Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Oddity of the Week

If you live in Wales, I suppose that Harri Potter a Maen yr Athronydd isn't odd at all. But in L.A., Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone in Welsh is a weird thing to find on a cart of books to be shelved. And we have a whole stack of them, thanks to our sale book buyer extraordinaire, Mr. Steve! Take a look at this excerpt:

Ond o'r munud hwnnw daeth Hermione Granger yn ffrind iddyn nhw. Mae yna rai pethau na fedrwch chi mo'u rhannu heb ichi ddiweddu'n hoffi'ch gilydd, ac mae llorio ellyll mynydd deuddeg troedfedd yn un ohonyn nhw.
Looks kinda like one of the spells Hogwarts teaches, doesn't it? A bargain at $6.98!

2 Comments:

At 8:37 PM, Blogger Nick Belardes said...

I want to see the Spanglish version...

Paperback Writer blog

 
At 3:15 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The title is a translation of the original British title, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", which if I remember correctly, was changed for America because the publishers felt that you guys wouldn't know what a philosopher's stone was. :-/ I feel the need at this point to apologise for my countrypeople's attitude.

Anyway, the snippet you have transcribed means:

But from that moment, Hermione Granger became his friend. There are something things that you cannot share without ending up liking each other, and flooring a 12 foot mountain sprite is one of them.

I'm only a learner, so I would find it hard to read the whole thing without constantly referring to a dictionary. I actually have a copy of a Terry Pratchett book in Welsh that one day, I hope to be able to read.

I'm surprised, though, that there should be so many Welsh copies in LA - is there much of a Welsh community there? I can't even get Welsh books in London, and we're far closer to Wales than you are.

 

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