For the last couple of years, I have been slowly making my way through French Harry Potter. It’s great. I’ve vastly improved my vocabulary, especially my knowledge of argot and idioms.
Reading Harry Potter in French is super useful because not only do I know the storyline, I’ve read these books often enough in English (over and over throughout my childhood) that I know them down to the sentence level and even the word level. As I read the opening paragraph of Harry Potter et le prisionner d’Azkaban, I hear Jim Dale in my head in the original English. I immediately know what French words mean when I see them appear in Harry Potter, not just through context clues, but because I remember what J.K. Rowling’s original word choice was.
This makes me notice some interesting discrepancies. First of all, I’ve come to truly appreciate the depth and breadth of the English vocabulary: there are many instances in which the translated French falls short of the original simply because there is not a corresponding word in French. For example, “witches and wizards” in French are “sorcières et sorciers.” This detracts, slightly, from the original: if sorcerers were meant, that word could have been used in English. Many such examples will be noticed by a close reader of a translation, not just of Harry Potter.
Harry does of course present a multitude of problems to any translator. In the French version, some proper names and special terms are translated (Hogwarts = Poudlard and muggle = moldu), some are kept the same (most of the main characters have their original names), and some are half-translated (Severus Snape is Severus Rogue and Barty Crouch is Barty Croupton). Some of these changes make sense, and some don’t seem to. Some are really quite inventive and work well in French (like the Choixpeau Magique for the Sorting Hat: chapeau is hat and choix is choice, making the name apt). Some just sound more French, and are maybe easier for French readers to pronounce.
The interesting thing about translating Harry Potter into French rather than any other language is that there is already some French in many of Rowling’s made-up words. Voldemort, for example, probably sounds a little heavy-handed to a native French reader. Once we get to the fourth book, more problems abound as new characters speak a few lines in untranslated French and speak English with French accents.
It is undoubtedly REALLY TRICKY to translate Harry Potter at all, but I must say that overall I’ve been a little disappointed in the French version. I was really impressed with the French sorting hat songs, and the French versions of OWLs and NEWTs are great (Brevet Universal de Sorcellerie Élementaire is BUSE, which means buzzard, and Accumulation de Sorcellerie Particulièrent Intensive et Contraignante is ASPIC, or viper). The French version of S.P.E.W., SALE (dirty) is pure genius. But I’ve finally made it to Harry Potter et la coupe de feu, and I’ve got a serious gripe.
Picture me, waiting on tenterhooks all through Harry Potter à l’école des sorciers, Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets, and Harry Potter et le prisionner d’Azkaban. Finally, I get to la coupe de feu, where I will finally find out how the translator deals with the conundrum of the Beauxbâtons crowd coming to Hogwarts. I am prepared for ingenuity, brilliance, and maybe, as a last resort, footnotes. But that’s not what I get:
In chapter 9, the first time someone speaks French, the translator has taken some license but has done okay. The original French sentence appears in italics, and the girl is given an additional comment in which she mutters that Ron doesn’t understand anything. But the girl’s original comment has been expanded upon: originally, she just says “Ou est Madame Maxime? Nous l’avons perdu (Where is Madame Maxime? We have lost her),” but in the French version she also says, “Enfin, c’est incroyable! Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette organisation? Faites quelque chose, voyons! (Come on, it’s incredible! What is this organization? Do something, honestly!) A little jab at British organizational abilities? All in good fun, I guess.
Something similar happens at the welcoming feast in chapter 16. Fleur asks Ron for la bouillabaisse, just as in the original. But instead of Harry intervening and handing it over, Ron stutters, “la bouba…la boubaliaisse…La bailloubaisse…” and “bouba…boubia…” until Fleur replies, “Tu n’as pas l’air très doué pour les langues étrangères…Alors, vous avez fini, oui ou non, avec cette bouillabaisse? (You don’t seem to be very gifted at foreign languages…well, are you finished with this bouillabaisse, yes or no?). ” Another gratuitous gibe at the British.
This is fine. It doesn’t really seem kosher for a translator to add his own jokes just for fun, but whatever. Now we come to the real problem. Yes, you have gotten, finally, to THE POINT OF THIS long, long, (okay, way too long) POST:
Madame Maxime is introduced in chapter 15. She has a French accent, as represented by writing “ze” instead of “the” and dropping “h”s. This would, of course, be a problem for any translator. But the French version does something weird:
Instead of “Mon cher Dumbledore,” Madame Maxime says “Mon cheur Dambleudore.” Instead of “Je vous présente mes élèves,” she says “Je vous preusente meus euleuves.” This doesn’t seem to be representing a regional accent. It seems more like…a speech impediment.
This theory is strengthened when we read on and see that Dumbledore accidentally falls into mimicking her, then corrects himself: “en effeut…heu, en effet,” and “tardeu…heu, tarder.” He even, at one point, fails to understand what she’s saying, and they have a little “who’s on first” moment:
Madame Maxime: Meus qui va s’occupeu de mes cheveux? (Should be “Mais qui va s’occuper de mes chevaux?” meaning “Who will take care of my horses?”)
Dumbledore: Vos cheveux sont coiffés à la perfection (Your hair is perfectly coiffed).
With Madame Maxime’s strange impediment, she says chevaux (horses) like cheveux (hair), making her the brunt of a small joke.
What is up with this? Did the translator misunderstand Madame Maxime’s “French” accent in the English version? Did it offend him? Did he have permission to add these weird jokes? Is this some regional accent I don’t know about, to replace the generic French accent? Qu’est-ce que sup?!
Are you outraged? An entire empire’s worth of young Harry Potter fans have been misled! Where is the justice?! Maybe they think Madame Maxime is dumb! (Is this half-giant discrimination? What would Hermione have to say about that?)
Harry Potter fans, francophiles, language geeks, unite. Can we figure this out?
Mot-valise 