French Names (Padfoot)

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 40545

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "lupinesque" <lupinesque at y...> wrote:
> Alley wrote:
> 
> > I never knew that actual names were translated too. I find it 
> >interesting because we often have to search for meaning within 
> >words that may be striclty in English or have derivitives from 
other 
> >languages, or other (e.g. mythical) implications. To translate 
words 
> >that aren't necessarily crystal clear to begin with seems odd.

> I think the translators are right to work with the names for exactly 
> the reason that they do contain puns or allusions that are 
> important.  It is never possible to translate all such levels of 
> meaning, playing on English words as they do, but Patmol is an 
> example of the translator giving it a shot.


I've talked about this before. I have to disagree.

Names mean a lot. But what would you feel like if you opened 
Dostoyevsky, or Tolstoy, or Solzhenitsyn to discover that the 
translator had decided to make hidden meanings more clear by giving 
them all English names? No, that sort of stuff belongs in footnotes. I 
am firmly opposed to changing names, because while hidden meaning is 
preserved, something more important is lost: the English atmosphere, 
the realization that these are English characters, not French ones, 
living in England, not France. To give them French names is, I think, 
as dumb as it would be to introduce American slang into the American 
version.

Eileen