Chapter 15: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

Simplified Chinese (Mandarin: China)
布斯巴顿和德姆斯特朗 Bùsībādùn hé Démǔsītèlǎng	布斯巴顿 Bùsībādùn = 'Beauxbatons'. 和 hé = 'and'. 德姆斯特朗 Démǔsītèlǎng = 'Durmstrang'	Beauxbatons and Durmstrang
Traditional Chinese (Mandarin: Taiwan)
波巴洞與德姆蘭 Bōbādòng yǔ Démǔlán	波巴洞 Bōbādòng （Pōbādòng?) = 'Beauxbatons'. 與 yǔ = 'and' (written). 德姆蘭 Démǔlán = 'Durmstrang'.	Beauxbatons and Durmstrang
Japanese
ボーバトンとダームストラング Bōbaton to Dāmustorangu	ボーバトン Bōbaton = 'Beauxbatons'. と to = 'and'. ダームストラング Dāmustorangu = 'Durmstrang'.	Beauxbatons and Durmstrang
Korean
보바통과 덤스트랭 Bobatong-gwa Deomseuteulaeng	보바통 Bobatong = 'Beauxbatons'. 과 -gwa = 'and'. 덤스트랭 Deomseuteulaeng = 'Durmstrang'.	Beauxbatons and Durmstrang
Vietnamese (Chinese characters show etymology)
Trường Beauxbatons và trường Durmstrang	trường (場) = 'school'. Beauxbatons (pronunciation: Bô-ba-tông). và = 'and'. trường (場) = 'school'. Durmstrang (pronunciation: Đơm-xtrang).	Beauxbatons school and Durmstrang school
Mongolian (new)
Боубатон ба Дурмстранг Boubaton ba Dürmstrang	Боубатон Boubaton = 'Beauxbatons'. ба ba = 'and'. Дурмстранг Dürmstrang = 'Durmstrang'.	Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

To an English speaker, the European flavour of these names is immediately apparent.

Beauxbatons, with the exotic spelling 'beaux', is obviously French. The name means 'beautiful batons', with 'beaux' agreeing with 'batons' as a plural form. However, anyone with a passing acquaintance with French will recognise that neither the 'x' nor the 's' are to be pronounced.

Durmstrang, with its 'str' consonant cluster, is German in feeling, reminiscent of the 'Sturm and Drang' (Storm and Stress) movement in German literature of the 19th century. In good German, the school would be pronounced 'Durmshtrang'. But while it looks German, Durmstrang does not appear to be a German school, or at least, not purely German. Karkaroff is a Slavic name and Krum is a Bulgarian.

How are 'Beauxbatons' and 'Durmstrang' translated?

While the French and (arguably) Germanic nature of the school names shines through the spelling for the English speaker, this is more problematic in languages of East Asia, especially those that are not written in Roman letters. At least one translator was misled by the spelling, while most of the others adopt anglicised pronunciations as their model.

• The Mainland Chinese translator adopts a heavily phonetic approach in spelling out the names.
  
  
  • 'Beauxbatons' becomes 布斯巴顿 Bùsībādùn' (4 characters), incorrectly spelling out the silent 'x' in Beauxbatons, although not the final 's'.
    
    
  • 'Durmstrang' becomes 德姆斯特朗 Démǔsītèlǎng, a 5-character effort to spell out the pronunciation. Because Chinese does not have consonant clusters, the 'mstr' combination is rendered as mǔsītèlǎ. 斯 sī represents an English-style 's' rather than a German-style 'sh'.
    
    
  For the Chinese reader, the names of the schools are merely two cumbersome foreign words.
  
  
• By contrast, the Chinese (Taiwan) translator renders both school names in three characters.
  
  
  • The 'x' and 's' in Beauxbatons are correctly omitted to give 波巴洞 Bōbādòng.
    
    
  • For 'Durmstrang', the compression into three characters sacrifices phonetic accuracy, yielding 德姆蘭 Démǔlán, which sounds neither Germanic nor Slavic.
    
    
  While these 3-character renderings look and sound satisfying in Chinese and avoid the ungainliness and lack of symmetry of the Mainland translation, they convey none of the Europeanness of the English names.
  
  
• In the Vietnamese version, the English spellings are used as is, without change. Looking at the pronunciation footnotes (found only in the original instalments):
  
  
  • Bô-ba-tông is a good representation of the French, perhaps because the Vietnamese have greater familiarity with French. The rendering of 'ons' (in fact, a nasalised 'o') as ông is traditional.
    
    
  • Đơm-xtrang is modelled on an anglicised pronunciation of 'Durmstrang'.
    
    
  The translation prefixes the names with trường meaning 'school', which is customary for schools and universities in Vietnam.
  
  
• The Japanese translation also offers a rendering of the pronunciation of the two schools in English.
  
  
  • 'Beauxbatons' is rendered as ボーバトン Bōbaton (making 'x' and 's' silent).
    
    
  • 'Durmstrang' is rendered in a completely anglicised pronunciation as ダームストラング Dāmustorangu. 'Durm' becomes English-style ダーム dāmu and 'strang' becomes English-style ストラング sutorangu. An attempt at a Germanic or Slavic pronunciation might have been ドゥルムストラング Durumusutorangu.
    
    Due to the open syllabic nature of Japanese, the consonant cluster 'mstr' is rendered as ムストラ mustora, as in the Mainland Chinese translation and (to a large extent) the Korean translation. The final 'ng' sound is rendered ング ngu, as is the norm in transliterating English words.
    
    
  The Japanese translation is a fine rendering of the English pronunciation of the names but does not fully convey the European flavour.
  
  
• The Korean translation uses a similar rendering of the English pronunciation, although more phonetically accurate than the Japanese because Korean has a greater range of vowels.
  
  
  • 'Beauxbatons' is rendered as 보바통 Bobatong, with 'x' and 's' silent.
    
    
  • 'Durmstrang' is rendered in an anglicised manner as 덤스트랭 Deomseuteulaeng. The vowel in 'durm' is rendered with ㅓ eu, close to English 'ur' (but without articulating the 'r' sound). The vowel in 'strang' is rendered as ㅐ ae, accurately representing the English short 'a' (phonetically /æ/), unlike any of the other translations here. Similar to the Mainland Chinese and Japanese translations, 'mstra' is rendered as mseuteulae since Korean does not have such consonant clusters.
    
    
• Mongolian differs from the languages above because it has a more complex sound system and has traditionally filtered Western words through Russian. There are two quirks in the transliterations, one traditional, one due to the translator's choice.
  
  
  • 'Beauxbatons' is Боубатон Boubaton. The 's' and 'x' are correctly ignored, but unlike Russian, which traditionally renders French 'eau' as о o, the Mongolian translator spells it as оу ou, presumably to represent an English-style pronunciation.
    
    
  • 'Durmstrang' (Дурмстранг Dürmstrang) follows traditional Russian spelling -- indeed, the Russian translation of Harry Potter also uses this spelling.
    
    The pronunciation 'ur' is spelt ур ur in Cyrillic, following Russian practice, but here is actually pronounced үр ür. (Note that the convention at this site is to transliterate у as u and ү as ü. The latter should not be confused with the German spelling 'ü', which is a totally different sound). The spelling and pronunciation issue here arises from the adoption of the Cyrillic script at the start of the 1940s under instructions from Stalin. Russian has one sound roughly equivalent to 'u' (phonetic alphabet /u/) whereas Mongolian has two. To represent these sounds, the creators of the new Mongolian orthography adopted у to represent a sound that is somewhat similar to 'awe' in British English, and ү to represent a sound that is somewhat similar to the vowel in 'book' in British English. As a result of this decision, the Russian pronunciation of у was actually closer to the Mongolian pronunciation of ү. The Mongolian practice in borrowing Russian words is to keep the original Russian spelling but pronounce Russian у as though it were Mongolian ү. Дурмстранг Durmstrang is thus pronounced as though it were spelt Дүрмстранг Dürmstrang.

(Korean appears thanks to "Hiro".)

(Detailed notes on the chapter can be found at Harry Potter Lexicon)

⇚ Chapter 14

Chapter 16 ⇛