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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
Chapter 16: Through the Trapdoor
(For the romanisation of Chinese and Japanese, see Transliteration. To understand the writing systems of CJV, see Writing Systems. For word order notes, see Word Order)
Where a Vietnamese word has been borrowed from Chinese, the original Chinese characters are shown in parentheses.
| Chinese (Mainland) | 穿越活板门 Chuānyuè huóbǎn-mén |
穿越
chuānyuè
= 'pass through'. 活板门 huóbǎn-mén = 'trapdoor'. |
Passing through the trapdoor |
| Chinese (Taiwan) | 穿越活板門 Chuānyuè huóbǎn-mén |
穿越
chuānyuè
= 'pass through'. 活板門 huóbǎn-mén = 'trapdoor'. |
Passing through the trapdoor |
| Japanese | 仕掛けられた罠 Shikakerareta wana |
仕掛けられた
shikakerareta = 'was set', past tense of 仕掛けられる shikakeraru
'to be set', which is the passive of 仕掛ける shikakeru 'to set (a trap)'. 罠 wana = 'trap'. |
The set trap (The trap that was set) |
| Vietnamese | Bẫy sập | bẫy sập
= trapdoor. |
Trapdoor |
Chinese is faithful to the English. Vietnamese departs only slightly. The Japanese translator latches on to the 'trap' in 'trapdoor' and changes the meaning completely into a 'set trap' (or 'set traps').
The Chinese word for 'trapdoor' is interesting. As we saw in the title for Chapter 1, 活 huó means 'to live'. It also has the meaning of 'movable', 'flexible', 'not fixed'. Something that is rigid or fixed is called 死 sǐ or 'dead'. In this case, a trapdoor is literally a 'live board door', i.e., a door with a 'moving board'.
(A summary of this chapter can be found at Harry Potter Facts. Detailed notes on the chapter can be found at Harry Potter Lexicon)
 Chapter 15 |
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