German versions

[morrigan09 at yahoo.com]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C1523
From: morrigan09
Subject: German versions
Reply To: [Yahoo! #1513] Catching up...
Date: 5/30/00 11:02 am  (ET)

The German versions are very interesting from a technical
translation point of view as so many of JKR's puns and wordplays
are untranslatable. The evocative impact of the character's names is
completely dimmed in German, for example... (Snape is SUCH a good name
in English-- snake, snipe, snide, you can imagine "to snape" being a
verb for "to be sarcastic and sneaky")

BTW Tom Riddle's middle name in German is Vorlost. Tom Vorlost Riddle=
Ist Lord Voldemort.

That was pretty random, sorry about that. But to actually answer Neil's
comment, I haven't seen any differences that can be attributed to cultural
rather than linguistic causes.