Mould-on-the-Wold

[Steve]

--- , "Geoff Bannister" <gbannister10 at ...> wrote:
>
> ---  "Steve" <bboyminn@> wrote:
> 
> Geoff: 
> > > Jelly was traditionally made in a moulded glass container. The
> > > phrase is  sometimes used to describe things such as cars which
> > > have exaggerated curves. ...
> 
> bboyminn: 
> > And, though you probably know, Jelly in the USA, is a fruit based clear spread for bread or toast, that is made primarily of concentrated fruit juice and pectin. 
> 
> Geoff:
> I presume this is something like marmlade, which is an orange
> preserve  almost universally used for toast at breakfast-time.
> 

BBOYMINN:

Assuming your Orange Marmalade is like ours, if you took all the bits of orange out of the marmalade, the orange flavored 'gell' that was left would be Jelly. 

If it actually has any visible bits of fruit in it, it becomes Jam or Preserves.


> bboymin:
> > Also, in what way would you use the word 'jelly' to describe a car. Could you give us a sample sentence? 
> 
> Geoff:
> Sorry, I didn't make myself totally clear. Sierras and similar
> shaped cars  were sometimes referred to as "jelly mould" cars -
> usually a disparaging description because of their shape.
> 

BBOYMINN:

Ah...got it. 

...edited...

> 
> bboymin: 
> > I think 'Ottery St. Catchpole' ... the village of St. 
> Catchpole on the Otter River. 
> 
> Geoff:
> Yes, it's modelled on Ottery St. Mary, near Exeter, which is
> a village based round the church of St.Mary and is on the 
> Otter river.
> 

BBOYMINN:

I've often wondered if there wasn't some hidden meaning to 'Catchpole that we were supposed to get if we dug deep enough.

To the best of my knowledge 'catchpole' is that long stick with a loop on the end that animal control people use to snare and safely control animals.

The alternate meaning is 'tax collector'. 

> bboymin: 
> > Again, unless a name of a person or a town makes absolutely no sense in another language, or as in the case of 'Moody' has an alternate impolite meaning in the local native language, I see no reason to change these names....
> 
> Geoff:
> I think we need to bear in mind that JKR didn't envisage the 
> impact of her books at this point and was writing for an 
> anticipated British readership. All the little "in" jokes and
> wordplays such as Diagon Alley, Apparition, Durmstrang and such
> like would be understood by her target readers without the need
> for extensive and joke-killing explanations.
>

BBOYMINN:

First, I think a lot of these are VERY MUCH 'IN' jokes or inside
jokes. I think she intended them to be overlooked by most readers
and just taken for granted. Only the most astute and inquisitive
reader were suppose to see the Sirius was the Dog star and 
Sirius Black was a 'dog'. 

I don't think it is so much that she never anticipated that her
books would be translated into 100 languages including dead 
languages like Latin, as it is that she never anticipated that
she would have such thoroughly obsessed readers that they 
would relish digging into every nuance, detail, and turn of a
phrase. 

I think she appreciates that her fans are obsessed detail
oriented people, otherwise a lot of the fine subtlity of her
books would have been lost. In a sense, they would have
remained just a personal joke for her own amusement. But now,
she is happy that people 'got it'. 

As I implied before, with all this subtle underlying indirect
humor and word play, for any translator, these books must be
a nightmare to translate. 

But at the same time, I think a lot of the translators, based 
on my limited knowledge, could have done a better job of it,
it they had translated less. 

Steve/bboyminn