Meditations on Harry Potter translations

[Natalia A.Androsova]

To: Muireann Maguire
and all the SEELANGers

As to Russian translations of "Harry Potter", I absolutely agree there is 
lack on proper characters' names translation! One of my students made a 
research on the subject; there are 5 different translations of different 
voumes of "Harry Potter", and only one of them is more or less adequate 
considering names. Unfortunately, it's not the one published and widely 
known. But the main results of the research show quite clearly that the 
translator of "РОСМЭН" edition has no idea how to interpret "Sinister" or 
"Pomona", to say nothing about "Dumbledore"...
If the article we published after is of any interest to anybody, I'd be 
happy to send it to you!

Best regards,

Elena.


Elena Arkhipova,
PhD, MBA,
Vice-President
for Foreign Affairs,
Nevsky Institute of  Language and Culture
27 Bolshaya Raznochinnaya
St. Petersburg, 197110, Russia
tel./fax: +7 812 230 36 98
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Muireann Maguire" <mm504 at CAM.AC.UK>
To: <SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 1:31 PM
Subject: [SEELANGS] Meditations on Harry Potter translations


> Dear all,
>
> The mention of Harry Potter translations in Nola's post tempts me to 
> mention my own experience of reading Harry Potter in Russian translation 
> ('Garri Potter i dari smerti', if I recall correctly, is the Russian title 
> of the last book, 'HP and the Deathly Hallows'). I found the overall 
> quality of the translation to be more than adequate. I was disappointed, 
> however, by the hit-and-miss translation of characters' names: there 
> seemed to be no standard policy. Some were transliterated, some were 
> translated, others suffered the worst of both worlds. Harry's daffy friend 
> Luna Lovegood re-emerged as 'Polumna Lavgud' - a forename which retained 
> the goofy associations of her first name, while losing the mystical ones. 
> A certain lack of global knowledge, on the translators' part, was also 
> evident. I spent some time wondering who Симус (Simus), apparently a major 
> character, might be, before realizing that this was an endearingly inept 
> transliteration of Seamus [Finnegan], one of the good guys.
>
> I was also intrigued that 'Garri Potter i dari smerti' was translated by 
> three different people - I wonder how effective and amicable team 
> translation can be?
>
> Best
>
> Muireann
>>
>>
> -- 
> Dr Muireann Maguire        Jesus College, Cambridge
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