Mould-on-the-Wold

[zanooda2]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at ...> wrote:


> So, if you change the name of the town, do you 
> correspondingly change the name of Godric Griffindor?


zanooda:

They don't change "Godric", Steve, they just translate "hollow" :-). Even Spanish translation, where they, unlike many others, mercifully left practically every name unchanged (except for Riddle, iirc), gives "valle de Godric". I'm certain everybody else did the same :-). 



Steve wrote:

> I think 'Ottery St. Catchpole' is nonsensical unless you 
> understand (and hopefully I'm correct) that it means the
> village of St. Catchpole on the Otter River.


zanooda:

I believe they all left this name as it is, because no one understands what it means, and because it sounds OK, no "TH"s or "W"s or other bad stuff :-).


> Steve wrote:
 
> All that said, I don't envy the life of a translator. 
> It has to be a difficult, time consuming, tedious task, 
> that satisfies no one. 


zanooda:

Not to mention that you have to know both languages really well :-). I'm happy to hear that you understand how difficult translation is. My husband works as a technical translator/editor, and he says that many of his American co-workers still think that a translator's job is just to replace every English word with a corresponding Russian word (and vice versa), and this is it, LOL. They seriously think that translation is done word-per-word. No wonder they believe that computers can do it :-).