WHY HARRY POTTER IS BETTER IN SCOTS
Harry Potter en scots : une version qui surpasse l'original
Vingt ans après sa sortie, le premier tome d’Harry Potter peut désormais être lu en « Scots », l’une des deux langues régionales de l'Ecosse. Intitulée Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane, cette nouvelle traduction des aventures du petit sorcier a enthousiasmé un journaliste du Guardian...
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is not a very good book. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane is terrific. The Scots version of JK Rowling’s debut is the 80th language into which the novel has been translated.
2. This is not just a translation, though. Matthew Fitt, the translator, has applied a defibrillator to Rowling’s flatlined text and made it come alive. Take the introduction of Harry’s uncle, Mr Dursley. No longer is he the director of a firm that makes drills; he is, in fact, the “heidbummer” – a word which is not only funnier, but better conveys his professional smugness. 3. When the Dursleys try to keep their nephew from his magical destiny by fleeing on a stormy sea, the journey is described thus: “Icy spindrift and rain creepit doon their craigies and a cranreuch wund whuppit their faces.” Some will recognise that word “cranreuch” – cold – from the Burns poem To a Mouse. Other Scots parents may simply be glad of the chance to read Harry Potter as a bedtime story without being bored into slumber themselves.
4. Fitt has taken liberties with names. The sport of Quidditch is now Bizzumbaw, a “bizzum” being a broom (as well as a fine Scots insult) and “baw” being ball. The Sorting Hat becomes the Bletherin Bunnet. Albus Dumbledore is renamed Dumbiedykes – an in-joke for those who know that it is an area of Edinburgh, the city where Rowling wrote the book. Dumbiedykes is one of the few characters brave enough to call Voldemort by name; most think it safer to refer to him as You-Ken-Wha.
5. According to the 2011 census, there are more than 1.5 million Scots speakers. However, the question of whether it is a language or a dialect of English is sometimes hotly disputed, in part as a proxy for the independence question. For Fitt, who was belted at school for using Scots (not uncommon among those of his generation or older), the novel is a statement about the status of Scots that he hopes will boost the self-esteem of children: “If the way they speak is in a Harry Potter book, it must be OK.”