Severus Piton

[donnaimmaculata]

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?

Comments

[madamemim.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.
Very entertaining.
I´m rather partial to the Scandinavian languages myself, particularly Swedish.
Sounds so amusing!

As for the cat: try to bribe her (or his?) Highness by offering your lap as an additional cushion. :-)

[mimine.livejournal.com]

In Greek most of the names remained the same, just transcribed. It's odd, "Sirius" was transcribed to the Greek name for the constellation (something like "Seirios") but "Remus" wasn't changed to the right name for the brother in Remus and Romulus (in Greek it should be "Romos"). Worst ever were the names for the Marauders. They were translated to huge names: "Elafokeratos" (Prongs, literally translating Deer Horn), "Alafropatitos" (Padfoot, "softly treading"), "Feggarogoitemenos" (Moony, "charmed by the moon") and "Pontikoouras" (Wormtail "Mouse tail" and I can understand that since use of word for worm in Greek would have been too disgusting. Same was done with Wormtongue who is Snaketongue in the Greek translation of Lord of the Rings)

[asphodeline.livejournal.com]

I assume the Italian is meant to be a snake reference - pitone is python.
I'm reading through the books in French and love the different words, my favourite is choixpeau for sorting hat but Rogue for Snape is a bit boring. I want to go into Italian next but the books are a bit expensive to get from here

convincing cats - um, no!