Bizzumbaw and heidbummers: why Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is better in Scots.

K Rowling’s wizard tale has been translated into 79 foreign languages, but this new version may just be the best of all.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is not a very good book. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane is terrific.

The Scots version of JK Rowling’s debut, to be published this Thursday by Itchy Coo, is the 80th language into which the novel has been translated. But what is the point? After all, anyone who can read the book in Scots will already be able to read it in English.

This is not just a translation, though. Matthew Fitt, the translator, has applied a defibrillator to Rowling’s flatlined text and made it come alive. Take the introduction of Harry’s uncle, Mr Dursley. No longer is he the director of a firm that makes drills; he is, in fact, the “heidbummer” – a word which is not only funnier, but better conveys his professional smugness.

When the Dursleys try to keep their nephew from his magical destiny by fleeing on a stormy sea, the journey is described thus: “Icy spindrift and rain creepit doon their craigies and a cranreuch wund whuppit their faces.” Some will recognise that word “cranreuch” – cold – from the Burns poem To a Mouse. Other Scots parents may simply be glad of the chance to read Harry Potter as a bedtime story without being bored into slumber themselves.