Before we get on with today's fanfic, I've got some fun bonus content. For whatever reason, youtube recommended to me a video of some woman reading Chapter 1 of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone in Korean. And then it offered an automatic transcript; better yet, it offered to autotranslate the autogenerated transcript into English for me. That was too much fun for me to pass up!
I won't link the original video, because I'm sure she did an absolutely fine job reading the Korean version of Harry Potter, and my intent is to make fun of Google's awful automatic transcriptions combined with it's only slightly less awful automatic translation, not to make fun of her. You can find the entire autogenerated autotranslated transcript of chapter 1 here. It starts off just fine, calling the chapter "A surviving child". But things quickly go off the rails after that. Here are some of my favourite quotes from this treasure-trove of nonsense:
- "The Dursleys who live in the free virgin burnt offering say that they are normal.": Well, uh, I don't think that's how Lily's sacrifice worked? I mean, unless Harry was an immaculate conception? Someone write this fanfic. (original line: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.")
- "The ship is long, so I take my head over the garden fence and steal my neighbors. Her hobby was perfect.": Virgin burnt offerings? Stealing the neighbors? What exactly are these Dursleys up to! (original line: "Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors.")
- "Mr. Dursley picks up a tie and prepares to go humming the hum.": Whatever this means, the more I picture Vernon doing it, the funnier it becomes. (original line: "Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work,")
- "At the paraplegic office, Mrs Dursley sat down as always to participate.": Well, now we know what Petunia does while Vernon is humming the hum. (original line: "Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor.")
- "He ran across the evacuation crossing to the office and did not interfere with his secretary.": That's good. Never interfere with your secretaries! (original line: "He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him,")
- "He put down Mathematics 2 again and fell in love with his beard.": Uh, what? Most of these you can at least guess the original line. Not sure how we got from "He put the receiver back down and stroked his mustache" to that, though.
- "Maybe people are celebrating the sunshine festival early at once.": That came out unreasonably well. Bonfire Night is a particularly British thing, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was changed to the sunshine festival in the Korean version. It just struck me as odd how something complicated like that came out fine, and much simpler concepts got completely mangled. (original line: "Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early")
- "Lily and James. I can not believe it. I do not want to believe the tentacles.": Ah, now we have tentacles to go along with the neighbor stealing and blood sacrifice. That's...nice? (original line: "Lily and James... I can't believe it... I didn't want to believe it... Oh, Albus...")
- "I also have a scar on my left knee that looks like a map of my car.": And I thought the original scar was kind of useless. (original line: "I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground.")
Right, that's enough of that! On with a fanfic! I was going to recommend something I just read yesterday and really enjoyed, but it's not a humour fic, and I don't feel like I can put anything else in a post with the above nonsense. Expect that one tomorrow. Instead, have the funniest one-shot by nonjon, one of the funniest fanfiction authors in the Harry Potter fandom. Not a lot I can say about it without spoiling things, other than that it makes me laugh outloud every time I read it. So enjoy!
- Title
- Birth of a Name
- Author
- nonjon
- Rating
- M
- Fandom
- Harry Potter
- Synopsis
-
- A Slytherin prefect on the brink of a series of lifechanging events, needs to settle on a secret identity that will inspire fear in the hearts of the weak... You didn�t think 'I am Lord Voldemort' was his first choice, did you?
- Status
- complete
- Download
- plain text