This clever combination gives you choixpeau, or “choice-hat,” with the adjective magique thrown on just to let you know that this is a magical choosing hat. Diagon Alley is translated to Le Chemin de Traverse which means “sideroad” or “the road less travelled. Cognards (cogner means to bang/bash/wallop), and the Vif d’or (vif is an adjective meaning bright or lively and a noun meaning quick). That really has been driving me crazy, maybe the word ‘philosophy’ is particularly scary to French kids because its compulsory to do it for their BAC!

So what do French Harry Potter fans think when they see the Hogwarts crest with a giant H in the middle and not a P? This is definitely a topic I could go on and on about, all the changes and the reason behind them are so interesting. I had visions of Hogwart's students walking down the stone corridors, battling monstrous snakes with cheese and ham rolls.From the fourth Harry Potter book onwards, once the saga’s French translator, Jean-François Ménard, was most definitely not translating the work of a little-known British children’s author any more, his working routine was the same. Brontis Jodorowsky, who portrays Nicolas Flamel in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is a Mexican-French actor. Australians can work out what a prefect is because our school system, like the British system, values both academic performance and leadership. It’s funny that you happened to mention Finnish, I actually used to live in Finland and the sheer length of Finnish words always amazes me! I've heard from my friends in France that 1st/2nd prints of Chamber are also becoming quite hard to find.

this choice may have been made to avoid offending people who may recognize their accent in a belittling context. Also, these books feature some of the most polarizing covers out of all of the Harry Potter translations printed to date. In the world of wizards, they aren’t paying for their wands and brooms in pounds or euros, but in bronze Knuts, silver Sickles, and golden Galleons, or Noises de bronze, Mornilles d’argent, and Gallions d’or.But it would have lost that endearing quality of the name, since to the French it would have been gibberish. The earlier prints of these larger editions had the cover art inset to the top right corner (books 1-3 can be found like this).

As Pickles points out in his article on this topic, often Rowling’s subtlety is lost in translation. Jean-Claude Götting is the French illustrator who worked on the cover art of the series for the publisher. Translation decisions could not be made lightly, since they would need to be maintained over the rest of the series, but they invariably needed to be made fast, as publishers rushed out the latest volumes. Under violent bombardment Volant took command, leading them into battle and killing many soldiers but becoming wounded in the arm and receiving massive shrapnel to the face. To translate the word "Muggle," Ménard said in the publishing house interview that he invented the term "Moldu," as a reference to the French expression "mou du bulbe," (link in French) which means "soft in the head.Discover unique things to do, places to eat, and sights to see in the best destinations around the world with Bring Me! You've no idea how much we love that - 'Beaux' meaning beautiful and batons, a word we've adopted ourselves for the baton twirlers in marching bands. In fact, the title itself is quite different since Harry Potter À L’école Des Sorciers translates to Harry Potter at the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.