46. Translating Harry Potter

Found at bytelevel. Think outside the country

Test Yourself

How would you translate the famous “Riddle of the Sphinx,” from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Give it a try, and then check your translation—in Russian, French, Italian, Swedish, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech, Basque, Slovenian, Finnish, Portuguese, and Spanish—against that of the published versions, at http://www.iti.org.uk/indexMain.html. If you don’t have Internet access, drop a line to the editor, and we’ll be happy to send you a copy of the answers. (Source: TransLittérature, ITI Bulletin, No. 24, Winter 2002, Paris, with kind permission.)

The Riddle of the Sphinx

”First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.
Next, tell me what’s always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?”