International book versions & character names

[porpentina_75]

No: HPFGUIDX 82051

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jwcpgh" <jwcpgh at y...> wrote:
> > <slytherin_jenn at y...> wrote:
> > > I just finished the Philosopher's Stone in Russian and I 
noticed 
> > that 
> > > some of the names were different. 
> 
> Clio:
> 
> >> If you look here   http://www.eulenfeder.de/int/gbint.html    
> > you will find a nice list of HP names and places and their 
> > translations in many languages.

Now Me:

Hi All,

I've read this and thought I'd post something about the issue of HP 
translations...This is my first post, so forgive me if it's not of 
interest!
Italian is my mother tongue, but I have been living in Ireland for 
many years and I've actually read all the HP books in English in the 
first place.  However I recently got hold of a copy of PS/SS in 
Italian and read it out of curiosity. 
I was appalled by the quality of the translation: 
the first problem is, predictably enough, the "free" translation of 
people's and places names. Even though in the Italian edition there 
is a foreword explicitly dealing with the way the translator worked 
on names, this doesn't change the fact that the choices she made are 
awful. From "Dumbledore", that has been interpreted as a variation 
of "dumb" and therefore translated "Silente" (= silent), to Oliver 
Wood (translated the equivalent of Oliver Stick!!!!). And this is 
just to make 2 simple examples.

After this, there are serious mistakes in actually understanding the 
meaning of certain sentences that have been translated in a 
completely wrong way, thus compromising the faithfulness to the 
original and the reader's understanding of what the hell is going on!

Thirdly and more generally, the nuances and details of JKR's writing 
have been nearly totally erased by very poor translating choices. I 
know that a translation is never going to be up to the original, but 
even I (not a translation expert in anyway!) could come up with 
better ways of translating certain expressions in Italian!

All this rant to come to 1 or 2 questions:
1- I wonder if JKR or Bloomsbury do actually check up on available HP 
translations and perhaps "evaluate them" and make sure they're up to 
a certain standard and so on.
2- Has anybody in the group come across another bad example of HP 
translation?
I'm thinking of collecting examples of HP translation "horrors"...

Thanks and apologies for the lengthy post!!!
Lui