October 13. It popped up everywhere, of course, in window displays in
bookstores, in people's hands on the metro, and in the magazine/book
kiosks in and around the metro, which by the way, offered the cheapest
price – 169 rubles. I think that I might have seen a flyer or two for
a release party in one of the larger bookstores of Nevsky. But there,
thankfully, wasn't really any Pottermania to speak of – probably
because if you wanted to know how Harry Potter ended, I'm sure someone
had translated the spoiler summary into Russian on the internet by
now, or you just read the book in English, since Russia has a school
system that does logical things like starting foreign language classes
in the primary grades. Or, it could have just been that I don't have
Michelle and Whitney to keep me abreast of such things. :D
But, Harry Potter in Russian – you know, that's a fun thing to own.
Besides, I want to know just how they transliterated all the very
Russian unfriendly names: Harry is Garry, and Voldermort is
Volan-de-mort (in Russian, he is French), btw. Or if they fixed the
faux Slavic names that were driving me batty in the book. So today,
for the first time in my life, I bought a Harry Potter book
exclusively for myself. Not purportedly for my little brother with
everyone knowing I was reading it as soon as he was finished. Just
for me.
Here was my other question? What on earth is a Deathly Hallow? I
still couldn't really tell you after having read the book in English.
And how do you translate something that doesn't make sense in the
source language? Well, one option is to make it make sense in the
target language. So, we have Garry Potter i Dary Smerti, translated
back into English as Harry Potter and the Gifts of Death. Which makes
more sense, but I suppose didn't sound quite as mysterious. Or maybe
sounded too gothy/depressive for a kid's book. Who knows?
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