Harry Potter och läsbarheten : En studie om översättningen av namn från engelska till kinesiska, i Harry Potter och dödsrelikerna

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the names of characters, places, spells and culture specific phenomena, in order to discover which are the most common translation strategies. The names that are analysed are those found in the Chinese translation of the seventh Harry Potter book written by J.K. Rowling, Hali Bote yu siwang sheng qi《哈利•波特与死亡圣诞器》. A chosen set of the translation strategies for translation of names in children’s literature by Lincoln Fernandes are used as a base for the analysis. With English and Chinese having different written languages, a certain set of difficulties are posed upon the translation. That makes the analysis all the more riveting, since the general approach to translation of names is to not translate them. The result shows that the most common strategies are rather different from one another and that, although they may represent either side in the debate on whether to conform the translation to the target language and culture or not, the two sides seem to work rather well together.