It started with the very title of the first book in the series. What British publisher Bloomsbury was willing to print as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone became for all time, but only in America, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It was the process of “translating” the Harry Potter books from their original British English into a language that American readers were expected to understand.

At first blush, this seems a bizarre thing to do. Both the Brits and the Yanks read English, don’t they? But as an American reader, I have found plenty of words and concepts in the Harry Potter books, even in their “Americanized” version, that called for a stretch of the imagination. Same language, different worlds.

It isn’t only because the British have different words for things that we all talk about in our own way. They have words for things Americans don’t talk about at all. At times, it is a challenge for us to come up with a mental picture of something mentioned in the books, such as a dish served in the Great Hall. Plus, the books are full of things we fail to visualize because “our education has been sadly neglected.” Maybe British readers have the same problem.

The defect isn’t in J. K. Rowling’s writing. It is in our minds and the poverty of our experience. The same thing happens, more or less, whenever we read a book written far from where we live. The farther away it lies culturally and/or geographically, the more new things we find ourselves discovering – things on the margins of the story that we had never conceived of before. By reading such things, we make our field of experience wider, our vocabulary bigger. The world shrinks around us as our knowledge grows.

The magic of the Harry Potter stories, for people of many cultures and languages, goes beyond spells and broomsticks. It has motivated millions of American readers to explore the world in which British people live, think, speak, eat, dress, and move around. More than perhaps any previous incentive, Harry Potter has captivated American minds with the “different world” that speaks our language – more or less.

To help you visualize some of the amazing images J. K. Rowling throws at you, I have found the following illustrations on the internet. My thanks and apologies to those from whom I stole them.

One of the biggest categories of “things mentioned in Harry Potter that the American reader may have trouble picturing in his mind” is: FOOD. I’ve watched enough programs on the Food Channel to have an idea that the British have a diet quite different from that of Americans. This means descriptions of Harry’s daily meals will often major in things that are simply not on the American menu. You could do as I do, and simply insert a shapeless, colorless blob into your mental movie as you read these passages...or you could picture the following dishes.

Bacon, in the U.K., looks rather different from in the U.S. Here’s what a “rasher” of U.K. bacon might look like:

I think the Brits get the better deal, when it comes to bacon. Hmmm.

If you wondered what on earth a bacon rind was supposed to look like, when you read about Harry feeding one to his owl, you might try picturing a pork rind...or you might picture this:

Harry’s favorite “pudding” (a word which, itself, doesn’t create the right picture in the American mind) is treacle tart. What on earth is treacle, you ask? And when did tart become a noun? OK, let’s be fair. We have heard of tarts. We’re not that uneducated. We probably even did a craft project that involved decorating tart tins at some time in our ill-spent youth, so we gather that a tart is some kind of miniature pie. And it turns out that a treacle tart is something like a the American pecan pie without the pecans. Here’s some food for thought:

As to steak and kidney pie, it’s not that Americans can’t imagine what it is, so much as that they would rather not do so. Nevertheless, here’s a picture for you:

When Harry had Mars Bars on his mind, we Americans may not have had anything on ours – or we may have had the wrong thing. Us older kids, this side of the Pond, may remember something called a Mars Bar, which is not the same thing that the British call a Mars Bar. The American version of Mars Bar was similar to what is now called Snickers With Almonds. The British version is similar to what we Yanks call Milky Way. Here’s a gooey image for you to savor:

Young witches and wizards enjoy a good pumpkin pasty now and then, particularly when riding the Hogwarts Express. Americans may not even know how to pronounce “pasty,” let alone what it is. To judge by the following picture, a pasty (which, I think, is supposed to rhyme with “nasty” rather than “tasty”) is rather like what we call a turnover or, in Italian-American restaurants, a calzone.

Christmastime at Hogwarts exposes the American reader to loads of British yuletide customs that are amazingly unfamiliar to us. This may explain why all the English Christmas carols we were forced to learn as children – such as “We wish you a merry Christmas” – sound like nonsense to our ears. We have never done Christmas the British way. A key example is the Christmas pudding, which (as I understand it) is nothing like the American idea of pudding, but more like a brandy-soused fruitcake boiled in a cloth bag. Here’s a picture of one, but I’ve seen other pictures too and no two of them look alike.

Another dish we first heard of at a Hogwarts Christmas dinner was chipolatas. Without any further ado, here they are:

When the Beauxbatons crowd came a-calling, the house-elves whipped up some special dishes for them, including a French seafood-based dish that contains everything but the kitchen sink, including some stuff you would rather not know about. If only you knew how to pronounce bouillabaisse (roughly, boo-ya-base) and what it was, you might enjoy throwing the word around (meaning: a hodge-podge of many different things) and impressing others with your excellent vocabulary. Or, you might know what you’re looking at when you see this:

Until Harry Potter came along, I had never heard of a blancmange. Frankly, when I did hear of it, I didn’t like the image that sprang up in my mind. What a relief it was to find out that “blancmange” means “white food” and that it is used to describe something wobbly and sweet, like this:

Or, if you prefer a chocolate blancmange, try this:

One of the first differences one encounters between the British and the American versions is the type of sweet Dumbledore mentions in book 1, chapter 1. The Americans have it as “lemon drop,” but the British (and the films) say “sherbet lemon.” The reason for the change is that Americans and Brits mean different things by the word “sherbet.” To Americans, it is a fruit-flavored, frozen dessert. To the Brits, it may be either a candy powder that causes a fizzy sensation in the mouth, like the American Pixie Sticks or Lick’m’Ade:

...or, a cool, refreshing drink that may contain the sherbet powder:

...or, finally, a sticky sweet that may also contain the sherbet powder:

I’ll conclude this part of “Found in Translation” with a candy that I had never heard of, not once, until it was mentioned in passing. Remember when Harry was cramming for the first Triwizard Task, desperately searching for a spell he could use on dragons? Someone mentioned a jinx that could turn a dragon’s teeth into “wine gums.” At the time I was completely perplexed. I didn’t even know that this was a candy. Then I moved into a city where wine gums are actually available (in the “foreign foods” section where British delicacies are sold) and I found out that they are delightful, fruity, gummy treats with the names of different types of wine embossed on them without any reference to the flavor of the candy. They have actually become a special favorite of mine. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to try them too. Here’s a picture so you know what to look for:

Tune in later for Part 2, where we will see pictures of clothes, animals, and other things you may have read about in Harry Potter, without knowing what to picture in your mind. Now, perhaps, you will be able to remove the boring “placeholder” image you stuck where those things belong, and your mental picture of Harry Potter’s world will be so much more detailed and vibrant. Or, at least, you won’t go cross-eyed every time the books remind you that Americans and Brits speak the same language, but live in different worlds.

2/7/2007

Posted by: Amy

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