Rishon Rishon

Hareios Poter

Here’s a delightful essay on translating Harry Potter (Ἅρειος Ποτήρ – Hareios Poter) into Ancient Greek (via Language Hat). Some of the problems:

Cultural problems There were many, one of the more obvious being relationships - the patriarchal Greeks not really concerning themselves with relationships like mother's sister (very important for Harry of course) because once married a Greek bride would have little contact with her former family. There does exist a word for aunt (mother's as opposed to father's sister), but it's rare - although the Greeks had a word for "women whose husbands are brothers" - εἰνάτερες [einateres] - because this might be important if one of the brothers died.

And colours - it's little appreciated how languages divide up the visible spectum of light in their own way - our red orange yellow etc is of course completely arbitrary- the spectrum is a continuum. The Greeks had very few real colour-words- Homer's "wine-looking, wine-faced" sea is a typical circumlocution (if it in fact means that - the traditional "wine-dark" is a romantic suggestion). So you will have to judge how I've dealt with the various yellows, blues, greens and other colours that JKR is so fond of - especially pink (the Romans invented the word - it comes from puniceus, the Carthaginian/Punic colour - which was the result of dyeing cloth with a sea mollusc whose identity is now unknown! But it was the "purple" of the emperors - inappropriate surely for a blush or or Dudley's baby photos!)

And also noises: an ancient Greek got by with one or two words which did duty for every kind of noise from a snap to a crackle to a pop to a bang to a rustle to a toot to a creak to a clunk to a click - this makes life difficult, and I had to avoid over-using comparisons with Mount Etna - probably the only really loud noise ever heard in the ancient world! Somewhat bathetically, I do use it for the wizard cracker in chapter 12 which "went of with blast like a cannon". But we just take it for granted in English how many words we have for different kinds and intensities of sound.