Harry Potter in translation

The "Harry Potter" series of fantasy novels by J. K. Rowling books have become some of the most widely-read works of children's literature in history, with readers of all ages and in many countries. Worldwide sales of "Harry Potter" books are estimated at over 300 million copies. [ [http://www.contemporarywriters.com/ ContemporaryWriters.com] . [http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth03D22J591912635584 "J. K. Rowling"] . Accessed 23 September 2006. ] As such, some or all of the books have been translated from the original English into other languages.

Translation process

For an authorised translation, the publisher must first negotiate and sign a contract with the authors' agents, the Christopher Little Literary Agency [ [http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/links_cl.cfm J. K. Rowling Official Site ] ] . A full list of authorised publishers can be read on J. K. Rowling’s website [ [http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/links_publishers.cfm J. K. Rowling Official Site ] ] . The publishers select translators locally.

Translators were not granted access to the books before their official release date in English, hence translation could only start after the English editions had been published, creating a lag of several months before the translations were made available. This necessary delay has boosted the sales of English language editions of the books to impatient fans, in countries where English is not the first language. Such was the clamour to read the fifth book that its English language edition became the first English-language book ever to top the bookseller list in France. [cite news
url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_3036000/3036350.stm
publisher=BBC
title=OOTP is best seller in France - in English!
date=1 July 2003] In Italy, impatient Potter fans organised "Operation Feather", deluging the publisher Salani with feathers (reminiscent of Hogwarts' messenger owls) to demand expedited publication for the Italian translation of the seventh and final book in the series. [ [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/children/article2645098.ece Who won the race to translate ‘Harry Potter'? review | Children's Books - Times Online ] ]

Another result of the huge public demand for instant translations of the books is the proliferation of "pirate" translations. Unauthorised translations can often be produced much faster than official translations, for several reasons: quality can be compromised, and less time is spent on editing and proofreading; the translation can be produced as a collaborative process, with several people working in parallel on different sections of the book; pirate translations can be published online, eliminating the time spent on printing and distributing official hard copies. This makes it very tempting to engage in a pirate translation, rather than wait several months for an authorised translation to be issued. However, for the very same reasons stated above, pirate translations are usually inferior to the official translations.

The high profile and demand for a high-quality local translation means that a great deal of care is often taken in the task. In some countries such as Italy, the first book was revised by the publishers and issued in an updated edition, in response to feedback from readers. In countries such as China and Portugal, the translation is conducted by a group of translators working together to save time. Some of the translators hired to work on the books were quite well known before their work on Harry Potter, such as Viktor Golyshev, who oversaw the Russian translation of the series' fifth book. Golyshev was previously best known for translating William Faulkner and George Orwell [cite web|title=Translating Harry — Part I: The Language of Magic|author=Steven Goldstein|url=http://www.globalbydesign.com/resources/articles/translating_harry_potter_part1.html|work=GlobalByDesign|year=2004|accessdate = 2007-05-09] and was known to snub the Harry Potter books in interviews and refer to them as inferior literature. The Turkish translation of books two to five was undertaken by Sevin Okyay, a popular literary critic and cultural commentator. [cite web|title=Not lost in translation: Harry Potter in Turkish|author=EMRAH GÜLER|url=http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=29054|year=2005|accessdate = 2007-05-09]

List of authorised translations by language

The original British English versions of the book were published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury. Authorised editions exist in the following languages (including the original):

edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: literally Harry Potter and the Prince of Dual Blood]

Not listed in this table is the long-planned translation into Scots Gaelic; initially scheduled for release in December 2006, it has been indefinitely delayed. [ [http://www.hpana.com/news.17417.html News: Potter translated to Scots Gaelic ] ] [ [http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=3&id=1804362006 Gaelic Harry Potter wait - Scotsman.com News ] ]

Some translations, such those to the extinct Latin and Ancient Greek languages, were done as academic exercises, to stimulate interest in the languages and to provide students of those languages with modern reading texts. The Ancient Greek version, according to the translator, is the longest text written in that language since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD, [ [http://playalicious.com/reference/news/greek_harry.html Greek Harry] Accessed 25 November 2006] and took one year to complete.

Note that in some countries, such as Spain and India, the book has been translated into several local languages (see section on publishers); sometimes the book has been translated into two different dialects of the same language in two different countries (for example, separate Portuguese versions for Brazil and for Portugal).

Unauthorised translations

From the first book in the series onwards, individuals have illegally produced unauthorized "pirate" translations of the novels, some of which have been released far ahead of the official translation in some languages.http://msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/docs/nytimes/2003-07-14_nytimes_h_potter.pdf] One notable example occurred in Venezuela in 2003, when an illegal translation of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, appeared soon after the release of the English version and five months before the scheduled release of the Spanish translation. The pirate translation was apparently so bad that the translator added messages, including "Here comes something that I'm unable to translate, sorry," and "I'm sorry, I didn't understand what that meant" in some sections. Two people were arrested in connection with the pirated version. [cite news
title = Potter Pirate Sorry for Mistakes
publisher = BBC News
date = Sept 3, 2003
url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3079032.stm
access date = 2007-02-18 ]

Another notable example was an internet fan translation community, "Harry auf Deutsch", formed to translate the Harry Potter books into German more rapidly [ [http://www.harry-auf-deutsch.de/ Harry auf Deutsch :: Projekt-Übersicht der Harry Potter Übersetzung(en) ] ] . After being prevented by the German publisher from openly releasing their translations, they converted their project a community site which (1) translates the books for the enjoyment of their own members (thus avoiding copyright issues, apparently)Fact|date=February 2007, (2) translates fan fiction, (3) discusses discrepancies in the official translations, and (4) creates their own lexicon.Fact|date=February 2007

The agents representing J. K. Rowling have stated in the past that they cannot and do not intend to prevent individuals from translating Rowling's books for their own personal enjoyment, as long as the results are not made available to the general public.

In some countries, there have been no authorised translations into the local language, but translations not sanctioned by J. K. Rowling have been prepared and published. Such is the case, for example, in Sri Lanka, where the books have been unofficially translated into Sinhala and possibly into Tamil. [cite web|title=Harry Potter to fly into Sri Lanka under tight security|author=Dilshani Samaraweera|work=Lanka Business Online|url=http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?newsID=1862492683&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=11|year=2005 |accessdate = 2007-06-05]

In Iran, several unauthorised translations of the Harry Potter books exist side by side. According to one source, there may be as many as 16 Persian translations in existence concurrently [http://www.payvand.com/news/08/may/1220.html] . Iran is not a member of the Universal Copyright Convention, so publishers are not prosecuted for publishing foreign books without respecting copyright or paying royalties. [cite web|title=Iran's Potter fans join frenzy over wizard's fate
author=AFP|work=Middle East Times|url=http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070721-091316-1672r|year=2007|accessdate = 2007-07-21] .

Fake translations

Whereas "pirate translations" are unauthorised translations of true Harry Potter books, "fake translations" have also appeared, which are published pastiches or fanfics that a foreign publisher has tried to pass off as the translation of the real book by Rowling. There have been several such books, the most famous of which is probably "Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon" which was written and published in China in 2002, prior to the release of the fifth book in Rowling's series, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".

Other fake Harry Potter books written in Chinese include " [http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/miscellaneous/ciwawa.html Harry Potter and the Porcelain Doll] " (哈利・波特与瓷娃娃 or Hālì Bōtè yǔ Cíwáwa), "Harry Potter and the Golden Turtle", and "Harry Potter and the Crystal Vase". [Leifer, Andrew. [http://pwr.stanford.edu/publications/Boothe_0304/PWR%20Leifer.pdf "Harry Potter and the Battle of the International Copyright Law"] , Stanford University Boothe Prize, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.] In August 2007, "The New York Times" noted that the publication of Rowling's "Deathly Hallows" had inspired "a surge of peculiarly Chinese imitations," and included [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/opinion/10potter.html plot synopses and excerpts] from a number of derivative works, among them "Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" and "Harry Potter and the Big Funnel". [Op-Ed Contributors. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/opinion/10potter.html "Memo to the Dept. of Magical Copyright Enforcement"] , The New York Times, 2007-08-10. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.] In Bengali, "Harry Potter in Calcutta" ("Harry Potter Kolkataye"), written by Uttam Ghosh, has appeared. [http://mailgate.supereva.com/rec/rec.arts.movies.local.indian/msg18539.html]

Americanisation as translation

The differences between the British and American editions of the books have sometimes been referred to as "translation" into American English. The most noted example of this is the difference in the titles of the first book in the series: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in the UK, versus "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in the US. A comprehensive list of differences between the American and British editions of the books was collated at the Harry Potter Lexicon website, here: [ [http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/cs/differences-cs.html HPL: Differences: CS ] ] Whether these changes are enough to count as actual translation ultimately depends on one's definition of translation. The changes are mostly simple lexical switches to reflect the different dialects: an American would still have very little problem reading the British edition, and vice versa. Other changes cannot be explained as simple lexical adaptations, but may be an attempt to adapt the text culturally to a different market - for example, the addition of a sentence describing Dean Thomas as black - or may even have entered the text as publishers' corrections (or failure to incorporate agreed corrections). Changes of this sort are common when adapting "any" text from British to American editions and vice versa [ [http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/potter.html FAST-US-1 Intro to American English Reference File ] ] , but in the case of the Harry Potter books, this standard practice has occasionally drawn fire [cite news
last = Gleick
first = Peter H.
title = Harry Potter, Minus a Certain Flavour
publisher = New York Times
date = 10 July 2000
url = http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/23/specials/rowling-gleick.html
accessdate = 2007-01-22 ] . In an Associated Press interview, Rowling described how the alterations to the American editions came about:

"Rowling pretended to bang her head against the sofa in mock frustration. "SO much has been made of that," she groans, noting that it was only done where words had been used that really meant something very different to Americans. Her American editor pointed out that the word jumper — British for pullover sweater — means a kind of dress in American. She had had no idea. "He asked, 'Can we change it to sweater,' which is just as British?" That was fine with Rowling." [cite news
last = Woods
first = Audrey
title = Success Stuns Harry Potter Author
publisher = Associated Press
date = 6 July 2000]

Publisher Arthur Levine of Scholastic explained the changes in an interview in The New Yorker:

"I wasn't trying to, quote, "Americanize" them... What I was trying to do is translate, which I think is different. I wanted to make sure that an American kid reading the book would have the same literary experience that a British kid would have." [cite news
last = Radosh
first = Daniel
title = Why American kids don't consider Harry Potter an insufferable prig
publisher = The New Yorker
date = 20 September 1999]

The same article, however, points out that some British dialect was retained in the books, and in some cases certain phrases were replaced with more stereotypical British phrases, such as "spanking good" for "cracking".

Americanisation of books is standard practice in the publishing business, and is not normally considered translation. No individual translator or editor is credited with the Americanisation of the Harry Potter books.

Issues in translation

As with many texts, the "Harry Potter" series presents some special challenges to translators:

Culture

The cultural environment of the book is decidedly British. The stories follow a familiar theme in British children's books, that of adventures at boarding school, and many of the cultural nuances will be unfamiliar to readers in translation. Such things require careful and creative translating.

Invented words and proper nouns

Rowling invented several words and phrases in the books such as spells, incantations, magical words, items, and place names. Many of the spells are drawn from or inspired by Latin, and have a certain resonance with English speakers. For example, "priori incantatem" (a spell which causes the last spells performed by a wand to be reproduced in reverse order) would be familiar to many English-speaking readers as the words "prior" (previous) and "incantation" (spell, charm). To create a similar effect in the Hindi version, the Sanskrit language, typical in mantras, has been used for the spells. Some translators have created new words themselves, others have resorted to transliteration.

Names such as "Knockturn Alley" and the "Pensieve" are extremely difficult to translate. The latter is a magical bowl into which memories and thoughts can be placed and examined at leisure, and is a portmanteau of two words: "pensive", meaning "musingly or dreamily thoughtful", and "sieve", a type of bowl with perforations through which fine particles of a substance (such as flour) may be passed to separate them from coarser ones. The name Knockturn Alley, an unsavoury area leading off Diagon Alley (the place where London's magic market is located), suggests something beaten up or twisted, and is also semi-homophonous with "nocturnally", suggesting darkness and, by extension, evil. Translators must use creativity and sensitivity in rendering such names, and some are more successful than others. If the words are simply transliterated, the shades of meaning are lost; but when new word-games are invented, they can end up sounding quite different from the original, and often reflect the translator's personal interpretation and preferences. For instance, the Turkish version of "Pensieve" is "Düsünseli", which is a portmanteau of the words "Düsünmek" (to think, to imagine) and "sel" (a flood of water); the German version of "Pensieve" is "Denkarium" with "denken" meaning "to think" and aquarium the word could be something like "thinkarium"; the Swedish version of "Pensieve" is "Minnessåll" which means "Memory's Sieve". The Hebrew version actually achieves a similar effect to the English in its translation of Pensieve; "Pensieve" is הגיגית ("Hagigit"), which is a combination of the word הגיג ("hagig") meaning "thought", and the word גיגית ("gigit") meaning "tub". The Spanish version of "Death Eaters" is "mortífagos", from Latin "morti" (death) and "fagos" (eat); the Swedish version of "Death Eaters" is "Dödsätare" and is a working direct translation of "Death Eaters".

Anagrams such as that of Tom Riddle's name that appears in the second book also do not make the transition easily into other languages. Translators have sometimes altered the names in the book in order to make the anagram work in that language. Sometimes translators manage to alter only one part of the name: Tom Riddle's middle name of Marvolo was changed to "Vandrolo" in the Hebrew edition, to "Marvoldo" in Turkish, to "Vorlost" in German, to "Sorvolo" in Spanish, to "Marvoloso" in Slovak and to "Orvoloson" in Italian. In other languages, translators replaced the name entirely for the sake of preserving the anagram: in Romanian the full name of Voldemort is "Tomas Dorlent Cruplud" an anagram for "Sunt lordul Cap-de-Mort", which means "I am lord Cap-de-Mort", (Cap-de-Mort means "Head of a Dead"); in French, Riddle's full name becomes "Tom Elvis Jedusor" an anagram of "Je suis Voldemort"; in Norwegian his name becomes "Tom Dredolo Venster, an anagram of "Voldemort den store", which means "Voldemort the Great" in English; Dutch his name becomes "Marten Asmodom Vilijn", an anagram of "Mijn naam is Voldemort" (My name is Voldemort); in Czech, his name is "Tom Rojvol Raddle", an anagram of "Já, Lord Voldemort" (I, Lord Voldemort); in Icelandic his name becomes "Trevor Delgome", an anagram of "Ég er Voldemort" (I am Voldemort); in Swedish the name becomes "Tom Gus Mervolo Dolder", an anagram of "Ego sum Lord Voldemort", where "ego sum" is Latin, not Swedish, for "I am". In Finnish his name is Tom Lomen Valedro (Ma olen Voldemort), in Hungarian the name is "Tom Rowle Denem", which is the anagram of "Nevem Voldemort" - the 'w' in the name becomes two 'v's (which in fact caused a name collision with the Death Eather Thorfinn Rowle who first appears in the seventh book and is not related to Voldemort thus in the Hungarian translation his family name was altered to Rovel). These changes to the name created problems in later books: Tom Riddle should share his given name with Tom the bartender, but this is not the case in all translations. Another notable trivia here is the translation of 'The Mirror of Erised'. In English it sounds similar with the word 'erased'. In German language it's called 'Der Spiegel Nerhegeb'. The words were both created by reading the word 'desire', i.e. the German word 'Begehren' from the right. Curious here is, that 'Nerhegeb' sounds like 'Nie her geb`' which would mean 'never give away'. [Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen]

Plot points

In some cases, English-speaking fans have sought clues to the story's mysteries by examining the way certain parts of the books have been translated in foreign editions. A case in point is the identity of a character mentioned by initials only in the book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The English initials R.A.B. could have belonged to several minor characters from the books, but variations on the initials in other languages gave evidence to the true identity of the mystery character: in the Dutch edition of the book R.A.B. was translated into R.A.Z., 'zwart' being Dutch for 'black'; in the Norwegian edition, R.A.B. translates to 'R.A.S.', "svart" being Norwegian for 'black'; and in the Finnish edition the initials were R.A.M., 'musta' being Finnish for 'black'. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, the identity of R.A.B. was resolved, and indeed his last name was Black.

Similarly, the title for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix did not make it obvious whether Order referred to a group of people or to a directive. The information that it was a group of people was then determined by viewing the title in other languages.The same goes for "the Carrows", who in some translations was translated as "the siblings Carrow" and hence were not a married couple, later Rowling revealed that it was the siblings Alecto and Amycus that were the Carrows.

Rowling released an alternative title for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" for use by translators finding difficulty translating its meaning. The alternative title (in English) is Harry Potter and the Relics of Death. [ [http://www.panorstedt.se/templates/Tiden/News.aspx?id=46232 Official announcment by Swedish publisher Tidan (Swedish language)] ] [ [http://blogs.nypost.com/potter/archives/2007/06/harry_potter_an.html Harry Potter and the Deathly Whats?] ]

ee also

* List of fictional books within the Harry Potter series
* Parodies of Harry Potter
* Harry Potter influences and analogues

References

External links

* Article from "Translorial", [http://bytelevel.com/global/translating_harry_potter.html Part I] , [http://bytelevel.com/global/translating_harry_potter_2.html Part II]
* [http://www.iti.org.uk/pdfs/newPDF/HarryPotter.pdf The Sphinx's Song in 13 Languages]
* [http://home.hccnet.nl/h.kip/kaft/ international cover gallery]
* [http://www.m5p.com/~pravn/hp/langs/ Harry Potter name and word equivalents in many different languages]
* [http://www.eulenfeder.de/int/gbint.html database of Harry Potter terms and chapter titles in different languages]
* [http://home.hccnet.nl/h.kip/woordenboek/index.html Dictionary of Dutch Harry Potter terms]
* [http://home.online.no/~bjaas/potter/ Dictionary of Norwegian Harry Potter terms and names]
* [http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/index.html Harry Potter in Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese Translation]
* [http://www.harry-auf-deutsch.de/HaD/lexikon.php English - German Dictionary + Lexicon of Harry Potter terms and names]
* [http://www.crown.com.tw/harrypotter/english.asp Platform 9 3/4: Crown Publishing (Taiwan) site containing lists of names, books, spells, quidditch terms, etc. in Chinese and English]
* [http://www.cesnur.org/recens/potter_040.htm Article about American English "translation"]
* [http://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/releases/01-1214potter.html short article on translation differences in Harry Potter]
* [http://www2.rosenet.ne.jp/~chatnoir/harry/terms/1_3_a.htm Harry Potter terms in Japanese]
* [http://www.mo-productions.com/eng/ftmagazine.html Financial Times article]
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,,1999420,00.html article from The Guardian]
* [http://www.hp-esperanto.com/?lang=en Petition to help publish an Esperanto translation of Harry Potter]
* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829231.html Harry Potter fans line up to meet Hebrew translator at Jerusalem book fair]