I forgot to make the thread on Sunday, sorry!
On to chapter 10 now. What do you think about the translation so far?
We’ll spend 2 weeks on chapter 10, January 18-31. The home thread for this bookclub is here .
Who will read Harry Potter chapter 10 now?
I’m reading along
I’m still reading but I haven’t reached this part yet
I’m not participating
0 voters
This chapter starts the second volume of my copy.
Interesting that the quidditch ball scores are written as 一〇 and 一五〇 when previous numbers were written in numerals.
I marked that as “to research”. Why not 十 and 十五?
With the traditional Japanese (Chinese) number system, much like Roman numerals, numbers become large quite quickly. Compare 240 to ニ百四十. Already it’s a digit longer. In 1Q84 all years are written like this. 一九八四年, but when I asked my teacher how you should pronounce it, he said you still just say the whole number like: せんきゅうひゃくはちじゅうよねん.
Google’s Quidditch rules are not the ones I remember…
(Blurred as technically it is a translation for the sentence that Wood introduces the Bludgers; albeit one I have my doubts about.)
Out of curiosity, how is the ‘bludger bat’ described in the American translation? In the British one it’s ‘rounders bat’ and in Japanese it’s 野球のバット.
ウッドが野球のバットに似やた短い棍棒をハリーに渡した。
(P246 of my edition - just before the bludgers come out.)
Heh, I was pondering that. I’ve got the UK version, and I haven’t got the foggiest idea what rounders even is. 
From someone who is British enough to have spent too many sunburnt school days playing it and no idea what baseball really is: Rounders is like baseball but with five bases, and a wooden bat about the length of a forearm.
I don’t think you can play it professionally (although, there’s always someone 
), I mostly associate it with sports days as a kid, and minor injuries at workplace bbqs.
From BBC Radio 4 :
The main difference between baseball and rounders is the batting. A rounders bat is much shorter at 18 inches (more like a truncheon) and it is usually swung one-handed. Misses or strikes are not called – the batter gets just one ball thrown to them and must run whether they hit it or not.
It’s the perfect game for kids just before the summer holidays, when half just don’t care any more.
Now I’m imagining the Weasley twins swinging around great heavy baseball bats.
“He handed Harry a small club, a bit like a short baseball bat.”
So, I only sort of noticed it before, but it definitely caught my attention here: the forbidden corridor has moved from the third floor in the English version to the fourth floor here. Is that for the four-is-death pun?
Wow. Good memory!
Wait, “faucet” in Japanese is “snake-mouth”?
So, in Chamber of Secrets, the entrance to the chamber in question was marked by a carving of a snake on a faucet. Was that a coincidence?
Probably just a fortunate coincidence with the whole parselmouth thing.
