[HPforGrownups] Translation / French

[rosie]

No: HPFGUIDX 40978

BBOY_MN said:

"...and yes, I am aware that I am still being a jerk about this, but
peoples names are never translated."

I'm not by any means a native French speaker (I've done a GCSE, that's it), so I'm probably missing the associations a French-speaking person would get from some of the names... but some of them still continue to puzzle me.

For example, "Muggle" in the French version is "Moldu(e)". You remember in CoS when Harry is at the Weasley's, and the WWN announces the popular songstress "Celestina Warbeck"? In the French version, she becomes "Celestina Moldubeck" - that is, Celestina Mugglebeck. Now, Warbeck to me sounds a bit like Warlock, and therefore more of a magical name... which Moldubeck seems to be the opposite of. This really puzzled me... can anyone shed some light?

I do agree that some of the name changes are a bit silly. For example, with Dumbledore, I think JKR said that she imagined him going round humming. Dumbledore sounds to me like a "hummy" sort of name because of the "Dum". Does anyone who speaks another language have any input about whether they would have thought "Dumbledore" was a "hummy" name in their language? Because "hum" is (I think) pretty onomatopoeic, but that might be just from my percep tion as a native English speaker. But I agree that his name being rendered as "Silencio" (if I got that right) in (I think) Spanish was pretty stupid. Unless "silence" has other connotations in Spanish, it seems like the very opposite of a hummy, music-loving man.

Incidentally, can any French speakers help me understand why Fawkes becomes Fumseck? Is that just the name in a French way, or does it mean something different? Feel free to email me off list if you can help as I don't want to go O.T. 

What do people think about this as another example: even though Hogwarts doesn't really have a meaning in English ( I think JKR said that it was the name of a lily she saw, but she forgot where it came from until a friend reminded her), it's translated to Poudlard in French, which I think someone said meant (roughly) Hog fat. Is this an example of overzealous translation? Does "Hogwarts"/"Poudlard" have connotations to anyone that I didn't notice, and that they think would be lost if the word was not translated?

Rosie


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