Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers

Harry Potter 1

By: J.K. Rowling

Narrated by: Bernard Giraudeau

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Orphelin, Harry Potter est élevé par un oncle et une tante qui ne l'aiment pas. Le jour de ses 11 ans, son existence bascule : un géant l'emmène à Poudlard, l'école de sorcellerie ! Voilà son incroyable destin : être sorcier. Jeter des sorts, utiliser des pouvoirs, ensorceler les trolls... À la maison Gryffondor, il rencontre Ron et Hermione, s'initie au Quidditch, un sport pratiqué sur un balai. La vie est excitante, mais Voldemort, Celui-Dont-On-Ne-Doit-Pas-Prononcer-Le-Nom, refait surface.

Initiation ou plaisir renouvelé, plongez dans le 1er tome du célèbre chef d'œuvre de J.K. Rowling ! Guidé par une voix envoutante, revivez le début de la série Harry Potter avec ce livre audio à télécharger.

©1997 J.K. Rowling (P)2000 Éditions Gallimard Jeunesse

The narrator’s effusive style is distracting.

I imagine that if I were a french-speaking teenager, I’d find the narration exciting to listen to. Monsieur Giraudeau does distinctive voices for each character, and reads with much drama. But as a learner, I found this distracting.

Narration is Annoying

I LOVE Harry Potter and have read and listened to them in English multiple times. This is my second time trying to read and listen in French. I really tried the first time but found the voices of the beloved characters so annoying I couldn't listen anymore. I'm trying again for the sake of improving my French but it's not easy. This time as I read along, I've noticed that the narrator also omits words and entire sentences fairly often and I am only on Chapter Four. As other reviewers have said, Mr.Giraudeau reads very quickly and mumbles. I'm happy to see that the narrator changes halfway through the series as I'm not sure I'll be able to listen to any others he narrates.

Great story. Excellent narrator. Fabulous learning tool.

As an American intermediate Speaker of French, I found this book to be a delight and an excellent learning tool. I have it in French on Kindle and the combination is magic (pun intended!). The kindle offers instant dictionary access for unfamiliar words, the audio provides practice in listening and comprehension (the hardest part for me), the ability to stop and repeat offers the opportunity to practice pronunciation, and the plot keeps you engaged and motivated. This and the right reference books have allowed for very efficient progress in my French listening and speaking skills.

Wonderful story, wonderful narrator, organic language acquisition. Most enjoyable and effective learning experience I’ve had in years.

Excellent

English speaker here. I love to hear the French. Some questions.
1) Why is "Hogwarts" called "Poudlard" instead of keeping its proper name?
2) The angry voices jump in volume so much that *I* jump to turn the volume down. Was the difference in volume done on purpose, for emphasis, or a mistake in levelling, or, something else?
I give only 3 Stars for Performance because of these moments. Also because some lines are over-acted or melodramatic, especially when the characters are angry.

Bad narrating

I bought this book to work on my listening in French, but the narrator was so annoying with his awful voice acting that it made it much more difficult than it should have been. The women’s voices were the worst. I doubt I will get another book narrated by this person.

The voice acting detracts from the story

The narrator makes core characters sound absolutely ridiculous, with hagrid sounding like a mentally handicapped troll and women being voiced with an absurdly high-pitched tenor.

Muy buen narrador!

El narrador lo hace bastante entretenido y fácil de seguir! Me encantó! Lo utilicé para ensayar francés. Mientras escuchaba el libro, leía en Kindle para acelerar mi aprendizaje.

Awful voice characterizarions

The narrator gave Ron a lisp. What more can I say? All the students have monotone voices that makes them sound like idiots, except Hermione who sounds on the point of piping hysteria. And all the adults have comedy voices, and sometimes the voice acting goes against the text - 'colère froide' means 'contained anger' so why is McGonigal screaming? It takes away the pleasure if trying to improve one's French when the reader is hurting your ears.

Very Difficult To Understand

So context, I am a fourth year university student (in Canada) taking French. I am fluent in French and fairly confident with my command of the language. That being said, I had a VERY difficult time understanding the narrator... Perhaps because I am not an native French speaker, but even with slowing down the narration I had such a difficult time understanding the voices. They seem mumbled, they seem too nasal and it causes me a lot of difficulty with this book.

I am hoping once I spend a little more time immersed in the French language I will be better equipped to understand that narration, but as someone who exclusively operates in the French language academically... I am not sure that that will happen any time soon.

Review:

As a native speaker, you will enjoy this book
As a language learner, you will probably have difficulty with this book

TIP: if you listen to this while reading a physical copy of the book, you will be able to better understand the narration.

Fantastic book. Big challenge.

Well, it was a delight to listen to this book, it was also a big challenge. Harry Potter is the kind of book I will always read/listen no matter in what language I pick up. In this case, I choose french as an oportunity to pratice the language, but was very hard, I need to say. The narrative is faster than I was used to, and and sometimes was almost impossible to understand, as Hagrid for example. Was an exercise to come back again and again until I thought I got the meaning. After some chapters, I do not know if the narrative was slower if I got used to the pronunciation, but it was a easier to identify the text, but even so it was hard. I think so, It is almost an exercise in resistance. If you stop, you will never know what you are capable of.