Today, I want to give you a look at Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: The Filipino Edition. Yes, that’s right. The well-loved Harry Potter novel has been translated into Filipino. And it came out during the Manila International Book Fair around the first week of September.

The Filipino edition of the first Harry Potter novel was published by Lampara Publishing, the children’s literature arm of Precious Pages Corporation. We all know Precious Pages as the leading publisher of Tagalog romance novels, but now it also translates English bestsellers into Filipino. Precious Pages previously came out with Filipino editions of Twilight, Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey, some novels by Nicholas Sparks and other bestsellers.

So now, Potterheads can experience the Harry Potter world once again by picking up and reading this edition. The good news is that this would only cost you P199, which is almost half the cost of its English counterpart. Do note that this one’s trade paperback.

The cover is just like any other Harry Potter books out there. And the only noticeable difference from other editions is the subtitle (“The Filipino Edition”) as well as the Lampara logo on the cover. They didn’t bother translating the title, too.

By the way, this one was translated by Becky Bravo, a known Children’s Lit author here in the Philippines.

The one thing I immediately noticed upon opening the book is that the printing press didn’t do a great job in trimming the book. You can still see crop marks. And the page is off center. There’s so much space at the bottom. But the printing, paperwise and ink-wise, is good enough. It’s comparable to other trade paperbacks available out there.

I haven’t finished reading the book. But I think it’s an okay translation job. It’s definitely better than the Twilight Filipino edition. Of course, there are still a lot of ways to improve this particular translation.

My beef with this translation is that “ay” was overly used and that usage made some parts read like an academic paper instead of a story. And having too much “ay” made some utterances unnatural. There are some typos here and there too, and some words accidentally omitted. But it’s good that proper names like “Number Four,” “Fat Lady” and others weren’t translated literally. Some English words were still used, of course, to avoid awkwardness.

So if you’ve read the Harry Potter series before, I’m sure you would want to read it again but this time in Filipino. I hope the Filipino edition of the other novels in the series would be out soon.

Back cover blurb

Kailanman ay hindi pa nakapaglalaro si Harry ng Quidditch. Wala siyang alam na mga orasyon, kailanman ay hindi tumulong upang mapisa ang itlog ng isang dragon at kailanman ay hindi nakapagsuot ng kapa na may kapangyarihan upang hindi makita ang isang tao. Ang tangi niyang alam ay ang miserableng buhay kasama ang mga Dursley, ang tiya at tiyo niyang masasama ang ugali, at ang kasuklam-suklam na anak ng mga ito na si Dudley—ang napakatabang bully na lumaki sa layaw. Ang silid ni Harry ay isang maliit na aparador sa ilalim ng hagdanan. Labing-isang taon na rin siyang hindi nagdiriwang ng kanyang kaarawan.

Pero nakatakdang magbago ang lahat nang dumating ang isang misteryosong sulat na hatid ng isang kuwago; isang sulat ng paanyaya na ni sa panaginip ay hindi niya naisip na may ganoong kamangha-manghang lugar. Doon ay nakatagpo siya hindi lang ng mga kaibigan, mga larong nagaganap sa himpapawid, at iba’t ibang uri ng mahika, kundi isang kapalaran na matagal na nang naghihintay sa kanya… kung kakayanin ni Harry na makaharap ito…

So that’s a look at the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: The Filipino Edition. You can buy it from Precious Pages bookstores nationwide for only P199.00 a copy. I know it will also be available in leading bookstores in the coming days.