The Adventures of Tintin conjunction with Casterman, Tintin's publishers, and starts by describing Tintin as "a French boy". Snowy was called by his French name "Milou". The process of translating Tintin into British English was then commissioned in 1958 by Methuen, Hergé's British publishers. It was a joint operation, headed by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, working closely with Hergé to attain an accurate translation as true as possible to the original work. Due in part to the large amount of language-specific word play (such as punning) in the series, especially the jokes which played on Professor Calculus' partial deafness, it was always the
Tintin (character) and has prompted a few to devote their careers to his study. General Charles de Gaulle "considered Tintin his only international rival". Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline noted that "Tintin had a prehistory", being influenced by a variety of sources that Hergé had encountered throughout his life. Hergé noted that during his early schooling in the midst of World War I, when German armies occupied Belgium, he had drawn pictures in the margins of his school workbooks of an unnamed young man battling (a slang term for the Germans). He later commented that these drawings depicted a brave and adventurous character