HP in translation (wordplay in Chinese characters, etc.)

[justcarol67]

If, like me, you wonder how HP translators render things like the
rearrangement of "Tom Marvolo Riddle" into "I am Lord Voldemort" into
Asian languages that use characters for whole words rather than an
alphabet, you may be interested in this website:

http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/wordplay/riddle.html

The main page for the site

http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/index.html#TOP

also includes links to mistranslations, some of which will bring tears
of laughter to your eyes. Here's my favorite:

"In the Taiwanese version, Filch's accusation runs:

    'See what he wrote on the wall! He found -- in my office -- he
knows I'm a -- .... He knows I'm a 'firecracker'!'"

(Yes, I know that a squib is a dud firecracker, but it's still funny.)

Anyway, I'm not sure whether these mistranslations are any worse than
in, say, the Russian edition, but I think they're entertaining.
Certainly, the Asian translators (those who actually used the Asian
language rather than an English edition with footnotes) faced a
serious challenge. I wouldn't want such a difficult job.

Carol, who also enjoyed the section on Nagini, the milk-drinking snake