Belinda says:

>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. 

Interesting that we've had a lot of talk about the differences between Brit/American versions and things needing to be changed for an American audience and this was not one of them. We don't have prefects here and generally wouldn't know what they were. I recently spent the fall semester in Bristol and so got to understand the British system much better but I still get a bit confused when it comes to how old people actually are in sixthform/a-levels (what would be the latter part of high school in the US). I don't think years/ages exactly correlate. When I was younger I was told that British kids had an "extra" year between high school and college. But it's not that simple really. I did understand prefect well enough in the context, though I'm not sure that would necessarily be THAT clear to an American audience in general. I would think the same of a French audience. But then again, I know a lot less about non-European Francophone school systems...

> 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).

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.
Also the thing about Madame Hooch I find really amusing. I feel like this could totally be way off base and I have no idea if this is an American or English or what item but there is also a cheap alcoholic beverage I have encoutered called Hooch. It's very sweet and lemony or orangey (at least the ones I've had). But I would never have thought of it as equating with HP on any level.

I hope that this has been on topic. I thought it was but apologize if it isn't.

Alley