What do you get when you cross a German cover with an Italian text? Albanian!

I am delighted to welcome back a guest contributor to potterglot.net, Baldur Babbling, the author of the site Potter of Babble (@baldurbabbling). He previously provided an excellent analysis of Arabic variation in PS—when I stumbled across a random Reddit comment asserting that Albanian was translated from Italian, not English, he was the first person I thought of. After doing some initial due diligence, I asked him for his opinion and I’m grateful that he indulged me once again!

One night recently, as I was getting ready for bed, I opened up my phone to find Potterglot asking my thoughts on whether the Albanian edition (Amik Kasoruho) could have been translated from Italian (Marina Astrologo). Certainly not, I thought! Of the translations I’d spent time engaging with, Albanian had been among my favorites. Admittedly, I hadn’t engaged with Italian very much—and so I had no judgment on how interesting the Italian translation was—but how could something as linguistically interesting as Albanian be taking the lead from an edition other than English?

Potterglot pointed out that the names in the Albanian translation are often Italian. He was right. Emeric Switch in Italian was Emeric Zott, as in Zott!—or Zing! in English. It was carried over into the Albanian edition as Emeric Zoti, adapted to Albanian’s linguistic constraints. Albanian also carried over Oliver Bastuni from Italian’s Oliver Baston (meaning wooden staff) for Oliver Wood.

Similarity in names always has an easy explanation, though: marketing. Proper nouns tend not to vary much across languages in the Harry Potter franchise. That makes products easier to market across borders. Albania has a close relationship to Italy, and it would make total sense that the Albanian publisher would want to share in Italy’s marketing in particular. Not surprising, given Albania’s small size and that the two countries are separated by less than 50 miles (80 km) of sea, but it has an even deeper relationship than you may realize.

Italy occupied Albania during World War II, setting the foundation for sustained Italian influence in Albania in modern times. Just years after Italy surrendered and the occupation ended, Albania came under one of the most hermetic and isolated communist regimes in history. Their access to the outside world was primarily through the airwaves—Italian radio and television—and it really cemented the special relationship Albanians have with Italian culture, which today pervades Albania. Last year I had the great pleasure to spend a month in Albania and Kosovo, the latter having a larger population of Albanians than Albania. The recurring joke throughout the trip was that Kosovo was a country for Albanians, while Albania was a country for Albanians who think they’re Italians.

But the “marketing” explanation quickly fell apart when we looked at more names. Potterglot pointed out McGonagall was translated into Italian as McGranitt and into Albanian as MekGuri (from guri, meaning stone). MekGuri clearly took after McGranitt as a translation choice, but it would have needed to be near-identical to McGranitt in order to have marketing value. Then I looked for Dumbledore’s name: Urtimori. It’s an absolutely brilliant description of Dumbledore. It refers to someone who remains quiet and calm. It must have been a direct translation from his name in Italian: Silente.¹ But there were other words the Albanian translator could have chosen that more neatly fit silente. He presumably chose Urtimori because it has another meaning in Albanian that quite fittingly describes Dumbledore: someone full of wisdom. With the Albanian translator’s clever choices, it’s easy to see why the Albanian translation is even more interesting than the Italian one!

So I stayed up late to look a bit deeper. The methodology I typically use for these cases is described in a previous guest post about the three macroeditions of Harry Potter in Arabic. You can read about it in this section specifically. Instead of rehashing the logic I set out there, I’ll state simply here that I believe the Albanian macroedition was indeed translated from the Italian macroedition, with some indication that the translator at times consulted the English original, and I’ll provide you a few examples of where this is evident.

First, a Word

The first place where I detected an Italian underpinning was in the passage with baby Dudley’s new word:

English	She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word (‘Won’t!’)
Italian	A cena, gli raccontò per filo e per segno I guai che la signora Della-Porta-Accanto aveva con la figlia, e poi che Dudley aveva imparato una nuova frase: «Neanche per sogno!»
Albanian	Duke ngrënë darkën, i tregoi fije e për pe telashet që kishte pasur zonja E-Shtëpisë-Ngjitur me të bijën dhe pastaj që Dadli kishte mësuar një shprehje të re: “Kurrën e kurrës“!

English	over dinner	all about	won’t
Italian	a cena to dinner “at dinner”	per filo e per segno by thread and by mark “in great detail”	neanche per sogno not-even by dream “never in your dreams”
Albanian	duke ngrënë darkën while eating dinner.DEF.ACC “during dinner”	fije e për pe strand and by thread “in great detail”	kurrën e kurrës never.DEF.ACC of never.GEN “never ever”

Nothing here is a smoking gun, but there are three markers that, together, strongly indicate the Albanian sentence was taken from Italian, not English. The first indicator is how “over dinner,” the sentence’s time reference, was moved to the front of the sentence. That alone is pretty weak evidence, though, since the placement of adverbial phrases can be rather strictly constrained in some languages: when I checked the translation of this sentence in other Romance languages, for example, they all placed their translation of “over dinner” at the beginning of the sentence, because that’s where it naturally should go in those languages.

“All about” was rendered into Italian and Albanian in a unique way, too. If you happen to be multilingual, you’re probably already aware that “all about” is a tough phrase to translate. Different translations have used different strategies to deal with this. It works all right in languages closely related to English that have this same phrase (such as in German, alles über). Some editions translated it as “all the problems” (French: tous les problèmes). Others skipped the phrase altogether (Spanish: le informó de los problemas).

The Italian and Albanian editions use the idioms per filo e per segno, “by thread and by mark” and fije e për pe, “strand and by thread” respectively, which LLMs translate to “in great detail”. Apart from offering a very literal sense of “all about”, these phrases appear to be etymologically related¹. Although we cannot conclusively say that Amik Kasoruho was influenced by Marina Astrologo’s translation choice for “all about”, it does seem more likely than not.

In the third marker, Dudley’s new word has been rendered suspiciously lengthy in Albanian. Part of what the reader understands from “won’t!” in English is that Dudley isn’t yet old enough to say whole phrases. Yet Albanian used a phrase, kurrën e kurrës “never, ever!”, that someone Dudley’s age would never say in full, and it’s quite easy to conceive that an Albanian kid would reduce this to just kurrën! or even kurrë! So why did the Albanian translator choose something so long? Neanche per sogno “never in your dreams” is the phrase used in Italian, and it’s possible that the Albanian translation was trying to match its cadence by using a longer phrase. Neanche would also help explain the Albanian edition’s shift from “won’t” to “never”.

And Now, A Treat

I then checked the translation of a food item, a test I try quite frequently in these cases. More often than not, food items remain unchanged. But translators have to be very intentional about the choices they make in describing food, because food plays a unique literary function in children’s literature. Any change a translator makes to food tends to be drastic and deliberate, and so if one translation is copying another’s change to food, it will be very obvious.

I turned to Dudley’s knickerbocker glory—a dessert that is very much culturally-coded—to see how the Italian and Albanian translations rendered it. Sure enough, the Italian translation changed it, and the Albanian translation had the same change.

English	Dudley had a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory didn’t have enough ice cream on top.
Italian	Dudley fece un capriccio perché la sua fetta di dolce non era abbastanza grande.
Albanian	Dadli bëri naze, sepse feta e tij e ëmbëlsirës nuk ishte mjaft e madhe.

English	his knickerbocker glory	didn’t have enough ice cream on top
Italian	la sua fetta di dolce the his slice of sweet “his slice of dessert”	non era abbastanza grande not was enough big “wasn’t big enough”
Albanian	feta e tij e ëmbëlsirës slice of his of cake “his slice of dessert”	nuk ishte mjaft e madhe not was enough of big “wasn’t big enough”

The Italian translator turned the knickerbocker glory into a “slice of dessert,” and the Albanian translator followed suit. I also highlighted the phrase that followed the dessert as indicating that Albanian relied on the Italian. In lieu of saying the dessert didn’t have enough ice cream for Dudley, both translations opted instead to say “it was not big enough.”

Consulting Hagrid

Another good place to check for these sorts of matters is in conversations with Hagrid. Because his dialogue is colloquially transcribed in the English original, it can require the translator to do a bit of rewording in order to convey the intended message. So if we suspect one macroedition is relying on another, we should be able to detect it somewhere in Hagrid’s many lines. Here’s an example where that can be seen in Albanian, from the passage where Hagrid tells Harry who Voldemort is:

English	Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin’ by then. But he couldn’t do it… took care of yer mum an’ dad an’ yer house, even — but it didn’t work on you, an’ that’s why yer famous, Harry.
Italian	Chissà, voleva fare piazza pulita, o forse a quel tempo ammazzava solo per il gusto di farlo. Ma non ci riuscì… non ha risparmiato la tua mamma e il tuo papà, e neanche la casa, ma su di te non ha funzionato, e questo è il motivo per cui sei famoso, Harry.
Albanian	Ku ta dish, mbase donte t’i vriste të gjithë, apo mbase aso kohe vriste vetëm se i pëlqente ta bënte. Por nuk ia doli… nuk t’i kurseu prindërit dhe as shtëpinë, por mbi ty nuk pat fuqi, prandaj edhe je i famshëm, Harri.

English	I suppose	he just liked killin’ by then	But he couldn’t do it	took care of
Italian	Chissà know.3SG “Who knows”	solo per il gusto di farlo only for the pleasure of doing-it “he just liked doing it”	Ma non ci riuscì but not at-it succeeded “he didn’t succeed”	risparmiato spared “spared”
Albanian	Ku ta dish where it know.2SG “Who knows”	vetëm se i pëlqente ta bënte only because him pleased to-it do “just because he liked doing it”	Por nuk ia doli but not to-him-it came “he didn’t succeed”	kurseu spared “spared”

The Italian and Albanian translations employ the same strategies in the highlighted parts: “I suppose” transforms into the interrogative, “who knows”; “maybe at that time he just liked doing it. But he didn’t succeed… he didn’t spare your parents.” Quite similar to one another, but quite different from English: “maybe he just liked killin’ by then. But he couldn’t do it… took care of yer mum an’ dad.”

But not so fast!

While it looks like the translator relied on the Italian translation, there are some places where the Albanian translation appears to buck the Italian for something closer to the English original. It’s most obvious in proper nouns that the translation didn’t carry over from Italian. Peeves, in the earlier Italian macroedition, is Pix². The Albanian translation, Ngac (meaning something like “nag”), tries to reproduce the meaning of Peeves in English.

And to add…

The Albanian translation could be linguistically interesting if it simply copied the Italian translation, but it could not be linguistically impactful if it stopped there. A translation that mimics its source without any sort of creativity of its own will come off dull and flat. The Albanian translator clearly used the Italian translation and he did so because he was intimately familiar with Italian literature: after spending decades in prison or under house arrest, Amik Kasoruho moved to Italy, where he published his body of work (writing in both Albanian and Italian). But he engaged actively with the Italian text in front of him, creating a new Albanian text in its own right. 

In some cases he reverted proper nouns to their English original, like with Nevil Longbottom (Italian, Nevil Paciock). In other cases he used the Italian as his springboard. Professor Quirrell became Professor Raptor in the early Italian edition. In Albanian he was transformed into Profesori Greps, a name that calls to mind clawing (as with Raptor) but in a surreptitious manner, like a cat when it’s stalking its prey. In another set of cases, Albanian did its own thing altogether: Remembrall (Ricordella in Italian) became MosHarro (“Forget-Not”). The goblins at Gringotts became xhuxhë, a short creature specific to Albanian folklore but with trickster qualities much like the goblins in English folklore.

Apart from proper nouns, we can also look at one of the places where a translator is most likely to go their own way: a poem. Take a look at the description of Slytherin in the Sorting Hat’s song:

English	Or perhaps in Slytherin You’ll make your real friends, Those cunning folk use any means To achieve their ends.
Italian	O forse a Serpeverde, ragazzi miei, voi troverete gli amici migliori quei tipi astuti e affatto babbei che qui raggiungono fini ed onori!	Or perhaps in Slytherin, boys mine, you-PL will-find the friends best those types cunning and not-at-all fools who here achieve ends and honors! Or perhaps in Slytherin, my dear boys, you will find your best friends, those cunning folk, not fools at all, who here achieve their ends and honors!
Albanian	Dhe Cjarpërblerti n’u takoftë, të mirë do i keni shokët, që me ndersynojnë të kenë në jetë të mirat që ëndërrojnë.	And Slytherin if-to-you befalls-it, ADJ good will them you-have friends, who with honor-intend to have in life the good-things that they-dream-of. And should Slytherin befall you, good friends you will have, who with ambition aim to have in life the good things they dream of.

The Italian here is quite faithful to the English. But you’ll notice immediately that the Albanian translator has reformatted the poem, using just three lines for every four in the English and Italian editions. The meaning is also subtly different from the English—it strikes perhaps a bit less sharp, as is the case with most of the Sorting Hat’s song in the Albanian version, but it captures the Slytherin ethos in a way I find more seductive and consistent to how Slytherins might pitch themselves to newcomers.

In sum

Since Amik Kasoruho, the translator, passed away in 2014, we may never get firm confirmation that the Italian was his primary point of reference in his translation process. But it seems to me that the number of linguistic markers showing an Italian underpinning is pretty abundant. Even so, Kasoruho adapted the translation in his own ways as well, adding a bit of original Albanian rizz to the text, while remaining restrained to the English original. It would be interesting to see if this remained the case throughout all seven books of the series.

1. Potterglot: It has been quite difficult to confirm if there is in fact a relationship between these two idioms. Superficially, the fact that they both employ “thread” as a motif leads us to believe that; however, it seems that the idioms are rooted in quite different imagery. In the Italian case, the “thread” references the practice in pre-industrial masonry, carpentry and fine arts or coating a thread in a coloured powder or chalk and snapping it against a surface to create a precision line (the “mark”). The Albanian idiom derives from the textile tradition; in this context, the fije refers to fibres or strands that are spun together in the pe, the thread. That said, even if there isn’t a direct etymological relationship here it remains plausible that the choice of phrase in Albanian was primed by seeing a similar Italian phrase. ↩︎
2. According to the fan-sourced Harry Potter Wiki, this is understood as an abbreviation for the English word “pixie,” but I could not verify that claim. ↩︎