Word Formations of Spells in Harry Potter Series

Abstract

As the most influential fantasy literature in the world, the “Harry Potter” series have led a magical fashion and won widely success ever since their publication. The mysterious spells used by wizards in the novels is one of the reasons for their success  in China. This thesis analyzes the word formations of spells in the “Harry Potter” series and explores the origins and connotations of those magic spells, with an aim to provide some enlightenment to the translation and understanding of foreign literature works.

This thesis has five parts. The first part mainly introduces the definition of English word formations and various ways of creating new words. The second part explores the specific ways of forming spells in “Harry Potter” series, including compounding, homophones and clipping. The third part discusses some traditional western culture reflected in the word formation of spells, such as the embodiment of the ancient Greek mythology, the Hebrew Language and the Latin culture. The fourth part explores enlightenment to translators from the perspective of translatology. The last part, based on the analysis of JK. Rowling's style of spell making, shows some inspirations to readers.

Through the analysis of the word formations of spells, we can find that the process of spell making also follows the rules of the word formation of English vocabularies and reflects their cultural origins.The author hope this paper could help readers and translators to understand and translate the foreign literature works much better. 

Key words: Harry Potter; word formation; spell; mythology