Welsh 'Harri Potter' translator speaks
September 18, 2003 at 4:41 PM ET
Geri
The Leaky Cauldron (via ic Wales.com)
The author, who has more than 300 titles of her own to her name, describes
being asked to translate the best-selling book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harri Potter a Maen yr Athronydd) from English into Welsh as a great honour but also a huge responsibility.
She goes on to describe some of the difficulties she had with House names:
"For example, with one of the houses, Gryffindor, I have used the exact translation of Griffin of Gold to become Llereurol, but with Slytherin there was less of a meaning and more of a feeling of a slithery snake, so that became Slafennog."
"Similarly with Hufflepuff, I translated that to Wfftitwff, which a lot of people seem to like. It's another sound-based one, whereas I was able to do another literal translation with Ravenclaw into Crafangfran."
She has revealed her hope that she will be chosen to translate the rest of the Harry Potter series into Welsh and a spokesman for Bloomsbury said that no plans to translate the remainder of the Harry Potter series into Welsh had been confirmed yet, but added it would be likely that the same translator would be used if that were to happen.