[HPforGrownups] French Derivatives & Translation Issues

[Mariuca Mihalache]

No: HPFGUIDX 40479

I have only read the books in the Romanian translation so far: many of the names were translated as well (probably for the readers to better grasp the clues about the characters' personality), including Voldemort and Malfoy.

Voldemort was rendered as "Capdemort", which, although bearing a resemblance of form to the original, has the (quite?) different meaning of "skull", litterally "head of a dead person".

Malfoy was translated with the equivalent of "badfaith" in Romanian.

While this may be justified for the reason I mentioned, I nevertheless think that the translations lack the "flavour" of the originals. I am a translator, too, and the way I'd have done it would have been to give the meanings in a footnote and preserve the original names.

I would be very interested to hear from non-native English speakers how other HP translations managed this kind of thing! If you think that would be too boring for the native speakers, please write to my personal address!

Mariuca


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