When Harry Potter’s French translator reached Chapter 17 of Chamber of Secrets, he hit a wall. The whole climax rests on an anagram: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE rearranges into I AM LORD VOLDEMORT. In French, of course, that’s just a pile of letters.
So what do you do when you’re faced with an impossible task like that?
The French translator, Jean-François Ménard, renamed the villain. In French, Tom Riddle is Tom Elvis Jedusor, which rearranges into Je suis Voldemort (I am Voldemort).
Dream of the Red Chamber hands its translators the same kind of problem in Chapter 20, and it’s only two syllables long.
This week in the story. Baoyu and Daiyu had their first real fight, and both of them ended it with the same words: “It’s my own heart I care about.” (See The Big Fight.) Then their cousin Shi Xiangyun walked in. (See Love Brother, free.) [CONFIRM: 20-005’s URL once it’s live] Xiangyun has a lisp. The girls call Baoyu 二哥哥 (èr gēge), “Second Brother,” because he’s the second son. In Xiangyun’s mouth, 二 comes out 愛 (ài), which means “love.” So the first thing she says, a few minutes after the lovers’ fight, is “Love Brother!”
Daiyu pounces. Xiangyun fires back. And we get one of the funniest scenes in this book so far. Well, it’s funny in Chinese, at least.
The puzzle. The whole joke lives in the sound. English has no mispronunciation of “Second” that turns into “Love.” A translator has to throw something away: the sound, the meaning, or the reader’s patience with footnotes.
So what do you keep? And is a translated joke still a joke if somebody has to explain it?
The answer, and which choice I made for my translation and why, is below for paying supporters. Listen to the first five minutes of the episode free.
