Hogwarts, it is unfortunate to admit, is fiction. Its homeland, the Scottish Highlands, is not. The first in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, has been translated into over 75 languages; now, after 20 years, the story of the boy who lived is coming home. Harry Potter is finally being translated into Scots.
Matthew Fitt, co-founder of Itchy Coo, an imprint of Black & White Publishing that produces Scots-language translations for young reader and children's books, will be heading the project. Due out in October 2017, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone will join such Itchy Coo-translated classics as Road Dahl's Chairlie and the Chocolate Works and The Sleekit Mr. Tod (that's The Fantastic Mr. Fox, for all ye wee bairns), and will be the 80th translated edition of Harry Potter.
Not only is Scotland the home of Hogwarts, it's the adopted country of J.K. Rowling, who penned the first novel while a struggling single mother in Edinburgh.
Though the translation process is still underway, Fitt and Itchy Coo have released the first paragraph of the beloved series. You Potterheads ready for a bit of a literary challenge?:
“Mr and Mrs Dursley, o nummer fower, Privet Loan, were prood tae say that they were gey normal, thank ye awfie muckle. They were the lest fowk ye wid jalouse wid be taigled up wi onythin unco or ferlie, because they jist widnae hae onythin tae dae wi joukery packery like yon.”
Weel dain, Itchy Coo. Weel dain, indeed.
