French Derivatives & Translation Issues

[mingarooni]

No: HPFGUIDX 40504

(disclaimer:) I'm a native English speaker but I have read all the
books in French as well, as I studied French at University and love
reading in it.

It's very strange reading Hermione say in French that the Beauxbatons
kids must be French! Interstingly Harry asks Ron in the French SS
about the house cup and what a prefect, clearly so that French readers
get a bit of background into things which are well known in English
schools. I'd agree that the translations can be lacking a bit in
'flavour' due to the wordplays that just don't work unless they're in
English so have been left out, or little descriptions which have been
left out here and there of the French translation. Also, Hagrid and
Karkaroff are not given accents in the French translation, but Madame
Maxime is! can you imagine Hagrid speaking in normal English???

On the translation of character names, Voldemort stays the same in the
French of course, but many characters have their names translated for
meaning, Snape becomes Rogue, Filch becomes Rusard, Crouch becomes
Croupton, etc. Hooch becomes Bibine, which is intersting because
Bibine in French is a bad quality alcoholic drink! (Unless of course
Hooch means the same in English and, being Australian, I don't know
the slang, forgive me if this is well-known as I haven't researched
it).

The translation of Hogwarts (Poudlard) is particularly interesting
because I originally thought it had nothing to do with the English
version, but pou de lard means lice of bacon which is sort of like
hog's warts! Hogsmeade, (Pré-au-Lard) means meadow at the bacon,
like hog's meadow. I find it interesting to see the names in the books
from a different language's point of view, if you like.

I'd be interested to know how much input J.K. Rowling has into how her
character names are translated, or whether the translator does what he
or she likes.

links:
http://www.cyance.be/
has a program that gives you many of the translations between the
English and French versions of the book.

http://www.harrypotter.gallimard-jeunesse.fr/Pages
/Presse/Presse08.html
Is an interview with the French translator of the books, which talks
about what the translation of Muggle means. probably not much use to
you but you could try putting it through <a
href="http://babelfish.altavista.com">bablefish</a> i guess :)

Sorry if I've bored anyone to death there.

Belinda

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Mariuca Mihalache" <sanda at f...> wrote:
> 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!
>