Although Asterix, guided by his British cousin once removed Anticlimax, set off in 1965 for Britain and Londinium when Asterix in Britain appeared in Pilote French magazine, English readers had to wait until 1969 before finally discovering the adventures of Gaul's most famous son in their own language.
A decade on from his creation, Asterix thus proved that he too could speak "in tongues" and be appreciated beyond Gaul's borders, not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the USA, India, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.
Translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, and reread very carefully by René Goscinny who was perfectly bilingual, Asterix albums have since become classics in countries whose comic-strip culture is largely based on oversized comic-book heroes.

An article by Anthea Bell which appeared on 7 May 2008 in The New York Sun gives an insight into just how challenging it is to translate an Asterix album. Under the heading "Asterix and his secrets", the article looks at the solutions that the translators found to adapt the countless wordplays and references which give Asterix albums all their spice.
We go on to learn how the Roman legionaries, who "lose their Latin" [colloquial meaning in French "to be baffled, at a loss"] under the rain of blows being dished out by Asterix and Obelix instead "decline" in the English version, so that the grammar-based metaphor can be continued. Similarly, the words of Victor Hugo commenting on the terrible battles in Asterix in Belgium have been replaced in English with the words of Byron, Shakespeare and Milton referring to battles no less evocative than the Battle of Waterloo that the French poet depicted in "Les Châtiments".
The success of Asterix publications in English has thus proved that Asterix unique sense of humour was not specifically Gaulish, as some critics claimed at the time, and that people from all around the world could have great fun reading the adventures of a little hero from Ancient Gaul. On this point, Anthea Bell explains that "the pictures speak for themselves", noting that she once saw some 8-year-old children who - without any knowledge of French - were immersed in a pile of French Asterix albums, able to follow the basic story line from the pictures alone!
Today, when Anthea Bell is asked what she translated, she responds that her work ranges from Freud to Asterix. Then, comparing the Freudian slip with the use that Asterix's authors make of wordplay, she suggests that maybe Freud and Asterix aren't so far apart after all… Our erudite druids have conducted their own inquiry, at the end of which they discovered that in the original French version of the album Asterix in Britain, there was in fact a Roman called Claudius Lapsus! [Ed: A "Freudian slip" in French is "un lapsus révélateur"]. These Britons are crazy!