PS Chapter Three

[hafl.livejournal.com]

- Harry's punishment for the snake incident is the most severe he ever had to endure. This supports my theory that the Dursleys had thought that Harry was attempting to attack Dudley.

- Dudley, who hates sports as mentioned in the previous chapter, has knocked down Mrs. Figg while riding his new bike. Isn't it nice to break previously established characterization to make a character look bad?

- Dudley is the leader of his gang, because he is the largest and stupidest. That makes no sense, why would a band of bullies let the fat kid be the leader. Are we supposed to think that Dudley is the type of kid that buys his friends with money or what?

- The pupils at Smeltings have silly uniforms and beat each other with sticks when teachers can't see it. It is supposed to prepare them for life. The pupils at Hogwarts have silly uniforms and curse each other with sticks when teachers can't see it.

- Harry being snarky at Petunia dyeing his new uniform is a nice touch. I can't see Petunia as being physically abusive, so Harry making some verbal comebacks makes sense.

- Still, it seems that Petunia just goes out of the way to be nasty to Harry by not buying him an used uniform and instead opting for an unpleasant job of dyeing.

- Of course, Little Whinging is translated. I know that it's a kid's book, but the back says it's for nine years and older. Most kids learn English at school at that age, give the kids some credit, publishers and translators.

- Vernon and Petunia are terrified by Harry's letter. At least part of this fear comes from the fact that the wizards apparently keep close watch on them. Silly Muggles, wanting privacy as if they were wizards.

- The Dursleys apparently abuse Harry to suppress his magic (except for Dudley, who is just a spoiled brat). Compare with Neville, who is abused to awake his magic.

- Vernon screams so loudly that spiders fall from the ceiling. Isn't Petunia supposed to be a neat freak, or did I just imagine that?

- Dursleys moving Harry to better room is probably because they're afraid that someone knows about their abuse of Harry. Since they're showing fear only after wizard gets involved, after years of pretty much open abuse, the theory that they're incredibly scared of magic seems more and more valid.

- The entire sequence of letters coming in more and more absurd ways is pretty much pure comedy and I have to say that it's pretty amusing.

- It stops being amusing, when Vernon is driving around in an desperate attempt to run away from the wizards, apparently terrified to death.

- The proprietor of the hotel is the only person shocked by Vernon's treatment of Harry. Maybe it's because she's an eyewitness, but still...

- Even in conditions of absolute destitution, Harry is the most destitute one.

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Of course, Little Whinging is translated.

Good lord. I read the US edition and don't even remember that. What on earth did they use instead?

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

Although I think some versions change "Mum" to "Mom"

[robina1984.livejournal.com]

Dudley, who hates sports as mentioned in the previous chapter, has knocked down Mrs. Figg while riding his new bike. Isn't it nice to break previously established characterization to make a character look bad?

Riding a bike doesn't tend to equal "sport" in most kids minds. I wasn't too fond of sports, but I'd spend hours riding up and down the block. I could see Dudley riding for a little bit because it was a bike (and, for most kids, bike DID equal cool...aren't the books set in the 90s?) and then getting bored/breaking it soon after hitting Mrs. Figgs.

[hafl.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the Harry filter in action, but in chapter two, Harry is wondering why would Dudley wish for a bike for birthday, when he hates any form of exercise, unless it involves punching someone. For me, it definitely implies that Dudley hates riding a bike as well. But yes, you have a point.

[hafl.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me. Sure, there are groups of bullies like Draco's team, with the smart, tiny kid in charge and the fatties doing the dirty work. But if Dudley's gang consists solely of boys who are pretty much the same as himself, they are likely to promote the one who is best at what they all do – in this case, at being fat and stupid and a bully, because this is apparently what Dud's friends are most interested in. (Also, don't forget about the Harry filter. It's quite possible that Dudley was in fact the most intelligent and athletic of his friends. ;))

This chapter describes them as all being big and stupid with Dudley being the leader since he's the biggest and stupidest. In previous chapter, Dudley is described as fat and Piers, one of the members of the gang, is described as scrawny.
The description in this chapter puts me in mind of kids that are tall and muscular for they age, the kind that, if they were bullies, would pick on the fat kid, because the fat kid is fat.
You're probably right about Harry filter, but this just seems like an inconsistency to me.

As much as I hate the translation and don't mean to be rude... I'd love to see you translating Little Whinging, of all things, at the age of nine. It's the third grade of elementary, fcol, the grade in which most children just begin learning foreign languages for the first time.

I've been reading Lord of the Rings in English when I was eight, so it's probably wrong to use me as a measure in these things, but I was thinking about the kids being smart enough to figure that it's a place name and knowing enough English to have an idea about how to pronounce it.

[hafl.livejournal.com]

Anyway, neither big nor scrawny does equal “tall and muscular” in my book (I'd say the translation is leading you astray here, as hromotluk is a rather ambiguous word) and I think jocks as bullies are more of a high school thing. (I was mostly joking with the Harry filter, though with Rowling one never knows, I suppose. :))

I specifically looked at the English version when I was checking this, though it was the US version, so there can be some differences.

As for the names, I suppose it's mostly personal bias, but I prefer them to be left as in the original. It did even when I was younger. It's probably the result of reading too many fantasy books when I was a kid, since those had notoriously bad translations in the nineties and I had problem trusting translations after that. I prefer to make my own translation mistakes.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Think of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', which was published in the USA as 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'. The Philosopher's Stone is a 'real' concept from medieval alchemy but a sorcerer's stone has none such connetations. So why did the American publisher change philosopher stone into sorcerers' stone? To make it more accessable and actractive to American kids, who might be put off by the word 'philosophy'? How sad is *that*?/

I never understood that either. I remember being surprised the first time that I found out that the original title of the first book was "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." I don't know why the publishers changed it; maybe they thought that "Sorceror's Stone" would sound more magical?

Your critique on the "translation" of original names into the intended audience's native language reminds me of why I don't like it when 4Kids and other dubbers change the Japanese names of characters in anime to make them sound "more American." Hence Satoshi and Kasumi from "Pokemon" become "Ash" and "Misty," Jounouchi, Anzu, and Honda from "Yu-Gi-Oh" become "Joey," "Tea" and "Tristan," Takao and Kyouji from "Bakuten Shoot" (or "Beyblade" as we Americans call it) become "Tyson" and "Kenny," Manta from "Shaman King" becomes "Morty," Usagi, Minako, and Mamoru from "Sailor Moon" become "Serena," "Mina," and "Darien," and so on and so forth. Coupled with the fact that 4Kids makes it a point to delete any Japanese references in the different series that they dub, no wonder so many people think that the characters in anime are white. *sighs*

Wow, your course in Anglo-Saxon sounds really cool! I know that "The Lord of the Rings" was heavily based on British mythology and lore, but I didn't know that Tolkien knew Anglo-Saxon. The whole "looking up a character's name in the original language" thing is totally something that I would do. :D

By the way, is it true that the Elvish language is based on Finnish?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Tolkien was a philologist, and he was as obsessed with languages as you can get (which is why his invented languages and place-names feel so 'real', and one reason I love him).

And yes, one of the Elven languages was modelled after the 'feel' of Finnish (Quenya). Another of the languages (Sindarin) is a little more like Welsh, apparently.

:)

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

I speak Irish, and I did feel that Sindarin had a Celtic flavour.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

An bhfuil Gaeilge agat? Cén chanúint? (I know very little Irish, so please correct me if I've made any mistakes.)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

I think one of the non-Welsh Celtic languages (possibly either Gaelic or Breton, but it's a while since I heard this) was one of the inspirations for the Black Speech.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"Wow, your course in Anglo-Saxon sounds really cool! I know that "The Lord of the Rings" was heavily based on British mythology and lore, but I didn't know that Tolkien knew Anglo-Saxon."

Wasn't he Professor of Anglo-Saxon Literature at Oxford for a time?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Sounds right. I'd have to check the bio to be sure what his exact title was.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Yes he was, and translated several epic poems from Old English, along with the recently-published Tale of Sigurn and Gudrun.

[hafl.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting approach. If you don't mind me asking, when you run into an original name, how did you go about it? You never gave the possible meaning a thought, or you went and tried to look it up in a dictionary? Because, should we stay in the HP universe, there are obvious names like Meadowes, who don't really need a translation, than easily translated ones like Fudge, but also more complicated cases, such as Skeeter. It's easy to find out the meaning now, with the Internet and everything, but in the 90s, you probably had to drag along the big OED, if you wanted to do you own translations?

In the nineties, I was still reading books in Czech, since I did not have access to English originals and I didn't understand English as well as I do now. Today, I can translate the names for myself, usually without a dictionary.

This is a little off-topic, but I've just remembered that the Czech translation of Astrid Lindgren's Children of the Noisy Village did keep most of the names intact and also might have caused me to develop an attitude against translating names. Did the standards for translating books for children change since then?

[hafl.livejournal.com]

I've read LOTR in English, but it was my brother's copy and I also read it in Czech before, so I already had the names fixed in my head, so I can't really count that as translating the names for myself.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Particularly when the translators hit a clanger and it passes.

For example: Professor Dumbledore -- which is an old term for bumblebee.
In Spanish-speaking translations came out as Professor Silencio since the translator took "dumb" to mean "mute".

In retrospect, there is some backwards apropriateness to it, given how reluctant he was to turn loose information that his tools *needed* to get their jobs done. But we couldn't have known that at the end of book 1.

Professor Silencio

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

That translation is inspired, if you ask me!

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/The pupils at Smeltings have silly uniforms and beat each other with sticks when teachers can't see it. It is supposed to prepare them for life. The pupils at Hogwarts have silly uniforms and curse each other with sticks when teachers can't see it./

Which is why I think that Hogwarts bullying can be worse than bullying at Muggle schools. As cruel and as vicious as some real-life bullies can be, at least you know that they'll never be able to levitate you into the air, hex you with boils, turn you into an animal, or give you permanent scarring that spells out "Sneak." Or nearly kill you without even having to lay hands on you or get near you. The fact that Hogwarts teachers hardly ever get involved in such incidents, even when they have magic themselves and know ways to prove who was the culprit, only makes it worse.

/Dursleys moving Harry to better room is probably because they're afraid that someone knows about their abuse of Harry. Since they're showing fear only after wizard gets involved, after years of pretty much open abuse, the theory that they're incredibly scared of magic seems more and more valid./

Remind me again why nobody from the wizarding world got involved sooner? *sighs*

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Because Dumbledore didn't let anyone know, and allowed it to continue, for the sake of creating an easily-manipulated and obedient little soldier ready to do anything for the Greater Good of the WW without thinking?

I might be a tad cynical, I'm afraid.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"- The pupils at Smeltings have silly uniforms and beat each other with sticks when teachers can't see it. It is supposed to prepare them for life. The pupils at Hogwarts have silly uniforms and curse each other with sticks when teachers can't see it."

Given that they can stop people apparating into and out of Hogwarts, is there any reason why the school authorities can't stop pupils doing any kind of magic at all outside of classrooms? That would almost certainly reduce the amount and severity of bullying in the school, but nobody seems to think of it.

"- The Dursleys apparently abuse Harry to suppress his magic (except for Dudley, who is just a spoiled brat)."

I wonder how many other children are abused to try and stamp the magic out of them? Not many, but there surely must be some. Which is why I've never got why the Ministry don't send someone around to meet the parents when the child is first born, instead of waiting till age eleven to inform them that their son/daughter is magical. It'd probably reduce the number of abuse cases, and they might be able to help the parents in other ways (e.g., anger management courses to stop cases of accidental magic, a la "Aunt Marge's Big Mistake").

"- The entire sequence of letters coming in more and more absurd ways is pretty much pure comedy and I have to say that it's pretty amusing."

It is, although it's also kind of stupid that Dumbledore doesn't get Hagrid to visit sooner.

"- It stops being amusing, when Vernon is driving around in an desperate attempt to run away from the wizards, apparently terrified to death."

Yeah, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the Dursleys here. Which I suppose just goes to show that I'm a coward who's too wimpy to vindictively crush my enemies without mercy, and am therefore unworthy of Gryffindor House.

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

It is, although it's also kind of stupid that Dumbledore doesn't get Hagrid to visit sooner.

It's also stupid that he chooses Hagrid for the job. Or any job.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, if he had sent Minerva (or any other teacher with half a brain), do you think she wouldn't have had some pointed questions about the wisdom of leaving Harry with the Dursleys? Also, Minerva might have avoided prejudicing Harry against Slytherins (or in favor of Gryffindor).

[oryx_leucoryx]

Continuing my previous post - had Dumbles sent a teacher who behaves like an adult one can communicate with and rely on Harry might have bonded with said teacher, viewing hir as his savior and surrogate parent. But Hagrid who behaves like a kid and has the attitude of a kid, who is easily distracted - Harry soon comes to view him as a peer, leaving the surrogate parent role to Twinkly (with warm recommendations from Hagrid).