“Every day, I receive calls or emails from collectors in France and Belgium to reserve an album!” Brice Roborel de Climens is not worried. The 3,000 copies of the comic strip “Les bijoux de la Castafiore”, which became “Los oreries d’lai Castafiore” in its Champagne version, will have no trouble finding buyers. The marketing of this project, launched in April 2022, will begin in November.
“It was Dominique Richard, the honorary president of the Maison du folklore de Champagne, who had the idea,” emphasizes Brice Roborel de Climens, current president of the association. Translated into more than 80 languages, including thirty regional languages, Tintin had never before been honored in the Champagne region! The oversight is now about to be corrected after more than two years of painstaking work. Originally from Tournai (Belgium), Hergé, Tintin’s father, was in favor of these multiple translations. He himself had asked Casterman for a version in Tournai Picard.
The first obstacle for the association’s volunteers: finding the budget. Only the publisher Casterman can print copies of Tintin. The Maison du folklore de Champagne therefore had no latitude for the cost of printing. “We had to find 27,000 euros, or 3,000 copies at 9 euros,” explains Brice Roborel de Climens. The association went hunting for subsidies: the Grand Est Region granted it an envelope of 5,000 euros and Europe, via the Leader funds (Liaison entre actions de développement de l’économie rurale) of the Côte des Bar, 16,000 euros.
“The rest was financed by a bank loan that will be repaid by the profits from the sale of the albums,” adds Brice Roborel de Climens. Here again, everything is codified: each copy will be sold for 13.50 euros. Either directly from the association, or at the bookstores currently being approached to distribute the highly anticipated “Los oreries d’lai Castafiore”. Chronologically, it is the 21st volume of the 24 Tintin albums if we take into account “Tintin et l’Alph-art”, published in 1986 but unfinished since Hergé died in 1983.
Why this album? “It wasn’t our initial idea,” admits Brice Roborel de Climens. “We surveyed the members of the association and chose Tintin in the Land of the Sovietsin reference to Little Moscow. » This is the nickname of the village of Ailleville, 40 km east of Troyes and stronghold of the association. The idea was abandoned. « Casterman advised us against this option because of the geopolitical context and also because it is an album with many more pages than the others. » Although it is the only one in the series in black and white, it has 140 pages compared to 62 for the majority of the other albums. Bianca Castafiore was therefore chosen. « This album has the advantage of being French and therefore more easily translatable into Champagne. For Moon objectivewe would have lacked vocabulary for words like rocket or astronaut.”
An educational support
It took six months to translate the album. “Casterman was impressed. We had been warned that translating a Tintin album into a regional language could take five to ten years,” sighs Brice Roborel de Climens. However, the association’s volunteers had to deal with a small setback. The album was first translated by Bernard Poplineau from the Ardennes into the Sedan dialect. “We then passed it on to Dominique Richard who lives in Guyana. He noticed that there were many differences between the Sedan dialect and that of the Côte des Bar!” Multiple corrections were made. The album was then finalized in Champagne. “We can’t change anything in the album anymore. The second BAT (good to print) was signed a few weeks ago,” says Brice Roborel de Climens. As an aside, the album will be printed in Langres in Haute-Marne. » Only 80 km from the association’s headquarters.
With this Champagne version of the adventures of the little reporter, the Maison du folklore de Champagne aims to make the regional language known to as many people as possible. In addition to the Tintin album, an educational support for children in schools in the Reims academy (Marne) has been created. This is the adventures of the cat Popy, a comic strip which, over the course of its episodes, incorporates more and more words in Champagne.