation…

The original plays on the idea of Englishness, or at least the French perception of the stereotyped English business-type, all bowler hat and umbrella, stiff upper lip et al. The gag has nothing to do with the words ‘il est trop cher mon melon?’ which means ‘my melon is too expensive?’ and everything to do with the visual gag here, all coming from the fact that the French word melon means both the fruit and bowler hat. So, visually, you have the posh English gent on the left with the umbrella and the melon playing on the imagery of the posh Brit.

But in the translation, the French melon gag is lost, so the panel wouldn’t make any sense. So in this case Bell and Hockridge come up with a magnificent new gag, taking the new line of ‘Oh, so this melon’s bad is it?’ and coming back with the retort, ‘Rather, old fruit.’ Now that, of course, is a magnificently funny gag, all playing off the phrasing. Read it as ‘Rather, old fruit,’ and that’s playing on the aristocratic way of talking, but read it as ‘rather old fruit’ and it’s a wonderful response to the shopkeeper.

Like I say, go and read the read at the Aunty Muriel blog article. It’s just the perfect illustration of why translators are so important and should never be undervalued.