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translation - Are there any changes in the Japanese edition of Harry Potter?


Whilst reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I noticed mild differences between it and the British version. (Sherbet lemons became lemon drops. Motorbike became motorcycle. Etc.)


Of course, this was done to make it more accessible to Americans, but it got me wondering if they regionized it elsewhere, namely Japan.


I can imagine, if regionized, that the food at the banquet scenes must be quite different, however, assume there are changes, there must be more substantial changes than just food, like the names of creatures to things more recognisable to an Asian audience, perhaps instead of Trolls they have Oni?


So, are there any significant changes between the Japanese and British versions of Harry Potter, and if so, what are they?




Answer



One of the biggest changes they had to make (not just in Japanese, but most other languages) was Hagrid. In the UK, we all recognise his accent as "West Country" and his slang as the kind of thing you'd hear around Bristol and Somerset. However, in other countries, this doesn't mean anything, so his accent and slang had to be reworked to be better understood by each individual country. In Japan, this meant changing his language to specifically speak the Tōhoku dialect of Japan, their equivalent of the rural "country" farmer accent.


In addition to this fact, there is a whole host of translation quirks for Japanese, Vietnamese and Chinese (both mainland and Taiwanese) that can be found at
Bathrobe's Harry Potter in Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese Translation


One of the more significant changes was that in Japanese, they actually maintained the name of 5th year exams as O.W.Ls, calling them fukurō (Japanese for Owl). This meant that they had to explain in detail what the exams actually were and what O, W and L stood for.


Overall, because of Katakana, proper nouns, such as the names of people, places, spells, and even "Pāserutangu" (Parseltongue) are all very well preserved and haven't really been changed. If you want significant changes to HP for the purposes of localisation, as well as translation errors, look at the Chinese version.


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