Researchers at the University of Calgary have complied a one-of-a-kind collection of 70 translations of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" novels and have published selections from those translations online, reports the Vancouver Sun. Geared to educators, students and Potter-fans alike, the resource "will feature images from international dust jackets and audio files with selections from each of the 70 translations, including Afrikaans, Hindi, ancient Greek and Latin." Russian literature professor and the leader behind this project, Nicholas Zekulin, says:
"It's a work which presents real challenges for the translator," said Zekulin. "How do you translate 'quidditch'? Nobody can... The Ukrainian translation is interesting. They don't have (Hogwarts) school, they have an orphanage. And the reason is that in Ukrainian culture, the idea of a boarding school is completely unknown. The only thing they could conceive of as bringing children together was an orphanage."
That’s terrible, terrible, terrible. They had a Russian do the Ukrainian reading. You can tell because she says “Garry Potter” which is what you have to do in Russian because there is no “h” sound in Russian. But there is an “H” in Ukrainian (if I recall correctly, the g is a late add-in, so you can say words like “golf”) and my Ukrainian books all clearly show an h-symbol and not a g-symbol.
Common, UofC, Edmonton [home to a very large Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian population] is only 2 hours away by car. Couldn’t you have imported a Ukrainian-Canadian for the job? Now I am questioning every other translation they did. How many other major cultural faux-pas did they commit?
Wow, Jillians, that is definitely an incredible oversight. I’m pretty sure that Ukrainians make up one of the largest immigrant populations in Alberta? Calgary isn’t so far from Vegreville, home of the world’s largest Ukrainian Easter egg.
I’ve kind of started trying to collect foreign editions of the HP books – just when I’m travelling and can actually buy them from their country of origin. I have a Thai copy, a Hindi copy, U.S. (I’m Canadian), and French (that one was just from the French section of a bookstore). But seeing as I can’t actually read Hindi or Thai, it’s super cool to be able to hear a snippet. It makes me want to learn languages. Like, all of them. Actually, though, it makes me so happy that English is my first language – it’s weird to think that subtle (or not-so-subtle) differences in translation could change the entire feel of the series. Really interesting to think about, though.
I did my thesis on the Dutch and French translations of the nouns in philosopher’s stone and it is indeed a different feel in every language. You sort of get the impression all is narrated by fleur in the French version (though I guess most kids haven’t read the Enlish originals so wouldn’t really take notice) and so many names have been changed in Dutch…Dumbledore becomes ‘Perkamentus’ and Sirius Black became ‘Sirius Zwarts’, which must have been a stressful problem once ‘RAB’ showed up…:-)
Oh yeah, forgot a major one…How about ‘Tom Elvis Jedusor’ in French—> je suis Voldemort.
Not a bad translation considering jedusor is close to ‘jeu du sort’ = game of destiny, but marvolo as elvis? LOL. Still, the translators had no way of knowing what was coming next (nor the succes it would all end up having) , so I can imagine it was a great challenge.
Thats quite cool!