another play on words that slipped by me

[scaryfairymary at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 24890

I have to say that reading all the HP books and coming from the right 
hand side of the Atlantic, there are alot of plays on words that you 
don't notice until the third or so reading, but I do find it 
interesting that such an, in my opinion, obvious pun escapes the 
American audience.  It is kind of sad that the richness of the text 
gets somewhat diluted in the translation (maybe there should be 
footnotes included in the American edition?)


-- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Steve Vander Ark" <vderark at b...> wrote:
> I was reading through a dictionary of British slang the other day 
and 
> noticed that the term "fairy lights" means what we Yanks 
> call "christmas lights." That means, if I understand correctly, the 
> strings of colored lights we put on our houses and trees during the 
> holiday season. So now, not only do I understand the password that 
> the Fat Lady used to get into Gryffindor, but I also understand 
that 
> play on words when Flitwick puts up lights in his room and they 
turn 
> out to be real live fairies. REAL fairy lights!
> 
> Makes me wonder how much else I'm missing because I was born on the 
> left side of the Atlantic. And how much gets lost in translation 
for 
> other countries!
> 
> Now I have to go add this to the Strictly British page of the 
Lexicon!
> 
> Steve Vander Ark
> The Harry Potter Lexicon
> http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon