DISCLAIMER: The following interview is IMAGINED and Jean-François Ménard is not involved in the creation in this article.
The Institut Français often receives translators to talk about their job and the difficulties of translating. We unfortunately cannot hold any conferences at the moment, so we are presenting you with an imagined interview between Mathilde Soubeyran, our Front Desk Officer, and Jean-François Ménard, who has translated the Harry Potter saga into French. This fake interview gathers information taken from many sources that are presented at the bottom of the interview.
Jean-François Ménard
Mathilde Soubeyran (MS): Hello Monsieur Ménard, thank you for meeting me today. First of all, sorry for blushing, I am meeting one of my heroes and am quite impressed. I hope you are doing well. I suggest we jump right into the subject. We mostly know how the whole Harry Potter adventure started for Ms Rowling, but what about you Monsieur Ménard?
Jean-François Ménard (JFM): Hello Mathilde, and thank you for your invitation. It is always a pleasure to speak about this period of my life. I started working on the Harry Potter translation in the summer 1998. I directly found this book to be a boon with all its invented vocabulary: the characters’ names as well as new objects and spells were all funny and evocative. I had worked on other fantasy novels before for which I had to invent languages and these experiences have been really useful for my work for Harry Potter, as I had to invent many new words.
MS: To inform our readers, I will just say that you have translated, among others, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, Roald Dahl’s The Big Friendly Giant and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain. You are also a writer yourself, and have written around a dozen of novels. As for today’s matter, let’s start with the name of the school, Hogwarts, and of the four houses, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Hufflepuff. How did you translate them and what were the thought processes behind?
JFM: In English, Hogwarts is an inversion of warthog which is made up of the quite gross word “wart”. I tried to get as close as possible to that. “Warts” became “pou” which means louse, and the idea of a pig became “lard”. Hence the word Poudlard for Hogwarts. Likewise, Hogsmeade sounded like Hogwarts and became Pré-au-lard in French. As for the houses, Gryffindor became Gryffondor, as griffin quite simply translates to griffon. For Ravenclaw, “serre de corbeau” did not sound great in French so I changed it for Serdaigle which fits the house’s emblem. Slytherin translates to “serpenter” in French, to which I added the often pejorative suffixe -ard, so the house became Serpentard. Hufflepuff was the most challenging. It is a pun on the stories of the Big Bad Wolf that huffs and puffs on the three little pigs’ houses. The alliteration made me think of the French one “paf/pouf”, and to me the students of this house always seem out-of-breath, so that’s the idea I kept in my translation to Poufsouffle.
MS: How fascinating! As a Ravenclaw myself, I really like that you have changed it to “eagle”. Before first reading it in English, I had never understood why ravens were featured on all merchandising when it very obviously should have been eagles! How fantastic that you have palliated a flaw of the original writing. Now, how did you come up with a translation for “muggles”?
JFM: Joanne has stated she created the word Muggle from "mug", an English term for someone who is easily fooled. She added the "-gle" to make it sound less demeaning and more "cuddly". I looked for a close sonority that started with “m”. I chose moldus because it reminded me of the expression “mous du bulbe”, equivalent to soft in the head in English, as it evokes the incapacity for them to understand the magical world.
MS: How sad that we are all mous du bulbe in the end. Now let’s enter a longer chapter: characters’ names. For instance, why did you choose to translate Snape’s name but kept Dumbledore’s as it is?
JFM: “Snape” means to reprimand in old English, and is just a letter away to the word snake. I personally chose to translate it to Rogue, which is quite a rare French word from the old norwegian “hrôkr”, meaning arrogant, unpleasant. Rogue also has a meaning in English: it indicates a mischievous and dubious character, which Snape appears to be. As for Dumbledore, it comes from an old English word for “bumblebee”, but I did not like how “Professeur Bourdon” sounded like, so I decided to keep it as it was.
I am quite proud of how I translated Mad-Eye Moody’s name into French, Maugrey Fol Oeil. Fol Oeil literally means mad eye, and Maugrey comes from the French verb “maugréer”, which means to grumble about something, which this character does quite often.
Lord Voldemort’s name was not even a question, as it is French, and means both “flight of death” and “theft of death”. However, one of the biggest challenges for translators all over the world was in the Chamber of Secrets when Tom Riddle reveals he is Lord Voldemort. Of course, we had to respect the fact that he was creating an anagram with his wand, so most of us had to change his name! To match with the French “Je suis Voldemort”, I found the name Tom Elvis Jedusor. I know that this has been subject to mockery on the internet, but I am still happy about it.
MS: Yes, it might be because I am used to it but I was quite surprised when I saw these online. The posts that never fail to make me laugh are the ones about the fact that wand translates into baguette in French, which was not your translation but just the usual and normal word for it! I also would like to thank you for not calling our dear and dubious Dumbledore “Monsieur Bourdon”!
They both laugh at this thought.
I am now just going to cite a few other characters’ names that you have translated into French for our readers, and whose signification is obvious enough not to have to ask you. Flitch became “Rusard”, based on the word “rusé” meaning slick. His cat Mrs. Norris became “Miss Teigne”. A teigne is a “nasty piece of work” and also designates the skin disease ringworm. Mrs. Sprout became Madame Chourave, which includes “chou” meaning… sprout!
I have another question on characters’ names: was there any name that you found particularly challenging to translate?
JFM: I quite struggled with Umbridge’s name. It seemed particularly difficult to pronounce in French, but I could not find any equivalent. However, I one day read an article from Newsweek about Harry Potter, in which, because of a missprint, they had written Umbradge, which in my brain instantly became Ombrage. “Ombre” means shade, and I thought this name perfectly fit the unpleasant personality of the character.
MS: I have chills down my spine just thinking about her… I sometimes think she’s even worse than our little Tom Elvis. I have a final question Monsieur Ménard, what translation are you the most proud of?
JFM: Without hesitation, I am quite happy with my translation of the sorting hat. There are no puns in the English name, but I translated it into choixpeau which sounds like “chapeau” meaning hat, but has the word choice included. The sorting hat therefore became the choosing hat, but in one word.
MS: Ah yes! I also saw internet posts about that! Your genius has reached people outside the French-speaking world! Thank you very much for having met with me today, and I wish you a wonderful rest of your day!
JFM: Thank you very much for having me, good-bye. Accio Nimbus 2018!
Sources:
© Article par Mathilde Soubeyran