Translating Harry Potter.

[elwen]

This awesome article about translating the Harry Potter books was posted on japanese, and I wanted to share.

I can relate to a lot of the things they mentioned. Although it sounds hypocritical, I think the approach of adjusting the names is better for HP. I never thought about it before, but a lot of the names are subtly evocative of certain things, and that probably does change if you're in a language that uses different sounds. It's kind of like how they really did have to change most of the Pokémon's names, because a lot of them were onomatopoetic or punny. But of course, I would never change the names in anything I was translating.

Then there's the issue of literal translation vs. something the readers will understand, when it comes to folk songs and the like. With anime and manga, the issue probably comes up most with proverbs. I'm always amazed at how I, and a lot of other people on translation forums, apparently, can rattle off English equivalents to so many Japanese sayings. [Lately, I keep running into ja no michi wa hebi (literally: "snakes on the path of snakes", approximately), but everyone uses "set a thief to catch a thief". I don't even know what that means.]

But I'm sure glad I don't have to deal with any of the "uniquely" HP problems. This was probably my favorite line in the article:

Tom Marvolo Riddle may be an anagram of "I am Lord Voldemort"; but it's not an anagram of "Je suis Voldemort", so in France he's Tom Elvis Jedusor.

XD

And then there's the part about the initials RAB becoming RAZ when they changed Sirius' last name to Zwartz. :o

I guess it depends on the work whether you should translate the "spirit" or the words. I usually like things to be literalist, but I was really excited to hear about the Lord of the Rings translation and how they'd "translated" names like Strider and Gollum that have meaning beyond their individual syllables. Or maybe I just like them translating the "spirit" when the work was originally in English and I know what that "spirit" is, whereas I translate Japanese literally because I don't know the language well enough to even grasp the "spirit"? I mean, I can tell that, say, Ginban Kaleidoscope, Kouga Ninpou Chou, and Scrapped Princess are all written in different tones, but I'm sure there are lots of subtleties that fly over my head. For example, I thought I was getting along fine in comprehending Scrapped Princess, and then Yuuma turned to look at the forest and I was lost for two paragraphs of what I assume was description (and hopefully not exposition).

Comments

[snoflakes.livejournal.com]

I've actually heard of the RAB thing with numerous translations. For at least a few translations I've heard of where "Black" is translated into the color name in the language, the B in RAB changes to the match...best arguement for RAB being Regulus that I've heard :-)

Also, I would be curious if the names and spells with latin roots change in Japanese? I mean, I would assume you would not need to change it for any European country, but it would be terribly Euro-centric of me to assume all people in the world knew basic latin roots. So do you know what they do for those?

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I guess the question with the initials is whether the translators are doing it because they think it's Regulus, or whether someone is telling them to do it.

Because Japanese has a fairly decent and clear system for phonetically spelling foreign words, I'd guess they just leave the spell names as is. This is in contrast to Chinese where you can't just take sounds to approximate something -- each of those sounds still has to be a Chiense word that means something. So Sacramento isn't just "san kwai man to", it's also "three plain buns". :P

I probably shouldn't be speculating, but since Japan doesn't get the books until maybe a year after the English release, I think a lot of fans read the English version first, especially since learning English is compulsory in Japan. (Not that that means they learn it to any degree of proficiency.) So there's probably less linguistic/cultural pressure to "localize" things. Maybe. Like I said, all wild speculation.

If I remember next time I'm at the Japanese bookstore, I'll check the spells, though, because now I'm kind of curious, too.

[snoflakes.livejournal.com]

I guess the question with the initials is whether the translators are doing it because they think it's Regulus, or whether someone is telling them to do it.

I read an article at some point that says JK Rowling tells them certain amounts of information, because she can't let them guess, otherwise it would screw up the future novels if it isn't Regulus for instance. I also remember she had to specify certain characters mentioned in passing and if they are male/female, due to specific pronoun use and other things in different languages. I think I found the article on mugglenet, but it was awhile ago.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Iiiinteresting.

OMG, it's totally Regulus! :O :P

I guess that's one of the problems when you translate something that's ongoing, or translate before personally reading the entirety of something... I guess it happens to me with manga, too. When you find out something later, it's like, "Oh crap, all the previous chapters were wrong and misleading!"

[nendil.livejournal.com]

The Japanese spells, at least in the first two books, are translated like "ルモス--光よ！" ("LUMOS - light!") which is an amazingly awesome method. Meanwhile the Chinese books just translate them phonetically. But I have a lot of rants about the clumsiness of the Chinese versions.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

That is an awesome method. How did they do the ones that are not so apparent in English either, namely alohomora?

[nendil.livejournal.com]

The ones I have:
Aparecium - Araware yo
Expelliarmus - Buki yo sare
Finite Incantatem - Jumon yo oware
Lumos - Hikari yo
Obliviate - Wasure yo
Rictusempra - Warai tsuzuke yo
Serpensortia - Hebi ide yo
Tarantellegra - Odore
And I believe Wingardium Leviosa was just phonetic.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder whether they actually sound cool to native speakers, or if I have been too much taken in by the impressive effect of the e-column imperative conjugation. ^^;;

I guess some of them do start to sound silly, especially rictusempra.

Okay, now I have that scene from the movies stuck in my head. "Wingardrium levioSA! *kaboom*"