A Goblin or a Dirty Nose?

This paper discusses the treatment of culture-specific items in translations of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books. It identifies a range of procedures adopted by various translators and considers their effectiveness or otherwise in dealing with particular problems. It is suggested that there is not necessarily a clear correlation between the use of a particular procedure and the degree of domestication or foreignization obtained in the target text. It is also argued that instead of dealing with each culture-specific item separately, on its own merits, it may sometimes be helpful to adopt a macro perspective which looks at sets of culture-specific items in terms of their joint contribution to the development of the whole text. More reasoned and systematic decisions as to how to treat individual items may be made once they are seen as part of a network of references which work together to achieve a global impact.