Le Hulk

Yesterday on MetaFilter:  How would Hulk say "Hulk Smash!" in French?

Great question!  Someday I'll use this in a class.  It's an apt example of how a seemingly simple phrase can entangle a translator in complex webs of linguistic and cultural meaning.  Some comments mentioned the little assistance that Babelfish and other on line translation tools provided.  When I tried it out, Babelfish initially recommended "Hulk smash" as a French equivalent.  That's not such a preposterous result.  Several comments supported not translating the phrase at all.  But I figured that Babelfish was just being lazy so I tried again.*  This time I got "fracas de carcasse."  "Carcasse" is how Babelfish translates the name Hulk. The question of whether or not to translate a proper name is very difficult for translators. Arguably, proper names should not be translated and some would go so far as to claim that they are untranslatable.  ("My name is my name!")  This doesn't mean that a proper name doesn't have an alternative form in another language but "Juan" is not a translation of "John" (more likely the difference has to do with how pronunciation affects orthography over time).  In comics, however, the names of characters are closely tied to their physical characteristics and/or their particular powers (take Storm or Wolverine as an example).  But even in comics these aren't proper names but rather epithets by which the characters are known when they are in superhero mode.  In such cases, the superhero epithet or nickname is often translated but the real/ordinary name of the character is not (Peter Parker/Spider-Man, for example).  But in French, the name Hulk has remained unchanged, as far as I can tell, though in Spanish he goes by "La Masa" (sometimes) and in Hebrew "Ha-'anak" ("the giant" or "the big one").  It would be interesting for someone better versed in the translation history of comics to track which names get translated/altered and which remain the same.  With regards to the problem of translating "smash" (is it a noun? verb [what kind?]? an onomatopoeia?), one user recommended consulting native speakers.  However, the French speakers involved in the discussion couldn't agree on a translation either.  The verb "smasher" exists in French but in the context of a tennis "smash."  The discussion links to examples of the different ways the phrase has been rendered in French.  Personally, I like the sound of "Hulk casse!"  It's concise, awkward, and sounds harsh to my ear.  (Many thanks to Alaina for letting me know that this discussion was taking place!)

* For the record, I do not endorse the use of Babelfish as a tool for literary translation (or any translation, for that matter).  The work and theory that goes into machine translation is very intriguing and interesting but the actual results are, so far, very unreliable.