Today in class we were asked to translate a passage from J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This passage appears towards the end of the novel, where Harry is working his way through the third challenge of the Triwizard Tournament. Amidst a hedge maze, Harry comes across a sphinx who bars his passage to the maze’s centre, where the Triwizard Cup – and wizarding glory – awaits. The sphinx tells Harry that she will let him go past her if he manages to solve her riddle; but should Harry fail to solve it, she will attack him. Alternatively, Harry may choose to turn around and take a more long-winded way to the maze’s centre, so as not to hear the riddle and get it wrong. But Harry being Harry, he opts to take up the challenge. So the sphinx asks him the following riddle:
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 the 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?
So here’s my attempt at translating it into French:
Penses d’abord à un symbole dont les usages sont vastes,
qui est l’Alpha d’un système et au milieu d’une phrase.
Puis, dis-moi la chose pour laquelle on ne paie,
qui réchauffe la peau et qui vient du soleil.
Puis, donnes-moi le verbe qui peut décrire bien celle
qui, s’ouvrant les poumons, trouve le souffle vital.
Ces fragments combines, et puis réponds à ça:
Quel créature embrasser tu ne préférais pas?
***
Back translation:
Think first of a symbol whose usage is vast,
the Alpha of a system and in the midst of a phrase.
Then, tell me the thing for which one doesn’t pay,
which warms up the skin and comes from the ‘soleil’.
Then, give me the verb which perhaps depicts she
who, opening her lungs, finds the breath of ‘la vie’.
So combining these fragments, do respond now to this:
Which creature would, preferably, you not like to kiss?
The answer of the riddle is, of course, spider. But in translating the riddle, it would make little sense to keep the word ‘spider’ as it appears in English. For one thing, unless the francophone reader has an acquaintance with English, the word ‘spider’ is unlikely to elicit the mental image of an eight-legged creature. Moreover, even if one were to recognise the word, it is not exactly easy to translate the request appearing in the first two lines, the answer of which is ‘spy’. The French equivalent is ‘espion‘ (from whence comes ‘espionage’), which could not, in any case, spell out the word ‘spider’.
So it makes more sense to use the French word for spider, araignée. But with this word, it thus becomes necessary to change the three requests in the riddle. So I’ve tried my best to create a riddle that hints at ‘araignée’, using imagery that departs from the ones in J.K. Rowling’s riddle, but which serves the same function of pointing towards a spider.
Samedi Quelquechose 