mct16:
Part of the idea is that he keeps making jokes and puns and is the only one who actually laughs at them,
Yes, as I explained, I understand that - however the translation hasn’t put any puns in for him (or the reader) to be laughing at; he just talks for a bit, and falls over. It’s a singularly humourless effort by the translator, in what is already a very pedestrian and un-nuanced translation.
As to where this falls in the story (or indeed in which of the two stories in the book) I can’t remember, as it was a library book which I no longer have (as it happens, I no longer have a local library either, as they shut it to cut costs…).
The rule of thumb used by the translators of Asterix seems to be the best expression of it to me (and given the great success of that series, it appears to work): they actually note the number of jokes, gags and puns in a book before they start. Then if they can’t adapt a joke
in situ (so, for example, if a pun can’t be found to match one in French), they compensate for it by adding another joke there or elsewhere.
So here Hergé is engaging a school-pupil level of joke, and that is his primary aim; what would make an eleven-year old boy or girl, say, laugh? It therefore seems to me right and proper that you translate that intention directly, rather than just addressing the words. You
might get away with leaving it; you certainly get
more of the flavour of Hergé’s wit by changing it.