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Harry Potter in French, German, Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5873 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 72 01 November 2009 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Welcome to a wonderful experiment!
I'm really psyched about my new project to read the first Harry Potter book in three languages. 
I've never read the book in English so this is going to be fun. I have no system or method for how I'm going to read these books, nor do I have a idea of when I'm going to finish, I just thought I'd play it by ear. German: German is my best language. There's always a lot of room for improvement, of course. I'm using German to help guide me through the French translation. French: My weakest and newest language. I've only been through half of "Assimil, Französisch Ohne Mühe". I've only done a modicum of grammar, mostly article and noun declinations. (Yes, I'll be doing some grammar work on the side!) Japanese: My "middle" language. I've been studying Japanese on my own for a long time and don't really have much of a handle on it because the time I spend with it is little and far between. The vocabulary will be hard but other than that I'm anxious to see how well I can understand the translation. So here goes: HARRY POTTER und der Stein der Weisen à l'école des sorciers と賢者の石 Last Sunday I started by comparing the German with the French, but after an hour I put the French down and read all the way to page 99, "Abreise von Gleis neundreiviertel". (I couldn't help it...) I've been looking up most of the French words that aren't familiar to me (that would be most of them) so it's taking me a long time to get through the first chapter, "le survivant". I just got my Japanese copy yesterday (used but what a gorgeous hardcover!) and I've only begun reading the first page of 生き残った男の子. "社長" reminded me what "dirigeait" means. (small leap of pride) Other than that I'm really busy with definitions and there's not much to report. I've had fun doing comparisons. quoi que ce de mystéｒｉｅｕｘ 不思議な出来事 (I cut out the "soit" in French in making these.) Both mean "something mysterious" or "a secret affair" (Jim Breen's definition of the Japanese) A new French phrase "to lose time with something" (I guess) Ils n'avaient pas de temps à perdre avec des sornettes. They would never waste time with such nonsense. cool! A new German verb for me, "verstricken". I understand it from the context but I'll look it up anyway... Ah-ha. "ensnare" That's about all the time I have for today. I'll be back next Sunday. Hopefully I'll be off the first page of 生き残った男の子 / "le survivant" by that time! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5635 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 72 01 November 2009 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting project, reading the same novel in three foreign languages. Must be fun to compare the versions. I wish you good luck for this endeavour!
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5873 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 3 of 72 05 November 2009 at 11:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not supposed to be here. I only have 45 minutes on the computer and I wanted to spend it with Anki, but it's more fun to go over my notes and compare the first chapter.
Something really interesting is 嗅ぎつけられることだった。 That's かぎ. It means "to get wind of something". The French wasn't so much fun because it just doesn't resonnate with me yet (I know so little), but I did locate the same portion of text, and even if didn't understand much of it, "découvre" is one of my Assimil words. The German is easier to compare with. (That's my translator help.) "und dass es jemand aufdecken könnte, war ihre größte Sorge." Easy. ooo. Let's compare "to wake up". That's easy. 目を覚ます s'éveillèrent (don't really know the plain form. I'm assuming this is Imparfait) die Augen aufschlagen This is also a good one: ありくれたのからネクタイ cravate la plus sinistre langweiligste Krawatte How about "good-for-nothing husband" bon à rien de mari ろくでなじ夫も Nichtsnutz von einem Mann he-he. So many words, so little time. I have to go pick up my daughter. I really hope to have time to read tonight after I get home from work. EDIT: Oh, and thanks for the post, Fasulye (^_^) Edited by Sunja on 05 November 2009 at 11:36am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5774 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 4 of 72 05 November 2009 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm currently on page 330 of book 4 in German, and I've read the first three in German already. I also listened to the audiobooks, which was quite fun.
One thing I found was that I enjoyed them more when I limited my use of the dictionary while reading. What I tend to do is use a highlighter to pick maybe 2 or 3 words from each page that I want to know, and then I go back later after I'm done reading and gather up some of those highlighted words. I also try not to highlight a word until I've seen it more than once, just to eliminate some of the really rare ones. When I do this, I find that I understand more of the story, and it's more enjoyable to read. If I spend too much time looking up words while I'm reading, then it interrupts the flow. you might also be interested in this site where japanese, chinese, and vietnamese harry potter translations are compared. http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/index.html 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5873 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 5 of 72 05 November 2009 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hi doviende!
oh yeah, that's a great site. I can't wait to make use of it. (I'm not that far along) I'm trying to stifle the urge to jump to the snake part, although I trust the Japanese translation is more accurate than the one from the Chinese People's Literature Publishing House as the author of the site suggests. (He reports that the snake says "I'm from Brazil", when it actually says "Brazil, here I come" giving the reader the faulty impression that the snake has already been there.) I can't wait to check out that part in my book -- o(^^o)(o^^)o *anticipation* I remember reading about your approach in one of your other posts and I think it's a good idea. I've started reading the French without looking everything up. French is close to English and German. Japanese is a harder nut to crack. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| -Kupo- Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5855 days ago 84 posts - 84 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Russian | Message 6 of 72 05 November 2009 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am going to look forward to reading this log.
Can I enquire on where you got the Japanese Harry Potter from? I have been looking for them in a reasonable price bracket for a while and cannot find anything cheaper than 30UK pounds. I have the Harry Potter books in English, German and Russian so will enjoy reading your comparisons of some other versions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mistral Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5717 days ago 160 posts - 179 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, German | Message 7 of 72 06 November 2009 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Kupo:
It costs around 2000yen in Japan so it's like 13 pounds. You can also buy an used one for even less than that. Check japanese amazon's page. @Sunja: How many kanji do you know? Do you have to check them often? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5873 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 72 06 November 2009 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hi Kupo! As Mistral said you can find it at Amazon.jp, but I prefer beNippon. I just like the service I get with them and they found me a really beautiful used copy. I did a Product request for the book (included the ISBN number which I got at Amazon.jp) and I got a response within a few days. it ended up costing me only about 3 Euros! --- with that price I was able to afford the "good" shipping. ^^
Hi Mistral. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. I'm not that exposed to the language in my daily life so it's a never-ending battle to keep up. I'm kind of in a "one step forward and two steps backward" phase right now so I'm basically throwing myself at this book because I really need exposure. For what it's worth in general: before I bought this book I asked at thejapanesepage.com if 2,000 kanji would be sufficient to read Harry Potter and I was told that it's not so much a question of "how many kanji" as it is a question of vocabulary. Now that I see the book I have to agree --- what with all the owls, magic spells, mythical figures and such ^^... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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