As both a voracious reader and a monoglot besides my best efforts, I've often wondered if reading familiar novels in other languages would be a good way of trying to teach myself a foreign language. So I was intrigued to see over at Ben and Alice's blog that they've had a great deal of success in teaching themselves French and Spanish by reading Harry Potter translations... an excellent choice, because the only way I could possibly stomach J.K. Rowling's pedestrian writing is in an inscrutable foreign tongue.
Ben and Alice also highlight an interesting Slate article on the challenges of translating Harry Potter to other languages. Largely, names of Harry Potter characters aren't updated for foreign markets, which robs them of some of their intended Dickensian effect ("Does Hufflepuff sound as ineffectual, dumb and huggable as it does to English ears?"), but occasionally some brilliant exceptions are made, as an anonymous commenter points out:
I think I like Tom Riddle's name in the French version better too: Tom Elvis Jedusor, an anagram of "Je suis Voldemort." Voldemort always did strike me as a fan of the King.
Translating Harry Potter [Ben and Alice]
