La toponymie du monde des sorciers en anglais, français, italien et polonais ou quelques aspects des traductions d’Harry Potter

Abstract

The toponyms used by J.K. Rowling in the series about Harry Potter fulfill a plethora of functions, namely, they permit readers to familiarize themselves with the setting of the wizarding realm, to understand the characters or to form opinions about the places where the action is set. Therefore, it seems imperative that the translations of the series into foreign languages should include the toponyms as well. Unfortunately, only a few of the numerous toponyms were translated in the Polish version, the remainder were left unchanged from the original English version. A similar decision was made by the Italian and French translators. The present authors search for the reasons why the translations of toponyms are incomplete, they present examples of successful as well as failed translations and make an attempt to create Polish toponyms for the untranslated English ones. With a view to achieving that the authors analyze seven volumes of the series in four languages, namely: English, Polish, French, and Italian. They create a database of the English toponyms and their existing translations in three languages and complete it with their own translations of the untranslated toponyms into Polish. The article presents a selected sample of their work.