That it isn’t the same translation they read as children and that was used in movies.

It is not a particularly high-brow debate, as HP, unlike Dostoyevsky in en-world, is read by everyone. People usually concentrate on proper names. Rowling uses a lot of “meaningful” names like Snape, Sprout or Ravenclaw, and translator have a choice of adapting them or leaving them be. Either choice leaves somebody unhappy. The same problem was with LotR a generation before. (LotR broke through the iron curtain only in 90s).

When I read HP in original, I realised that the “proper” translation is also extremely bad. I don’t know what I should do when/if I have children. Either I’ll start working on my own translation during the pregnancy, or I’ll teach them English from the birth.

The situation in Lord of the Rings has an added twist: many of the names are Old English, Anglo-Saxon or even Goth, and the translator faces a choice between leaving them alone and trying to translate them into Old Czech (Old Slavonic...), Old Finnish or whatever, which will nevertheless change the cultural context.

...and the twist on top of that is that JRRT has already translated the characters' actual names into anglophone cultural equivalents, eg:

  Maura Labingi          Frodo Baggins
  Banazîr "Ban" Galpsi   Samwise "Sam" Gamgee

What an absolute chad.

We did the English route without even thinking about it. LOtR is very strange in Swedish...

I hear Star Wars is a pain to translate because of the meaningful names.

“Darth Vader” was sometimes translated as “Dark Father”, but that his role as Luke’s father too obvious - a role the initial translators didn’t know existed.

George Lucas wrote that twist for The Empire Strikes Back. The character was already named Darth Vader.

>> LotR broke through the iron curtain only in 90s

Strange, because my understanding is that The Hobbit was well-accepted by soviet authorities.

Probably because it was simpler and less prone to political interpretation (a dark lord sitting in the east of the continent with a ton of humanoids that work like slaves to wage a war to the rest of the world).

For instance, 'Longbottom' is translated quite literally, which can feel a bit silly.

As someone with an English "bottom" as in bottom-lands surname, I appreciate the deliberate silliness of "Longbottom" while leaning into a very traditional British sounding name.

Does it refer to a large valley? (lots of fertile ground) Perhaps, it is a punny reference to him being a pure blood.

It's silly in English too. Perhaps some British readers might be familiar with the name and its history/origins, but for most English readers, I suspect, it just sounds a bit silly, like he has a very tall butt.

Washington, D.C. has the famous Foggy Bottom.

Edit: America has a lot of bottoms, apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geographical_bottoms

Nowhere as grand as Aunt Mary's Bottom but South Dakota does have a Big Bottom.

"Talk about mud flaps My gal's got 'em."

It's silly, but it does feel like a real name. There are many such names in Britain.

Longbottom is the serious version, before that it was Stretcharse.

In French he's called "Londubat", which phonetically means "long FROM the bottom", which is arguably even worse than the English name.