Bad Translation

[Christine]

No: HPFGUIDX 6820

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Kaitlin " <ReinaKata02 at y...> wrote:
> You translated English to French and back to English?  Or did you 
> translate the French version into English?
> Computer translators are really bad because they don't really look 
at 
> context.  Instead, they basically do word-for-word substitution.
> Anyway, I've read the Castillian Spanish translations of books 1 and
> 2 
> and they are just awful.  Things are switched around and left out, 
> most of the names and titles and places are still in English, and 
> there's tons of typos.  Dedaleus Diggle is spelled three different 
> ways within a span of 50 or so pages!
> One thing that I think is interesting, however, is how they change
> Tom 
> Riddle's name.  If you recall, he writes out TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE and 
> rearranges it to spell I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.  In Spanish, he is TOM 
> SORVOLO RYDDLE so that when rearranged, it spells SOY LORD 
VOLDEMORT. 
> How do other languages do this passage?  I would be interested to
> find 
> out.
> ~Kaitlin

I've read all the books in English (UK ed.) and I just read SS in 
Danish. I've actually only found one thing that really ticked me off: 
The phoenix feather in Harrys wand is translated into a chimaera-
horn!!! First of all there is absolutely NO reason for this, the word 
phoenix does exists in the Danish language. And second it ruins the 
plot later on. I spoke to a friend who has the Danish editions of all 
the books, and in GoF it says that it's a phoenix feather - go 
figure. (LOL imagining the translator dicovering the mistake).
Other than that the "mistakes" have to do with words or phrases that 
do not translate at all. Diagon Alley has become Diagonal Street, and 
it doesn't really matter, because the play on word can't be 
translated anyway.

Christine