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J K Rowling Torstein Bugge Hoverstad Biography & Facts

The Harry Potter series of fantasy novels by J. K. Rowling is one of the most translated series of all time, being available in 85 languages. This includes languages with fewer than a million speakers such as Basque, Greenlandic, and Welsh, as well as the Classical languages Latin and Ancient Greek. Additionally, regional adaptations of the books have been made to accommodate regional dialects such as the American English edition or the Valencian adaptation of Catalan. For reasons of secrecy, translations were only allowed to begin after each book had been published in English, creating a lag of several months for readers of other languages. Impatient fans in many places simply bought the book in English instead. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first English language book to top France's best-seller list. In some cases, fans have created their own unofficial translations, either ahead of a licensed translation or when a licensed translation is unavailable. Issues arising in the translation of Harry Potter include cultural references, riddles, anticipating future plot points, and Rowling's creative names for characters and other elements in the magical world which often involve word play and phonology. Translation process For an authorised translation, the publisher must first negotiate and sign a contract with Rowling's agents, The Blair Partnership. The publishers select translators locally. So as to prevent plots being leaked, translators were not granted access to the books before their official release date in English; hence, translation could start only after the English editions had been published, creating a lag of several months before the translations were made available. This necessary delay has boosted the sales of English language editions of the books to impatient fans, in countries where English is not the first language. Such was the clamour to read the fifth book that its English edition became the first English-language book ever to top the bookseller list in France. In Italy, impatient Potter fans organised "Operation Feather", deluging the publisher Salani with feathers (reminiscent of Hogwarts' messenger owls) to demand expedited publication for the Italian translation of the seventh and final book in the series. This has also caused unauthorised translations and fake versions of the books to appear in many countries. The high profile and demand for a high-quality local translation means that a great deal of care is often taken in the task. In some countries, such as Italy, the first book was revised by the publishers and issued in an updated edition in response to readers who complained about the quality of the first translation. In countries such as China and Portugal, the translation is conducted by a group of translators working together to save time. Some of the translators hired to work on the books were well known before their work on Harry Potter, such as Viktor Golyshev, who oversaw the Russian translation of the series' fifth book. Golyshev was renowned for his translations of William Faulkner and George Orwell, and was known to snub the Harry Potter books in interviews and refer to them as inferior literature. The Turkish translation of books two to five was undertaken by Sevin Okyay, a popular literary critic and cultural commentator. In 2017, Bloomsbury celebrated the series' 20th anniversary with an announcement that it had been officially translated into 79 languages. Since 2017, Bloomsbury has published or licensed translations into Scots, Hawaiian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Yiddish, and Māori. Some translations, such as those to the dead Latin and Ancient Greek languages, were done as academic exercises, to stimulate interest in the languages and to provide students of those languages with modern reading texts. The Ancient Greek version, according to the translator, is the longest text written in Ancient Greek since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD, and took about a year to complete. List of translations by language The original British English versions of the book were published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury. Note that in some countries, such as Spain and India, the series has been translated into several local languages; sometimes the book has been translated into two dialects of the same language in two countries (for example, separate Portuguese versions for Brazil and Portugal). Unauthorised translations The impatience of the international Harry Potter fan community for translations of the books has led to the proliferation of unauthorised or pirate translations that are often hastily translated and posted on the internet chapter-by-chapter, or printed by small presses and sold illegally. The work may be done by multiple translators to speed the process. Such translations are often poorly written and riddled with errors. A team translated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into Chinese three days after its English release. A director at People's Literature Publishing House, who obtained the official license, worried that the unauthorised translations would lead to the spread of pirated copies. One notable case involved a French 16-year-old who published serialised translations of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows online. He was arrested and his site was later shut down; however, the wife of the official translator noted that these works do not necessarily hurt the official translation. Another example occurred in Venezuela in 2003, when an illegal translation of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, appeared soon after the release of the English version and five months before the scheduled release of the Spanish translation. The pirate translation was apparently so bad that the translator added messages, including "Here comes something that I'm unable to translate, sorry," and "I'm sorry, I didn't understand what that meant" in some sections. Two people were arrested in connection with the pirated version. Another case involved the Internet fan translation community, Harry auf Deutsch, formed to translate the Harry Potter books into German more rapidly. The German publisher of the Harry Potter books, Carlsen Verlag, filed a cease and desist against the fan translators; they complied, taking down the translations. In some countries, where there were no authorised translations into the local language, translations not sanctioned by J. K. Rowling were prepared and published. Such was the case, for example, in Sri Lanka, where the books had been unofficially translated into Sinhala and possibly into Tamil. Authorised translations into both Sinhala and Tamil have since been published. In Iran, several unauthorised translations of the Harry Potter books exist side by side. According to one source, there may be as many as 16 Persian translations in existence concurrently. Iran is not a member of the Universal Copyright Convention, so publishers are not .... Discover the J K Rowling Torstein Bugge Hoverstad popular books. Find the top 100 most popular J K Rowling Torstein Bugge Hoverstad books.