In my previous chapter, which provided pictures to go with your Harry Potter dinner menu, I neglected at least one significant kind of food that many Americans may not know by sight: tripe. You remember, one of the unholy trinity of Bertie Bott’s flavors Ron warned Harry about, along with spinach and liver (so, clearly, not a popular dish with British children). This coming from someone who actually likes kidneys! You also remember McGonagall’s Christmas dinner crack at Trelawney: “Tripe, Sibyll?” So what is tripe? Well, you’d really rather not know. Nowadays, in America, the best place to find it is in the Mexican food aisle, if your grocery store has one, because it is part of the traditional soup called Menudo (not named after the 1980s boy band). It’s part of a pig or a cow (sometimes even a lamb) and, after you’ve chewed on it a while, your best hope of getting it down is not to think about what part it is. Here’s a picture if you have the courage to look at it.

But now it is time to move on from the dinner table and explore more areas where your lack of experience, or distance from the U.K., may put you at a disadvantage. Do you want to know what to picture in your mind when you read about such things as balaclavas and scops owls? Read on.

Since I’ve mentioned balaclavas, let’s start there. Personally, I was mystified when I first read, in Harry Potter, about people wearing balaclavas. I thought they were talking about baklavas, which is a flaky pastry you can get at your friendly neighborhood Greek deli. The idea of a sticky dessert keeping people warm made no sense, but of course, I wasn’t paying close enough attention. “Balaclava,” I think is named after a place in what is now Ukraine where the British fought a major battle in the Crimean War. I don’t know why the garment is named after a Ukrainian city, but Americans know of it and sometimes wear it. Only we usually call it a “ski mask.” Here’s a picture anyway:

Another garment JKR mentions is a jumper. I’m not sure which kind of jumper she means, because I’ve found photos of two different articles of clothing by that name. My guess is that she means this kind of open-fronted sweater:

...rather than this dress sort of thing:

Most of us were bright enough to guess, when we read about Harry’s “trainers,” that the term described some kind of athletic footwear. The term “trainers” may be familiar to many Americans, but it’s not a household word where I come from. So for those who, like me, need visual confirmation of what we only vaguely guessed, here is a picture of of a pair of trainers:

Mrs. Figg’s string shopping bag is an interesting concept. Again, some Americans probably use such things, but many may scratch their heads at this. We don’t generally bring shopping bags into the store; we bring them out, and in most American stores the bags are disposable (paper or plastic) and provided by the store at no extra charge. This isn’t always the case, though, and for those stores that do charge for shopping bags, the idea of bringing your own in with you does make sense. Now picture the following, but filled with cans of cat food:

Very few American children go to boarding schools. This is one of the reasons Hogwarts is such a romantic setting to the American mind. Things like Prefects and Head Boys are foreign to our experience. And so are the badges they wear. Here is a Prefect’s badge:

...and a Head Boy’s badge:

Maybe the movies have solved this problem, but Hagrid’s moleskin overcoat is another thing that American readers may not be able to visualize. Moleskin jackets sound like the sort of thing that Americans would call “politically incorrect.” How many moles have to die to make a coat in Hagrid’s size? So we wouldn’t know a moleskin coat if we saw it — perhaps a lucky thing for the fellow wearing it in the next seat over on your train or bus. Here is what a moleskin coat may look like; but please, don’t rush into judgment when you see something like it on your neighbor:

A Christmas custom, not related to food, that Americans may have trouble framing in their minds is the Christmas Cracker. We gather, from the accounts in the Harry Potter books, that a cracker is something which two people grasp, one at each end, and pull in opposite directions. It comes apart with a loud noise and out comes some kind of hat, a lame joke, and some toy or other that will usually be lost or broken by the morning after Christmas. Since we Americans know nothing whatever of Christmas Crackers, we are apt to fall into one of two errors: either (a) thinking about the kind of cracker you can eat and wondering how on earth all that stuff can fit inside something we probably visualize as a kind of oversized fortune cookie, or (b) believing that what they have at Hogwarts is a typical Christmas cracker when, in fact, they are full of extra-special, magical gimmicks – real pirate hats, live mice, whole sets of wizard chess pieces, etc. – and not just just the sort of cheap trinkets you may find in a box of sugary breakfast cereal. For the record, and for your imagination’s use, here is a Christmas cracker:

Now we come to the wild kingdom. Anyone who has seen the Harry Potter films hardly needs to see a picture of what a boarhound looks like, but here’s one anyway:

On the other hand, very few Americans have the word “budgerigar” or its shortened form “budgie” in their vocabulary. I’m still not sure exactly how to pronounce the longer word. I had to guess what it was, and my guess wasn’t far off the mark: it’s a bird similar to what Americans know as the parakeet. In fact, it’s probably exactly the same bird. Here’s an example:

Owls we know about. I once spent an hour in a college classroom, totally tuned out of a lecture on Greek adjective endings, staring into the eyes of an owl perched on a tree branch just the other side of the window. Time seemed to stand still. On the other hand, I couldn’t tell you what kind of owl it was, and though JKR has named several different kinds of owls, I probably couldn’t tell one from the other. If you have this problem, here are some representatives of the owl family.

The scops owl (Pigwidgeon) looks like this:

Here is a brown owl:

And a barn owl:

And a great gray owl:

A tawny owl:

And last but not least, a snowy owl (Hedwig):

Americans probably do have a good idea what a boa constrictor looks like, but while we’re looking at owls we might as well look at snakes as well.

Finally, let’s look at a piece of technology that Americans call by a different name. The British call it a hosepipe, which is a very accurate name. Americans just call it a hose, though that can also mean a long stocking. In case you have any doubt that you’re thinking about the right thing, here’s a hosepipe:

So clearly, when the Dursleys and their neighbors are coping with a “hosepipe ban,” they are talking about what Americans might call a “sprinkling ban” – not that there was an embargo on buying or possessing rubber hoses, but that you weren't supposed to water your lawn due to a water shortage.

In the next and final part of “Found in Translation,” you will find aids to your imagination in the flowers and stars for whom certain characters in Harry Potter are named. Maybe this won’t give you much insight into their characters, but if you’re not alert to different types of flowers or the constellations in the night sky you may not have even realized that characters like Regulus Black and Narcissa Malfoy are actually named after things you can see in the outside world. Won’t it be interesting to share, perhaps, the mental image J.K.R. had in mind when she named those characters? Tune in then for Part 3!

2/8/2007

Posted by: Amy

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