{"id":2274,"date":"2020-01-30T13:34:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T12:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/blog\/harry-potter-translations-fascinating-facts\/"},"modified":"2024-01-23T12:25:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T11:25:12","slug":"harry-potter-translations-fascinating-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eurotrad.com\/en\/magazine\/harry-potter-translations-fascinating-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Translating Harry Potter: Fascinating Facts and Faults"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Translating Harry Potter is just about as\u00a0<strong>difficult<\/strong><strong>\u00a0as literary translation gets<\/strong>, not only due to the book and film series\u2019<strong>\u00a0global success<\/strong>, but also to the fact that the\u00a0<strong>character names\u00a0<\/strong>were translated differently from one edition to another, causing confusion among readers, along with a lot of criticism.<\/p>\n<p>But why did professional translators find it so hard?<\/p>\n<h2>Harry Potter and the translation of character names<\/h2>\n<p>At first glance, the above heading might look like another chapter in the book series about the most famous wizard in popular culture. But in actual fact, we\u2019re referring to the saga of translating JK Rowling\u2019s famous character names into Italian.<\/p>\n<p>Publishing houses across the globe chose to adopt\u00a0<strong>different approaches\u00a0<\/strong>to the<strong>\u00a0task of translating\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Harry Potter\u00a0<\/strong>into other languages<strong>.\u00a0<\/strong>In France, as one might expect, they decided to<strong>\u00a0translate all character names into French.\u00a0<\/strong>While in Spain, they decided to<strong>\u00a0leave all names in English<\/strong>. In Italy, translators opted for a<strong>\u00a0mix\u00a0<\/strong>of Italian and English names. However, over time and with the release of new editions, the percentage of translated character names has dropped, and in the most recent Italian translation of Harry Potter, 80% of character names remain in English.<\/p>\n<p>The perfect example of a name you might prefer to leave in English is<strong>\u00a0Dolores Umbridge,\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0whose surname derives from the expression<em>\u00a0to take umbridge<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A name that was excellently translated into Italian is that of Hogwarts\u2019 resident caretaker,\u00a0<strong>Filtch<\/strong><strong>,\u00a0<\/strong>whose name was translated to\u00a0<strong>Argus Gazza\u00a0<\/strong>in Italian<strong>.\u00a0<\/strong>While<strong>\u00a0\u2018to filtch\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0something means to secretly steal it,\u00a0<em>gazza<\/em>\u00a0is the Italian word for magpie, which conjures up a similar image.<\/p>\n<h2>Marina Astrologo, Harry Potter and Ravenclaw<\/h2>\n<p>The first translator ever to work for the Italian publishing house Salani on the Harry Potter series was\u00a0<strong>Marina Astrologo.\u00a0<\/strong>And it is to her that we owe the very difficult task of translating the\u00a0<strong>house names that appear in Harry Potter<\/strong>, which Rowling used to briefly describe the character traits of students belonging to each house.<\/p>\n<p>Marina Astrologo\u2019s translation choices were kept as they were in subsequent translations, with one huge exception: Ravenclaw. Astrologo originally decided to translate Ravenclaw as\u00a0<strong><em>Pecoranera<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0in Italian, which essentially means \u2018black sheep.\u2019 However, in subsequent versions, it was translated as\u00a0<strong><em>Corvonero<\/em><\/strong>, which means \u2018black raven.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>This was a huge translation mishap as the word \u2018<em>pecoranera\u2019<\/em>\u00a0not only has no link to the English house name or its associated coat of arms (which actually features a hawk), it also has very\u00a0<strong>negative connotations\u00a0<\/strong>in Italian. As such,\u00a0<em>pecoranera<\/em>\u00a0remains a weak point in the Italian translation of the Harry Potter literary series. In subsequent translations, the publishing house made the executive decision to do away with the sheep and return the raven back to its rightful place.<\/p>\n<p>Frequent accusations of incompetence have been directed at Marina Astrologo over the years. However, none of them have taken into account the extenuating circumstances that rendered her use of \u2018pecoranera\u2019 forgivable.\u00a0<em>Harry Potter and the Philosopher\u2019s Stone<\/em>\u00a0was translated into Italian before the rest of the series had been published in English. So when Astrologo chose a translation for Ravenclaw, she was unable to refer to the series as a whole to get a real sense of the houses\u2019 overarching characteristics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Translating Harry Potter is just about as\u00a0difficult\u00a0as literary translation gets, not only due to the book and film series\u2019\u00a0global success, but also to the fact that the\u00a0character names\u00a0were translated differently, causing confusion among readers, along with a lot of criticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Harry Potter Translations: Fascinating Facts | Eurotrad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" 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