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

[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*"