donnaimmaculata ([personal profile] donnaimmaculata) wrote2004-04-10 01:25 pm
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Severus Piton

The discussions that evolved from my latest post on Harry Potter-influenced naming of children made me think of this site. It offers a list of the translations of HP names (both characters and objects) they use in various European languages. Some of them are funny. Did you know that Minerva is called "Minerva McSlurp" in Norwegian? And that "Moony" is "Luna"? (Quite an identity crisis coming up in OotP. Or maybe the Norwegian translator is giving us subtext.) The Finnish Padfoot is "Anturajalka", and I simply love the Czech versions of all female names, all of which come with the -ova suffix; Rita Holoubková, Madame Pomfreyová, paní Norrisová.... Snape is called Severus Piton (Italian), Perselus Piton (Hungarian) and Severus Kalkaros (Finnish.) Kalkaros? Kalkaroff? Subtext? I know that one of the meanings of "piton" in French is "large nose", but what does it mean in Italian? Or Hungarian, for that matter?

Can anyone tell me how you convince the Cat that it's time to vacate the chair and let the human sit on it with more than half a buttock?
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[identity profile] donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com 2004-04-10 05:30 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I missed the Greek translations on the list, so thanks for supplying. The translations of MWPP seem so wrong - because of the length. I mean, the boys were using them as nicknames, and those are supposed to be easy to handle. "Feggarogoitemenos" seems to be quite a mouthful for 15-year-old boys to call each other. "Oy, Feggarogoitemenos, watch out! There's Filch!"

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