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Harry Potter in Ancient Greek
- StavrosK 11y agoOh god, they transliterated the name "Harry Potter" to "Άρειος Ποτήρ", which pretty much means "aryan cup"! I'm dying over here.
- mryingster 11y agoFrom the article: "And Harry Potter is Ἅρειος Ποτήρ [Hareios Poter]- ἄρειος [areios] means "belonging to Ares", the war god - appropriate for the young warrior, and ποτήρ [poter] is a Greek word for "cup" or "goblet" - presumably the cup of wisdom from which Harry must quickly learn to drink deeply." It doesn't look like Aryan was what the translator believes it means?
- StavrosK 11y agoActually, both are right, because the words are homonyms. "Hareios" is both the word we use for "aryan" and for "something of Ares". I actually thought "Aryan" was supposed to mean "sons of Ares", but apparently the root is indo-european. I guess it's much better with his explanation, but "aryan glass" sounds amazingly funny in Greek. He basically nailed all the names, they're very well done, and all the explanations he gives for them are correct (the ones I've seen so far, anyway).
- mryingster 11y agoI wouldn't know :) It must be a weird task to try to translate something as bizarre as names from one language to another. Harry isn't exactly a distinctive name. It's rather common, like the name John. I wonder, why not pick a traditional Greek name for the protagonist rather than trying to find something that seems similar to the English name?
- StavrosK 11y agoI think it's because an additional constraint. Translating it to just "John" or something is fine, but translating it to something that both sounds like the original and has meaning in the new language and is relevant to the book is just brilliant, and he did it for many of the names.
- stan_rogers 11y agoHarry, though, is a diminutive of Henry, which means something along the lines of "lord of the manor". Seems to me there'd be a Greek name beginning with "ari" that would be a closer fit. I'm not sure whether you could work in the aspiration, though; to say my Greek is weak would be understating the case significantly.
- eru 11y agoThe translation of the names in the Lord of the Rings to German is also interesting. Our hero from the Hobbit becomes Bilbo Beutlin.
- vacri 11y agoThere was an article on HN in which the author was talking about the impressive translation of Asterix comics into English - not only was the translator able to make the English as pun-filled as the original French, but in most cases the translated puns were very similar in nature to the originals. Unfortunately I can't recall enough about the article to search HN for it.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoAre Greek surnames commonly profession words? I'm wondering how plausibly they could have just translated "potter" as the profession term, and whether a clay pot would be a ποτήρ or something else.
- StavrosK 11y agoSometimes they are, yes, but I don't know if it would fit. I like the existing translation a lot, though.
- ComputerGuru 11y agoOff topic: I have been reading Harry Potter in French as my gateway to French literature. My love for French actually started with The Count of Monte Cristo which made want to learn French just so as to read the original Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. Obviously, my French (starting from zero) a mere year or so later isn't good enough to read something like Alexandre Dumas' masterpiece, but I figured if I started with a book I've literally read dozens of times in English that I always know what the next sentence will say, well, that would be a good place to start.
- jackpirate 11y agoI'm doing the same exact thing in Spanish right now! I've just finished Harry Potter y La Camara de Los Secretos :)
- ldd 11y agoI am a firm believer that one should spend at least 10 or 20 years learning French and then read Les Miserables and Le Compte de Monte-Cristo. The same could be said about La sombra del viento, 100 años de soledad or Neruda's poems in Spanish. In English, only Virginia Woolf inspires the same awe for language that these other books impregnated in me. In some sense, these authors don't use words. They let words use them.
- eru 11y ago> I am a firm believer that one should spend at least 10 or 20 years learning French and then read Les Miserables and Le Compte de Monte-Cristo. Sure do that. But no harm in reading these two books a few times before that, too.
- ldd 11y agoSure no harm in that. Also, some translations are really great, and you can sense the style of the original authors through them. Yet, there is something about those particular books that just has to be said in their respective language. Not because the message is lost, but a part of their magic will always be bound to the words used, I guess
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Jun8 11y ago"The Greeks ate a simple healthy diet, involving bread, vegetables and fruit - none which (except potatoes - γεώμηλα -in every guise) are available at Hogwarts." Wait, Ancient Greeks didn't eat potatoes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato)!
- cafard 11y agoNor was their notion of a healthy diet quite that implied. The meals in Homer always or nearly always have meat, and the one I remember best--the suitor's lunch, shared by Odysseus after he thrashes the beggar--is goat stomachs stuffed with blood and fat.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- schoen 11y agoYeah, I'm not sure where this reference comes from. γεώμηλα is a Modern Greek word for potato (literally 'earth apple', presumably a calque from French pomme de terre). It might be a sensible way to refer to potatoes in Ancient Greek too, but it wouldn't be sensible to suggest they were eaten in Ancient Greece!
- madaxe_again 11y agoWere they, our history of circumnavigation would need a complete redraft, as last I checked Chiloe (from where potatoes come) is some distance from Greece.
- lips 11y agoFrom the Amazon product page: > Age Range: 12 - 17 years This might be more relevant if HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE had a code for Ancient Greek.
- bhaak 11y agoISO 639-2 defines "grc" for Ancient Greek. But I couldn't find a specification for HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE. Going by the language tag best practices every program should accept 3 letter language codes if it also accepts 2 letter language codes. But with software, you never know.
- acdha 11y agohttps://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-3.1.3.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-3.1.3.1 says that Accept-Language uses a RFC 5646 language tag. That now says that the three-character ISO 639 codes are valid, although it looks like the two-character versions are preferred when available: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.1 That said, it would be amusing to see how many servers and clients actually support this.
- raimue 11y agoI learned Ancient Greek in school at the age of 15-17 years. However, I never used the language afterwards, so that description seems to be appropriate.
- hacknat 11y agoAlso in Latin: http://www.amazon.com/Harrius-Potter-Philosophi-Lapis-Philosophers/dp/1582348251 http://www.amazon.com/Harrius-Potter-Philosophi-Lapis-Philos... This has been available for a while though.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tempodox 11y agoOMG, this is so cool. I have the translatio in linguam Latinam “Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis”, done by Peter Needham. If only my ancient Greek weren't that bad, I would enjoy this endlessly. The latin version is full of shrewd and imaginative adaptations of the good old lingua to our modern (and magical) times. If the greek version is anything like that (and how could it manage otherwise?), then this is apt to be highly addictive poison :) Wouldn't you like a chocolate frog?
- TomAnthony 11y agoAndrew Wilson (the translator) was my Latin teacher in school (20 years ago!), and I remember he made the subject quite fun. Having someone who is so passionate about their subject makes a huge difference as a student. The effort and ingenuity he put into the translation is wonderful. I can't speak any Greek, so having the translations and logic laid out is a wonderful insight into translation as a process.
- madaxe_again 11y agoWhat a great idea. When we learned Greek, we ended up translating Homer... which would have been fine, had we not spent most of the previous year reading the Iliad and Odyssey in Latin. Main reason I found myself ultimately disengaged with Greek was the subject material... that and the ultimately limited tolerance of a 9 year old's mind for endless declensions and beatings. "IMPERFECT INDICATIVE, BOY! FUTURE PERFECT INDICATIVE INDEED! COME HERE. HOLD OUT YOUR HANDS." Shudder.
- murbard2 11y agoThat and ... In all languages, regular verb conjugations are taught with some example, typically the simplest regular verb you can think of. It's "cantar" in Spanish, "to sing", it's often "parler" in French, "to talk", "amare" and "vocare" (to love, to call) are common in Latin. In Greek, it's "λύω" (I untie), because yes, that's how common regular verbs are.
- madaxe_again 11y agoUntie, eh? It was "loose" when we learned, but yeah, precisely that. I wish that they'd involved us in it - explained the wonder of a language so ancient, so close to PIE, the tie of language to thought and semantic linking - but it was utilitarian. Latin was better as they intermingled it with roman history, but it was almost like they wanted Greek to be miserable. Our texts were printed in the 19th century - little leather bound books covered in notes on translation... In Latin. My school was such a time warp.
- bitwize 11y agoHarry Potter is Areios Poter -- Areios "of Ares" and Poter "goblet". Strangely fitting since a "Goblet of Fire" figures later in the saga. And Quidditch is Icarusball. I love it.