Translation and Cultural Issues

[agassizde]

No: HPFGUIDX 34177

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "racjom" <racjom at y...> wrote:
> delurks
> 
> I'm from Slovenia and I must say that I'm quite happy with our 
> translation. 

Well, then you're very lucky. Unfortunately, not all translations
are that good.

> What I really would like to know is how the German and Spanish 
> speaking members of this group liked their translations.

I have already mentioned a while ago that I *hate* the German 
translation of the books. Being a professional translator myself,
I know very well that it is not easy to translate a text full of
invented words. Not to speak of the cultural differences. But if I
have to pay for a product, I want it to be as good as possible, and
the German translations are full of mistakes (things that really
alter the sense), there are whole passages and even pages (!)
missing, and I have to repeat it again, the character of Sirius 
has been mangled in PoA to show someone a lot more calm and "nice" by
leaving out whole scenes where he gets really angry and by
deliberately changing some words. There have even been things added
to make up for the missing passages. This contradicts everything I
learned during my formation, a translator should always respect the
original. Apart from this, there's a lot of bad grammar and poor
word choice in the books. They are a huge success nevertheless, I
think because people either don't know better or don't care and 
prefer a bad translation to no translation at all.

Sorry for the rant, but I just had to say this.

Monika

--
Monika's HP fanfiction site, home of the German translation of 
"A Sirius Affair": http://sites.inka.de/darwin/fanfic