Harry Potter and the translator's nightmare

Accio Harry Potter translations!

Translating the Harry Potter books written by J.K. Rowling, in over 60 languages around the world, was not for the faint of heart or vocabulary.

Translators didn't have advanced copies of the books to get a headstart and these books could take months to adapt from English. They also had to be clever in their solutions because the books are filled with wordplays, invented words, puns, British culture references, riddles, and more.

The longest book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, at 870 pages was published June 21, 2003. The first translation of it was ready July 21, 2003. Translators had to work day and night to have them ready for eager readers. Even then, fans still banded together to create illegal translations of the series.

[nicoleee]

You know your book is popular when it is translated from english to english.

[shintapp]

In my country the translator simply gave up the "I am Voldemort" anagram and decided to just leave a footnote 😂

[lorenzsanjuan]

"Dumbledore asks calmly"

I wonder where warner bros. got their translation for this

[msdenise]

I’ll never get over Americans needing an American translation of an ENGLISH BOOK

[lounesz.]

In the French translation "Sorting Hat" is "Choixpeau". "Chapeau" means "hat" but he added "choix" which means "choice"
I always thought it was very clever ^^

[nickzardiashvili]

Harry Potter translators: Boy, this is more difficult than I thought.
Alice in Wonderland translators: Well, I have to rewrite an entire book.

[mariazapata]

I remember the a joke from a translator post saying something like '' If the book sell well, all the credits goes to the author. But if the book doesn't sell well, all the blamed goes to the translator " ouch.

[sxn]

As a translator I can tell you these problems are extremely wide-spread and far from unique to Harry Potter. So even if HP is a great example of the struggles translators face, other books have similar aspects. Espcially the "translating this from a culture to another"... that is literally an aspect of every single translation ever. Lastly: thanks for showing the hardships of translation, transaltors are way too often forgotten about and when we're not, we're being criticised. This made me happy :)

[daffo]

Meaning that every translated book you've read has been written twice, you're not just reading the original author but the translator's take on the original author. It makes me wonder how much we actually miss when not reading the original text. I have such huge respect for translators, they have such huge challenges when translating a book, trying to retain the original nuance of the book.

[joojoobat]

I never knew that Quidditch stood for the names of the balls O_O.

[SlimTakesYou]

In the Norwegian translation, all names, places, spells etc. (2000 names) have been translated into Norwegian. The translator, an expert in classic English, did not want Norwegian kids to miss out on the many puns and wordplays of the various names, so he made Norwegian equivalents

[petra]

In hungarian they changed Voldemort’s name to “Tom Denem” (for the anagram in chamber of secrets) and we can broke it down to “Tom de nem” which means “Tom but not” and i just find it brilliant considering his past and how he never wanted to be known as Tom

[TheJuhi]

The finnish translator even won an award for her excellent job at translating the books and you don't even mention her? smh...

[Dark_Aeon]

I’ve read the books both in polish and english and I must say that the translator did a FANTASTIC job translating the books. In each book he included a little dictionary at the end, thoroughly explaining origins of the english names and words created by Rowling and his thought process in translating them. I think he even contacted the author to get her approval on some stuff. His translations made the books easy to read and the dictionary was just additional info for the extra-curious. I used to love to read all the interesting details he’d included.

[Padfoot]

Imagine calling Voldemort "Romeo"?

[mindaraneras]

In Swedish "I am Lord Voldemort" is "Jag är Lord Voldemort". The ä was problematic so the translator changed the name to Tom Gus Mervolo Dolder, so that it could spell out "Ego sum Lord Voldemort", the latin phrase. Really clever if you ask me, especially since it still contains the pun (dold=hidden)!

[booksbyleynes]

In the German translation, they translated „Exploding Snap“ to „Exploding Snape“. 😂😂

[kaan]

In my country
"I AM LORD VOLDEMORT"
was supposed to be
"ADIM LORD VOLDEMORT"
which means the translator needed an extra "D" so she changed Tom Marvolo Riddle's name to Tom Marvoldo Riddle which was brilliant in my opinion

[GeaForce]

If Harry Potter was a transator's nightmare, Shakespeare was a translator's night terror

[ikweetgeennaam]

For the "Diagon Alley": In Dutch, they translated it to "Wegisweg". This is because the Dutch word 'weg' has two meanings: 'road' and 'gone'. So basically you can read it in several ways: the road is road, the road is gone, or gone is gone. I like it.