Well, also the BBC article explains it for those of us who don't speak Welsh....
The irony here is that they quote people saying, "if you're going to translate signs into Welsh, ask for help from an expert" -- but, in this case, they did!
I read the first chapter or so of Harry Potter in Chinese. (I might try reading the rest now that my Chinese vocabulary is incrementally larger.) Aside from discovering that I was apparently never going to recognize the Chinese word for "owl" on sight, I discovered:
1. They translated "sherbet lemon" as "lemon sherbet." Dumbledore, instead of offering McGonagall a candy, offered her a frozen dessert.
2. They had the American definition of "cupboard" in mind. In the traditional Chinese translation, Harry lived in a kitchen cabinet under the stairs. (I guess that's actually crueler than the original intent.)
There was probably more, but I don't remember now. (Really, I spent most of my time looking up "owl" in my dictionary over and over again.)
Stuff like this makes me wonder about the works I read that have been translated into English.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-10-31 07:46 pm (UTC)The irony here is that they quote people saying, "if you're going to translate signs into Welsh, ask for help from an expert" -- but, in this case, they did!
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Date: 2008-10-31 08:21 pm (UTC)1. They translated "sherbet lemon" as "lemon sherbet." Dumbledore, instead of offering McGonagall a candy, offered her a frozen dessert.
2. They had the American definition of "cupboard" in mind. In the traditional Chinese translation, Harry lived in a kitchen cabinet under the stairs. (I guess that's actually crueler than the original intent.)
There was probably more, but I don't remember now. (Really, I spent most of my time looking up "owl" in my dictionary over and over again.)
Stuff like this makes me wonder about the works I read that have been translated into English.