Works

Lia Wyler has been translating books since 1969. Her translations include books by English-language authors such as Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

, Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

, Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe

Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

, Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

, Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

, and many others.

However, it is as the translator of the Harry Potter

Harry Potter

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...

 series that she has become most well-known. She has been praised by the series author, J.K. Rowling, for daring to take on the challenging task of translating personal names to Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

. "Bob Odgen," for example, in the sixth book, became "Beto Odgen": "Bob" is a nickname for the English name "Robert," which has the Portuguese equivalent of "Roberto," for which "Beto" is a nickname.

Some typically Brazilian slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 terms were also incorporated into the translation: "Crookshanks" (literally "bent legs") became Bichento (a word which means "twisted legs" in the Brazilian Northeast

Northeast Region, Brazil

The Northeast Region of Brazil is composed of the following states: Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia, and it represents 18.26% of the Brazilian territory....

). She also created original versions of names created by the author, such as "Quadribol," (Quidditch

Quidditch

Quidditch is a fictional sport developed by British author J. K. Rowling for the Harry Potter series of novels. It is described as an extremely rough, but very popular, semi-contact sport, played by wizards and witches around the world...

), "Trouxas" (Muggle

Muggle

Muggle, a term from the Harry Potter book series by J. K. Rowling, refers to a person who lacks any sort of magical ability and was not born into the magical world...

s), and the names of the four houses of Hogwarts

Hogwarts

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry or simply Hogwarts is the primary setting for the first six books of the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, with each book lasting the equivalent of one school year. It is a fictional boarding school of magic for witches and wizards between the ages of...

: "Sonserina", "Grifinória", "Lufa-lufa" e "Corvinal" (Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw).

Lia graduated with a degree in Literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 at PUC-Rio and received her Masters in Communication

Communication

Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...

s at Eco-UFRJ, where her thesis was entitled "Translation in Brazil." She was also the author of the first history of translation in Brazil, "Línguas, poetas e bacharéis", ("Languages, Poets, and Scholars" (?) ), and she was the president of the National Union of Translators from 1991 to 1993.

Wyler recently released the translation of the seventh book in the series (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) with the Brazilian Portuguese title Harry Potter e as Relíquias da Morte.