At the wave of "une baguette magique"

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It is often the case that you are able to say things in fewer words in English than in French.  This often results in a French translation being invariably longer than the original English text.

This is due to the fact that there are around 100 000 French words recorded in “Le grand Robert” while the Oxford English Dictionary counts about 171 500 words. As a result, while the English language may create a new single word, the same term in French requires a combination of multiple existing words.

For example; the English word ‘a wand’ translates as “une baguette magique” in French. Why use one word when three will do?!

As the word ‘a wand’ is used countless times in the Harry Potter series, when it came to translate The Half Blood Prince, the French version contained 727 pages compared to 607 in the English version!





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