Analysis

Rowlingisms Analysis

The purpose of the large chart of Rowlingisms was so we could have all translations listed side by side and then from there be able to go through all the different translations to gauge how many translations ended up being literal and then how many translations differed on a morphological, phonological or semantic level.

If a translation is said to differ on a morphological level, this means that the Rowlingism translation was created by adding small units of meaning (morphemes) together to create the concept of that Rowlingism in its respective language, as a result the translation is not entirely literal and was translated in this fashion.

If a translation is said to differ on a phonological level, this means that that respective language may not naturally have a certain sound in the language and thus the Rowlingism is translated as closely as possible, with a translation adhering to the phonological rules of the language. An example here is Harry Potter being translated as ‘Garry Potter.’ This occurs because of a popular shift in Russian phonetics in which the ‘h’ sound (which is harsher in Russian) is alternated with a simpler ‘g’ sound.

Lastly, if a translation is said to differ on a semantic level, this means that the Rowlingism concept could not be adequately grasped in the respective language on a literal level and instead the Rowlingism was translated in a fashion in which the translation’s meaning was more apparent to native and fluent speakers of the respective languages. For example, in Swedish, they do have literal translations for anything dealing with magic(based off of English), however more commonly anything having to do with magic has the root of ‘troll.’ This is because Swedish and Scandinavian folklore is based heavily on stories of trolls and anything from seemingly possessed children to ugly babies is said to be the result of trolls and their magic. Thus the translations for History of Magic, Potions and Charms are ‘trollkonsthistoria’ literally meaning the history of trolls’ art, ‘trolldryckskonst’ literally meaning something along the lines of troll mixology (as the root is trolls it’s assumed this is magical), and ‘trollformler’ literally meaning troll formulas.

After consulting with professors and native speakers of each language, here are the results of our analysis of our Rowlingism chart which contains 68 individual Rowlingisms:

Swedish had the most literal translations, with 88.2% of translations being literal. 2 Swedish Rowlingisms varied on a morphological level, 2 on a phonological level and 4 on a semantic level, respectively.

French had the second highest amount of literal translations, with 75% of translations being literal. 1 French Rowlingism varied on a morphological level, 6 on a phonological level and 10 on a semantic level, respectively.

Russian had the least amount of literal translations, with 66.2% of translations being literal. 2 Russian Rowlingisms varied on a morphological level, 16 on a phonological level and 5 on a semantic level, respectively.

Conclusions

The language with the most literal Rowlingism translations, Swedish, is also a part of the same language family (Germanic) as the original Harry Potter language, English. Thus, according to Professor Eva Albertsson (Swedish Language Professor at the University of Pittsburgh), it is not surprising that exact Rowlingisms are for the most part left unchanged and if they are changed it is most likely to be on a semantic level having to do with magic its roots with trolls in Scandinavian culture. French, although a Romance language, also has roots in Western Europe like English and Swedish and also does not exhibit a significant amount of change in Rowlingism translations. From the analysis of translation differences it is clear that most variations in French occur on a semantic level, in instances in which the original Rowlingism concept in English could not be adequately and literally translated into French. Lastly, Russian, being a Slavic language with roots in Eastern Europe, unsurprisingly showed the most variation. The greatest amount of variation occurred on a phonological level because there are sounds in English (mostly vowels) that do not occur in the Russian phonetic environment. Overall, it can be said the translation gap is smallest in languages of the same family as the original Harry Potter (English) and in languages that originated near English. The translation gap widens in languages that are more distanced from English as it becomes more difficult to translate the created concepts embedded in each Rowlingism.

Click on one of the headers below to see our Rowlingism analysis charts.

Rowlingisms Translation Chart

Translational Differences Across Languages