Muggled in Bangkok

It took Sumalee Bumroongsook nearly three months to translate the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series but she promises that it was worth the wait.

Launched last Friday by Nanmee Books, the Thai version of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is sure to be a publishing phenomenon with pre-orders shooting past 100,000 copies. And Sumalee has 100,000 reasons to smile.

Today, she compares the job to an arduous marathon - of the fingers rather than the legs. She started translating the first page of the seventh book on July 21 and finished on September 25 after almost 11 weeks near-solitary confinement and ploughing through shelves of dictionaries. But she believes it was worth her swollen fingers.

"I'm so glad it was done in time for this month's launch," she says with a smile.

Sumalee, who has translated all but books three and four of the series, says she couldn't have done the work had she not been living in Britain, the land of Hogwarts, where she's a former part-time lecturer in Southeast Asian politics at the graduate school of the University of Durham. She quit the academic life in Durham two years ago to settle in Manchester ("not as cold as Durham"), where she lives with her husband.

After 10 years in the UK, the bespectacled Sumalee feels at home, but she still enjoys the occasional trip back to Bangkok to catch up with Thai friends and publishers. 

Sumalee definitely found herself in the right place at the right time. While lecturing at Durham from 1997 to 2005, she witnessed the rise of Potter mania in the UK. Just before the world went wild for book one, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", she recommended Thai publisher Nanmee Books purchase the translation rights to the Potter series, thinking it would probably strike a chord with Thai children. It proved a multi-million-baht decision and Sumalee was entrusted with the translation task.

"I was so happy to be able to translate a book I had really enjoyed reading," she recalls.

It was a decision that also changed her life. The translation job was a major learning experience for Sumalee, opening her eyes to different facets of English life and its culture, increasing her vocabulary and making her aware of the importance of being organised, systematic and thorough. Most importantly, it's brought her closer to her niece. "She loves me more because we have such a lot to talk about when it comes to the Harry Potter books," she laughs.

She's also found that literary translation is an art form that encourages better understanding between cultures.

And Sumalee has her own way of picking out a smooth Thai translation from the complex puzzling linguistic minefield of Rowling's Potter series.

The seventh book, she says, was unsurprisingly the most challenging, as it's also the last in the series. Before she started, she read through the title in one sitting, noting down the difficult terms.

Then she started work on the first five chapters, stopping afterwards to undertake two rewrites. Only when the translation of the five chapters was smooth, did Sumalee move on to the next five.

The translation hit snags whenever Rowling used English and Scottish slang and terms not listed in the dictionaries ("Collins dictionary is the best", she says, "it has lots of British slang.")

She recalls having a really hard time translating words like "git", "ickle" and "spattergroit" (a disease that leaves pockmarks on the character Ron).

"I had to consult many English and Scottish friends there. That's why it's good I was in the UK while translating the series. 'Spattergroit' is not listed in the dictionary, you know. One of my advisers told me that 'groit' is a derivative of the Scottish root 'groat'," she says.

Another challenge for Sumalee was writing names like Hermione in Thai so that it reads like Rowling insists it should be pronounced - her-mai-oh-nee.

"I also found it hard to make Rowling's sense of humour understandable to Thais. The English humour usually consists of satire and wordplay, which is difficult to get across in a translation. And, of course, it's impossible to do word-by-word translations of the author's jokes."

The result is a brilliant translation, which Sumalee humbly describes as "good enough". It will surely please Thai fans who have been impatiently waiting to find out what happens to Harry and his friends.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", she says, is lively, well-paced and suspenseful.

"I like Harry the most, but I also love Hermione. While Harry likes to act on impulse just like other teenagers, Hermione is a smart girl who is mindful and cautious. I find Snape likeable too. He's good at being tough and cruel. Without him the series would have been tame. Ron also has a lot of humour. He's not intelligent, but he's very friendly," she says.

When asked who she dislikes, Sumalee doesn't hesitate. "Dolores Umbridge," she says. "She's evil."

Sumalee attributes her fascination for the story to Rowling's superb characterisations and the Scottish author's knack for endowing her characters with human qualities. "But I really like that Harry never kills anyone even though he has the power to do so. He chooses not to use his magic to end life."

She's also pleased at the amount of knowledge she's accumulated through the translations - the different poisons ("they are real poisons not imagined by the way") and the range of mythological creatures.

Ironically enough, even with the pressure from deadlines and the tiring linguistic marathon, Sumalee has found translating the Harry Potter series less intellectually demanding than preparing for her classes at Durham.

"It used to take me at least nine hours and dozens of books to prepare for a two-hour class. I needed that time to be able to give the kind of answers my students merited. I've had enough of academic life. Now I prefer writing and translating," she says.

Manote Tripathi

The Nation