Translating Accent and Colloquial Language of a Literary Character: Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The aim of my thesis is to analyse a particular and extremely difficult situation translators might have to face during their career, especially when translating literary works, that is, translating the colloquial language of a character’s speech which is also influenced by a given regional accent. As it will be explained in the following pages, not only do translators have to deal with some problems caused by typical features of colloquial language, but they also have to find a solution which would permit not to miss the effect produced by that accent in the source text in the target text. To do so, I will take advantage of the Hagrid’s quotations table (see Appendix 1) in which I compare in two columns Hagrid’s English quotations (left column) and their Italian translation (right column). In order to individuate and analyse the strategies employed by the translator I will refer to some scientific works on translation studies and practice (e.g., Cavagnoli, Morini, Podeur, Zacchi).
The reason why I chose the third book of the saga, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, to carry out my research is that, in my opinion, here Hagrid participates more to the story with respect to the other six volumes. In fact, he is the protagonist of a secondary story, the end of which is fundamental for the development of the main one: he becomes Care of Magical Creatures teacher and one of his “pets”, the hippogriff Buckbeak, is unfairly sentenced to death because after being provoked, it attacked a student during the first lesson. Harry, Hermione and Ron help him overcome the terrible situation and in the end they even succeed to save Buckbeak.