The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997 with only 500 copies. But over the course of twenty years, more than 500 million books about the wizard boy have been sold in the world. The cycle of books about Harry Potter and his adventures has become a real phenomenon. Probably, the childhood of not a single child passed without books or films about the magical school of Hogwarts and its students. They have been translated into 80 languages, and we will talk about translations, or rather, about errors in the translation of these books.
Translation of the Harry Potter book
Perhaps there is not a single book about the history of Harry Potter, where there were no gross oversights from one of the Russian publishing houses – ROSMEN. The publishing house today plays a key role in the book segment and publishes books for young readers of all ages. Despite this, there were many mistakes, for example, Hermione with Hagrid in a conversation on “You”. “The One Whose Name May Not Be Spoken” appears to have died many times, which is inconsistent with the plot of past Harry Potter books. We see that the translators, having poorly familiarized themselves with the whole story about the young wizard, made a number of other mistakes, which is not recommended. The same spells are translated differently in different places in the book. The word “God” is printed first with a small letter, then with a capital letter. And all these errors were printed in the book, which was presented to the audience. And those who were dissatisfied with the translation, according to the commercial director of the publishing house, simply had a mediocre command of English.
Ukrainian translation in the lead
But not everything is so bad, the Ukrainian translation of a series of books about Harry Potter from the oldest domestic book publishing house “A-ba-ba-ha-la-ma-ga” (Kyiv) received high marks from experts. The Ukrainian translation of books by the British writer JK Rowling, which was made by Viktor Morozov, is considered more accurate than Russian. Thanks to the translator, the fifth book “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” visited Ukraine a month earlier than France, and four months earlier than Russia. Thus becoming the first national presentation in Europe. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows also appeared in A-ba-ba-ha-la-ma-gi, the first of all translated editions.
Anniversary this year!
And even more pleasantly, this New Year there will be a special issue dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of the Harry Potter film franchise (we remind you that the first film was released all over the world in 2001). The “anniversary” will feature the director of the first two films, Chris Columbus, as well as the original cast. We’ll see what happens next year, but Harry Potter fans will definitely be delighted.
Many, faced with the need to translate a document into a foreign language, understand how important accuracy, literacy and correctness are in the design of the translation of any document. The translators of our Translation Center are wizards in their field. We always guarantee that our specialists will perform any translation, including literary translation, with high quality and in a short time.
Write and call (097) 003-22-77, we work on weekdays from 9 to 19 without a break and we are the Translation Agency in Kharkov, which works on Saturdays from 9 to 16.
