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Misha comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Is it actually that bad? I haven't read it in English yet, but if the translation is at least semi-decent, then I can start recommending it to friends.
I will admit to having read reviews rather than the actual thing (having read the original in Russian). However, the reviews are pretty damning in terms of translation quaity. To give one example, the translator apparently didn't twig that, in the Cyrillic alphabet, "X" is pronounced "KH" rather than "ECKS". As a result, every single name containing an "h" sound (of which there are many, including major characters) has had it swapped for an "x" sound. This is a level of incompetence that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't read the reviews first-hand.
...Huh. By itself, that doesn't seem that bad: it's not as though the exact pronunciation matters to someone who hasn't read the original. But it is a pretty frightening warning sign.
It's pretty bad in that it forces you to pronounce lots of awkward "x"s in names that were meant to be euphonic. But yes, the main issue is that a translator making such an epic mistake can't be trusted to maintain accuracy or faithfulness elsewhere.
Also, a separate review criticism is that the translation fails miserably to capture the cheerful, whimsical style of the original narration, instead giving it a completely different and much less gripping narrative voice that ends up clashing with the content of the story.