http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4100821.stm Last Updated: Thursday, 16 December, 2004, 10:29 GMT
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Irish spells for Harry Potter
The Harry Potter books have sold millions worldwide
The magical world of Harry Potter has cast its spell on the Irish language.
The first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, has been translated into Irish by Maire Nic Mhaolain, originally from County Down.
The book's publishers, Bloomsbury, have produced 25,000 copies and are waiting to see how it sells before translating the rest of the series.
Ms Nic Mhaolain said that translating JK Rowling's intrinsically English expressions to Irish was difficult.
Encountered problems
The names of the characters and places invented by the original author were not changed in translation, Harry Potter Agus An Orchloch.
In addition words such as Quidditch and Muggles were left alone by the Irish author.
However, Ms Nic Mhaolain said she still encountered problems right from the start.
She said: "When I was doing the translation, the very first sentence took me ages because it said 'The Dursleys were perfectly normal, thank you very much'."
She said that the expression 'thank you very much' was not intended to mean what it normally would.
I think Hermione is a good role model. She would get up your nose at times, she is so bossy, but in the end she is a good friend
Maire Nic Mhaolain
"I worked and worked at that sentence and then I said 'I'm still at the first sentence, help'. I went on, because I could have been stuck for ages," she said.
"After a while I worked out a technique to get around that."
Ms Nic Mhaolain gave a reading to some young Harry fans at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin on Wednesday.
Eleven-year-old Sean Behan said: "It's good to finally have an Irish book that someone can read."
Laura Duff, from the Gael Scoil, Maynooth , County Kildare, who was attending the event, said it was wonderful to have a contemporary and successful book to offer her pupils.
"I think it is a great idea," she said.
"It is something they all enjoy reading. They have all read it in English and a lot of them have the book in Irish and were following along when the author was reading."
Ms Nic Mhaolain, who is from Downpatrick and worked for many years as an editor with An Gum, spent about nine months working on the commission.
Good friend
Before she started, she had not read the original novel, although it was "in the house".
Now she has a favourite character, Hermione.
She said: "Harry, of course, is the central character but Hermione is a clever girl.
"I think she is a good role model. She would get up your nose at times, she is so bossy, but in the end she is a good friend."
A Greek version of the book was launched at the same time, bringing to more than 200 the number of languages into which the record-selling children's books have been translated.
Already, 35m Harry Potter books have been sold worldwide, making author JK Rowling the highest earning writer in the world today.
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