Am I the only one who hates Harry Potter?

General discussion about learning languages
Atinkoriko
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 9:31 pm
Location: England
Languages: English (N)
Ibibio (N)
West African Pidgin English/Guinea Coast Creole[N]
Actively learning
Int: German, French, Spanish

Beginner: Russian, Japanese

Next: Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 6&start=20
x 398

Re: Am I the only one who hates Harry Potter?

Postby Atinkoriko » Sat Apr 08, 2017 5:43 pm

I must say that my main interest in re reading HP is purely out of the amusement I derive from comparing the translations to the original work.

Call it juvenile but the sight of 'une baguette magique' [for 'wand'] makes me chuckle every time. :lol:

EDIT: There's a Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Ancient Greek and Latin. Really can't beat that for me, being able to read a contemporary work in languages for which contemporary resources are practically non existent. The chance to see Hermione nag Harry in Attic Greek is one which I find hard to pass up.
7 x
: 50 / 2000 Remembering the Kanji :
: 33 / 75 SpanishFilms Half SC :
: 45 / 124 German Active wave :
: 3 / 100 Assimil Japanese :
: 33 / 100 Russian without Toil :
: 160 / 10000 Russian 10k srs :

User avatar
Serpent
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3657
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 10:54 am
Location: Moskova
Languages: heritage
Russian (native); Belarusian, Polish

fluent or close: Finnish (certified C1), English; Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian
learning: Croatian+, Ukrainian; Romanian, Galician; Danish, Swedish; Estonian
exploring: Latin, Karelian, Catalan, Dutch, Czech, Latvian
x 5179
Contact:

Re: Am I the only one who hates Harry Potter?

Postby Serpent » Sun Apr 09, 2017 1:55 am

Xenops wrote:Aside from the HP books, as far as I know, the only audiobooks that match the physical books are the original literature in the original language. I would love to be proven wrong. :)
This depends on the language. Nowadays there are often separate translations into "Croatian" and "Serbian" for example, most differences being down to the individual translator's choice. (see Clare's log)
In Portuguese there are even European and Brazilian editions of HP ;)
On the other hand, back in 2006 I easily bought the da Vinci code in Finland. The paperback and audiobook were by the same publisher, had the same design and obviously the translation was the same too.
In general I don't think anyone ever pays for a separate translation just for the sake of recording an audiobook. Ie I'm pretty sure most existing translated audiobooks have also been published in writing. The difficulty is mostly about finding the matching version. It's more of an issue with older works really, and with pluricentric languages.

A separate issue is that many audiobooks are/were abridged, which affects the original literature too (if there's even an audiobook market at all :roll:). This was more of a problem with CD's and cassettes, I think. (the da Vinci code audiobook I mentioned above was unabridged, on 17 CD's :shock: afaiu at the time the mp3 format was associated with piracy and it wasn't possible to sell mp3 CD's, only audio ones)
3 x
LyricsTraining now has Finnish and Polish :)
Corrections welcome


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests