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Harry Potter in French, German, Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5785 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 9 of 72 06 November 2009 at 6:38pm | IP Logged |
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Everyone seems to make a big fuss about the magic words and the owl names, but I found it quite easy to ignore them. The biggest problem for me (reading the books in German) was my regular vocabulary skill. I don't think the Harry Potter books are any harder than any other books for that age-group. Compared to all the rest of the story line, the owls and magic spells make up a very very tiny percentage of the words.
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| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6718 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 72 06 November 2009 at 7:27pm | IP Logged |
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About Harry Potter in Translation
Translating the Magic of Harry Potter Comparison of the Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese versions About Harry Potter in Greek Interview with Welsh translator Guide to Using Harry Potter to Learn German Harry Potter in Translation Where to buy them 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5884 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 11 of 72 07 November 2009 at 12:05pm | IP Logged |
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I appreciate the comments. I have the feeling that this log is going to spark some interesting discussion!
I've been concentrating on the Japanese Harry Potter the past few days. I didn't get much time to read during the week. Today is a typical German November day: cold, drizzly, grey. A perfect day for reading. I'm still in the first chapter. I've been making note of some spots where the translation differs. It doesn't affect the meaning as far as I've been concerned, but it makes me have to stop and examine it, because as I've stated before, I don't have the English version. German's missing "Harold" I was reading a Japanese passage: 一度も会ったこともないし、ハービー という名だったかもしれない。 いやハロルドかも。 HEH?? What's ハロルド ??? I've never be sharp knowing all of the Japanese borrowed English words, and I'm always wary because it's easy to get the wrong impression of what they mean when they use them. I went straight to the German version: Er konnte auch "Harvey" heissen. He could just has well have been named "Harvey". Then I checked the French: Après tout, il s'appelait peut-être Harvey. Ou Harold. A-HA! "OR HAROLD" "Or Harold" isn't in the German version. I'm sure the translator thought the name "Harvey" made the thing humorful enough, without having to add that extra "Harold". Nonfamiliar German phrases/words causing me to look up a bunch of stuff: There was also a piece where I had to scrutinize the Japanese because the German wasn't quite clear to serve as a translation for the Japanese Mr. Dursely versuchte sich ganz wie immer zu geben なるべく as much as possible ふだん usually どうりに in accordance with ふるまおうとした behave as The English must be something like, "tried to behave the way he usually did". Birdwatcher Then there was the issue of a katakana word -- バードウォッチャー which looked longer and more complicated than usual stuck within a page of vertical Japanese text. I looked at the German, "Vogelkundler" -- not familiar with it. "témoignages" -- no help for me there. I googled the Japanese and I finally figured it out. I felt pretty silly that it's so simple -- "ba-doweoccha" -- and then again not so simple. I think the ウォ tripped me up. "Guy Fawke's Night" missing in the German version ガイ・フォークスの焚き火祭り really threw me for a loop. This is where the French actually did me some good. Peut-être s'agissait-il des feux de joie de la nuit du 5 novembre, bien que ce ne soit pas encore la saison. I put the date and the katakana together and figured it out. (Finding the word "bonfire" also clued me in.) It's interesting to note that while I don't expect many foreign speakers to know about Guy Fawke's Night, the Japanese translator chose to include it and Mr. Fritz didn't. Vielleicht haben die Leute zu früh Silvester gefeiert...! I think Mr. Fritz thought the text worked better with "Silvester" (New Year's) rather than readers being forced to ask, "Guy Fawkes Night -- what's that?". The time line in the story is certainly not affected by his alteration. I'd still like to give the Japanese translator 松岡佑子 a hand Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ. one of my penpals mentioned the translation was accurate. I have to take her word for it. I have to admit, so far it seems that Ms. Matsuoka has not left out anything from the original. Edited by Sunja on 07 November 2009 at 12:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6063 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 12 of 72 07 November 2009 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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Katakana words are pretty transparent once you figure out how to sound them out.
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| Elwing Tetraglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5307 days ago 43 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Swedish, Finnish*, English, French Studies: Norwegian | Message 13 of 72 08 November 2009 at 1:58am | IP Logged |
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Seems like an interesting project! I've read Harry Potters in three different languages but I never started comparing them in that much detail (since I was reading them mainly for the plot). I did find though, that in the Swedish version the names of the characters for example have not been translated but kept as they are in the original text. In the Finnish version many of the names with a meaning behind them (e.g. Snape, Hogwarts, Crookshanks) have been translated with about the same amount of meaning as the original name has so it gives the same impression.
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| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5884 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 14 of 72 08 November 2009 at 11:11am | IP Logged |
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Yukamina-san! Yes, some words are pretty easy. However, I don't have much experience speaking Japanese so the phonetics are lost on me sometimes. I could mispell "Fawkes" and it would read "Fox", because I don't elongate that sound properly enough.
Hi Elwig, someone could write a book on the choice of whether to make a transliteration of the names or to try to make the meaning stand out. I can imagine that many of these English word plays are lost in many languages... I was flipping through my book here.. and I notice in the chapter "The Sorting Hat" (Japanese puts the English title in small print under their title),....It looks like the Japanese have made transliterations of most of these names. I'd have to read it, but I can already see that they use スリサリン for "Slytherin" -- which is too bad. Such a great name. The word play is lost. German would not change the names -- they prefer to have the English -- even though the German language is equally as colorful as English in coming up with such wonderful word plays. On the other hand, their words might be so loaded with their own culture that it might confuse the reader. The German word for "griffen" is "Greif". There's a castle in my neighborhood called "Burg Greifenstein" (translated: "griffen" "stone"). This name already has a history so perhaps it would detract a bit from the story if the Germans made "Gryffindor" into "Greifenheim" oder "Greifensitz". It would be too "GERMAN" in their eyes. I think that's why none of the names are changed. What do you think? In other names, (according to my research because I haven't reached this point yet) The Japanese is used where a place name has to convey some kind of meaning to the reader. If it's a twisting, turning kind of dark place, they use their words for it. I plan to go into this as soon as I get there. I'm still struggling through the "set-up the story" conversation with McGonagall and Dumbledore in the beginning. It's a pretty dry section so I'll try to pick up speed..... Edited by Sunja on 08 November 2009 at 11:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5646 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 15 of 72 08 November 2009 at 12:17pm | IP Logged |
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I only have verry limited Harry Potter experience: I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in English, but not in German. So I can't compare two languages. I found the vocabulary of the book quite uncommon. I wanted to read the book because at that time there was a real Harry Potter hype in Germany and I wanted to be able to speak about it as well. My descision after my first Harry Potter book was not to read an other book of this series, because I am not a fan of horror stories, this became clear after only one book.
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 08 November 2009 at 12:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5884 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 16 of 72 08 November 2009 at 6:03pm | IP Logged |
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I finally got through the first chapter. To commemorate my advancement into
Ein Fenster verschwindet, 消えたグラス, Une vitre disparaît a picture of the J. chapter title page which nobody can read because my camera is so cheap.. 
if anyone is wondering what those faint scratchy lines are, no my 3-year-old did not scribble in my book. That's a drawing of the famous Brazilian boa constrictor, which says "Thanksss, Amigo". I'll get back to my reading. Oh, One last thing... "le survivant" is also finished in French. What took me three hours to read in Japanese I read in about 40 minutes in French. The Japanese vocabulary is indeed hard. I've marked up a few pages with notes. Some pages (the "good ones") only have about four kanji which I've marked. The "bad" pages -- the ones where I really had to mull through -- had about 10-17 words marked. once I'd been over German and Japanese -- the French turned out to be pretty easy. The only note that I made was "des Moldus", which is the French translation of "Muggle". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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