HP translation

I think a person who does not heard about Harry Potter does not exist. It is one of the most popular book series in the world and it deserves its fame since it's great.
In this post I don't want to write about the plot, but something different. HP translation is a popular subject - to the extent that I heard students in my university can not write their BA work about HP translation, because there are already plenty of works about that :D (the same goes with Shrek movies).

In HP there are a lot of names, that's why a translator has a very difficult task to do. In my opinion, Polish translation is great - some names were translated, some not (I think it should have been hard to decide what to rest in original version!). In French version, however, literally everything is translated. The main character goes to Poudlard, not Hogwart, which is close to Pré-au-lard, not Hogsmeade. In the school there are four houses: Serdaigle (Ravenclaw), Serpentard (Slytherin), Poufsouffle (Hufflepuff) and Gyffondor (Gryffindor). Harry makes friends with Neville Londubat (Longbottom) and Olivier Dubois (Wood),  but he does not like Drago Malefoy (Draco Malfoy). His less favourite teachers are Ombrage (Umbridge) and Rouge (Snape). 

Aaand there's one thing that makes me laugh everytime I think about it - Lord Voldemort. If you read or watched "The Chamber of Secrets", you would probably remember that the sentence "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT" consists of the same letters as in the name TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE, Voldemort's real name. To make the same effect in a sentence "JE SUIS VOLDEMORT", it was decided to change his name into "TOM ELVIS JEDUSOR"... A name Elvis makes me think about Elvis Presley :D

In spite of all, French translation is not bad. For me, it is nice to read Harry Potter in three language versions to see the differences between them ;)