Harry Potter Franchise in English

The Harry Potter series has been translated from the original English into several other languages.
==List of translations by language==
#English (non-UK editions, no translations): Australia, Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd (Distributor); Canada, Bloomsbury/Raincoast;From http://www.raincoast.com/faq: Raincoast Books was the joint publisher of Harry Potter series in Canada in conjunction with Bloomsbury Plc of London from 1999 until 2010. The Canadian editions of all the Harry Potter books have the original British text intact, the same title and feature the original cover artwork. New editions are only made if there are significant changes to the text or format. In new editions, J.K. Rowling has corrected some parts of the text. South Africa, Jonathan Ball Publishers (Distributors)
#English (American), United States: Arthur A. Levine Books
Some translations, such as those to the dead Latin and Ancient Greek, were done as academic exercises, to stimulate interest in the languages and to give students of those languages modern texts to read. The Ancient Greek version, according to the translator, is the longest text translated into Ancient Greek in over 1500 years, and took one year to complete.
Note that in some countries, such as Spain and India, the book has been translated into several local languages (see section on publishers); sometimes the book has been translated into two dialects of the same language in two countries (for example, Portuguese versions for Brazil and Portugal).
===Culture===
The cultural environment of the book is decidedly English. The stories follow a familiar theme in English children's books, that of adventures at boarding school, and many of the cultural nuances will be unfamiliar to readers in translation. Such things require careful and creative translating.
===Language===
The language of the books, reflected, for example, in Hagrid's manner of speaking, reveals much about the various characters. Various expressions and forms of speech are regional. Scholastic executives chose to issue the books with some adaptations to American EnglishList of changes in the American editions, a practice which is quite common with books that "cross the pond" in either direction, but which was met with a certain amount of reader outrage in the case of Harry Potter.
A significant change was made to the American edition of the first book (which was also reflected in the title of the first movie when distributed in that country) in that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (with applicable changes to the text). Although translated titles often result in wording changes, this is a rare care when a non-UK edition in a common language, English, was so retitled.
The varying word order in different languages often presented a problem for translators in cases where characters were interrupted before finishing their sentence. For instance, in , Ron Weasley asks "Why in the name of Merlin's saggy left..." before being interrupted by Arthur Weasley, who tells him not to speak to his mother like that. This presented problems in languages such as Spanish and Hebrew where nouns are used before adjectives, since Ron never states what body part or object of Merlin is saggy and on his left side. This forced translators to either rearrange the sentence or simply guess what the noun was supposed to be. 
===Invented words and proper nouns===
Several words and phrases in the books such as spells, incantations, magical words, items and place names were invented by Rowling. Many of the spells are drawn from or inspired by Latin, and have a certain resonance with English speakers. For example, priori incantatem (a spell which causes the last spells performed by a wand to be reproduced in reverse order) would be familiar to many English-speaking readers as the words prior ("previous") and incant ("recite, utter"). Some translators have created new words themselves, others have resorted to transliteration.Names such as Knockturn Alley and the Pensieve are extremely difficult to translate. The latter is a magical bowl into which memories and thoughts can be placed and examined at leisure, and is a portmanteau of two words: pensive, meaning "musingly or dreamily thoughtful", and sieve, a type of bowl with perforations through which fine particles of a substance (such as flour) may be passed to separate them from coarser ones. The name Knockturn Alley, an unsavoury section of Diagon Alley (the place where London's magic market is located), suggests something beaten up or twisted, and is also semi-homophonous with "nocturnally", suggesting darkness and, by extension, evil. Translators must use creativity and sensitivity in rendering such names, and some are more successful than others. Some translators chose completely different names, like in the Danish editions, where Knockturn Alley is called Tusmørkegyden, which means "Twilight Alley" and the Pensieve is called Mindekarret, which means "The Memory Bowl".
===Anagrams===
The name "Tom Marvolo Riddle", first mentioned in , is rearranged to spell "I am Lord Voldemort". This has required translators to alter Riddle's name to make the anagram work. Sometimes translators manage to alter only one part of the name: Tom Riddle's middle name of Marvolo was changed to Servolo in Brazilian Portuguese, Vandrolo in Hebrew, Marvoldo in Turkish, Vorlost in German, Marvoloso in Slovak, and Orvoloson in Italian.In many cases, these changes to the name created a problem in later books: in the English edition, a line of dialogue mentions that Tom Riddle shares his given name with Tom the bartender of the Leaky Cauldron, and this becomes a plot point. Translators who could not have foreseen this development had, in fact, given different names to Tom the bartender and to Tom Riddle, resulting in this reference having to be erased.
==Notes and references==
==External links==
*Article from "Translorial", Part I, Part II
*The Sphinx's Song in 13 languages
*international cover gallery
*Harry Potter name and word equivalents in many languages
*Database of Harry Potter terms and chapter titles in different languages
*Dictionary of Dutch Harry Potter terms
*Dictionary of Norwegian Harry Potter terms and names
*Harry Potter in Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese translation
*English - German Dictionary + Lexicon of Harry Potter terms and names
*Platform 9 3/4: Crown Publishing (Taiwan) site containing lists of names, books, spells, quidditch terms, etc. in Chinese and English
*Article about American English "translation"
*short article on translation differences in Harry Potter
*Harry Potter terms in Japanese
*Financial Times article
*Petition to help publish an Esperanto translation of Harry Potter
Translations