[mryingster]

From the article:

"And Harry Potter is Ἅρειος Ποτήρ [Hareios Poter]- ἄρειος [areios] means "belonging to Ares", the war god - appropriate for the young warrior, and ποτήρ [poter] is a Greek word for "cup" or "goblet" - presumably the cup of wisdom from which Harry must quickly learn to drink deeply."

It doesn't look like Aryan was what the translator believes it means?

[StavrosK]

Actually, both are right, because the words are homonyms. "Hareios" is both the word we use for "aryan" and for "something of Ares". I actually thought "Aryan" was supposed to mean "sons of Ares", but apparently the root is indo-european.

I guess it's much better with his explanation, but "aryan glass" sounds amazingly funny in Greek. He basically nailed all the names, they're very well done, and all the explanations he gives for them are correct (the ones I've seen so far, anyway).

[mryingster]

I wouldn't know :) It must be a weird task to try to translate something as bizarre as names from one language to another. Harry isn't exactly a distinctive name. It's rather common, like the name John. I wonder, why not pick a traditional Greek name for the protagonist rather than trying to find something that seems similar to the English name?

[StavrosK]

I think it's because an additional constraint. Translating it to just "John" or something is fine, but translating it to something that both sounds like the original and has meaning in the new language and is relevant to the book is just brilliant, and he did it for many of the names.

[stan_rogers]

Harry, though, is a diminutive of Henry, which means something along the lines of "lord of the manor". Seems to me there'd be a Greek name beginning with "ari" that would be a closer fit. I'm not sure whether you could work in the aspiration, though; to say my Greek is weak would be understating the case significantly.

[vacri]

There was an article on HN in which the author was talking about the impressive translation of Asterix comics into English - not only was the translator able to make the English as pun-filled as the original French, but in most cases the translated puns were very similar in nature to the originals.

Unfortunately I can't recall enough about the article to search HN for it.

[eru]

The translation of the names in the Lord of the Rings to German is also interesting. Our hero from the Hobbit becomes Bilbo Beutlin.