Harry Potter was first published in 1997, in English in the United Kingdom. In the twenty years that followed, the world has fallen in love with the boy who lived, so it's not a surprise that translations and adaptations of the book began being published shortly after Philosopher's Stone was published. Of the authorized translations and adaptations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone there are eighty-nine, with many of the following six books being translated and adapted as well. Alongside these authorized translations, there are many unauthorized as well. Interestingly, some of these authorized translations and adaptations began as unauthorized editions and translations that were once thought to be authorized are found to not have been at all. These languages of Potter not only allow many others throughout the world to experience Potter in their own language, but also give the story a life of its own. Because of these Potter translations and adaptations, more original cover art exists, each one giving its own little spin on this lovable and time-enduring series. And because of these translations and adaptations, many Potterheads around the World have been able to hear Harry speak in their own voice.

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The Boy Who Lived

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I chose the name from this project from the title of Chapter 1 of the Philosopher's Stone, The Boy Who Lived--the first paragraph of which I have used for this project.  I love the idea of language paired with life. To me, to give language to something, or in this case many, allows that thing to live in a new context, and I think this idea applies very well to Harry Potter and its many translations and adaptations, whether official or not. Additionally, I love the idea of this book, originally printed in a print run of 5,650 between soft and hardcovers, from an author who was an unknown selling millions and millions of copies worldwide with both becoming legends in their own time.

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Below are native and second-language speakers reading the 1st Paragraph of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in their own language(s).

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I hope you enjoy listening Potter come alive from all over the world. I know I most certainly have.

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The Authorized Languages of Potter:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Asturian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, UK English, US English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, West Frisian, Galician, Georgian, German, Low German, Modern Greek, Ancient Greek, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Gujarati, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Latvian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Maori, Marathi, Malay, Malayalam, Mongolian, Montenegrin, Nepali, Norwegian, Occitan, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Scots, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Valencian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish

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There are also Braille editions for some of these languages

Braille US English

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Alongside official, authorized translations of Harry Potter, unofficial ones were created, usually due such high demand by those speakers to have access to the text. In fact, unofficial translations quite commonly helped pave the way for official ones to comes later, like we see with Nepali.In other cases, they were created because the official translations were taking too long and readers desperately wanted to see what happened in the next installment, as is the case with the unofficial Spanish translations of books 6 and 7. Once you start collecting Potter translations, you will quickly find that there are a decent number of unauthorized or unofficial translations that have been produced over the years, and more are still cropping up within the collectorship - sometimes they were just recently produced and other times, they were just found out about. Regardless, they're out there and they're certainly quite fun.

 

Unauthorized translations included here so far: Armenian, Nepali, Uzbek

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Since its inception, this project has branched out to include languages that do not yet have Potter translations (authorized or unauthorized); speakers were nice enough to translate and record the 1st paragraph of book 1 for us; you can find these languages under Non-Potter Languages. The Authorized Potter Languages will be under that heading :)

 

Are YOU a native or near-native speaker of one of the languages of Potter? If so, would you like like to a part of my project below? If yes, drop me a line through the Contact Me feature here, OR, find me on Instagram @AllThePrettyBooks

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Wanna hear more Harry Potter from around the world? If so, Click Here!