Remember how I wrote that the Arabic translation of Harry Potter #1 (Sorcerer’s Stone) pretty much followed the original English to the letter, baring some few slight deviations?
Well, unfortunately, the translation of the second book does not. The book’s font is bigger, there’s far fewer sentences squeezed in per page, and it’s barely longer than the translation of the first book. You know what that has to mean: the translator simply cut lots of things out. It was often no longer a word-by-word translation, but tossing out jokes and thoughts, or taking a long paragraph or scene and simplifying it into a sentence.
For example, in the first chapter, when Harry is cutting the grass and cleaning the windows and pulling weeds for the Dursley’s in preparation for the visit of Mr. Mason and his family, he’s running through in his head all the things, one by one, that he misses most from Hogwarts, and he ends by thinking “what he really missed was his friends”. It’s like pages and pages of this in the original English so that we really get the emotional impact. In the Arabic, it’s like all wrapped up in two sentences. I don’t even think it mentioned the part about it being Ron and Hermione he missed the most.
Then when Ron is trying to curse Malfoy and his wand backfires, it totally skips over the part about Ron throwing up slugs. Was that considered too distasteful for dainty Arab youth? I forget exactly, but in place of the slugs, Ron just has a bad stomach-ache or something. And instead of Ron’s slug attack being the reason he had to polish Tom Riddle’s trophy for “Special Services” fifty times, Ron says he remembered that particular trophy because Filch just randomly chose that one and made him clean it again and again.
In fact, in general, the book didn’t really mention Ron’s malfunctioning wand that much. When it erases Lockhart’s memory, I’m not even sure it was super made clear and tied to Ron’s wand particularly.
When Harry is in Dumbledore’s office, he sees the Sorting Hat; but it skips entirely Harry trying it on again and it telling him, “I stand by what I said, you would have done well in Slytherin.” See, entire key pieces of dialogue are just wiped out.
During the dueling club, it skips the fun little details, like Millicent Balustrode putting Hermione in a head-lock (not that that’s fun!) and Ron apologizing profusely to Seamus for whatever his wand had done. I didn’t have the English original in front of me when I was reading, but these are the lines that are just stained in memory, and I know to expect them, and when they don’t show up, it’s obvious.
Back to Lockhart, when Harry and Ron go to his office to let him know they’ve found where the Chamber of Secrets is, and they catch him trying to sneak off, Lockhart never fesses up that he’d never done any of the things in his books, and instead had stolen other people’s valor and then purged their memories.
Instead of Percy’s Prefect badge being charmed by Fred and George into “pinhead”, it’s charmed into “Small boy.” Maybe there’s no Arabic equivalent of pinhead as an insult. Oh, wait a second. I guess a pinhead is extremely small.
When Ron and his brothers rescue Harry from Privet Drive in the flying car, and Mrs. Weasley catches them, she’s yelling at everyone, and amidst her yelling, as George protests that the Dursleys were starving Harry, she snaps back, “You need to starve!” Really? I need to look at the second book again and see what the actual original text is there.
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