MORE THAN 600 Irish children have applied to be the voice of Harry Potter in an Irish-language film version of JK Rowling’s story.

TG4 is to broadcast Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as Gaeilge on Hallowe’en, and will hold auditions in six cities and towns this week to find a young actor to speak the hero’s lines.

Warner Brothers has given the station permission to dub the second movie in the series as Harry Potter agus an Seomra Runda. It will supervise the casting of actors to replace the voices of stars such as Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore, and Fiona Shaw, who was Aunt Petunia.

Telegael, the Spiddal-based television facilities company, will reduce the hopefuls to a shortlist of about 20 following casting calls in Dublin, Belfast, Limerick and gaeltacht areas this week. They want a fluent Irish speaker between the age of seven and 13, who is willing to spend most of August in a sound studio in return for a fee of about €1,000.

Siobhan ni Ghadhra, a Telegael producer, said: “Warner Brothers have the final say on which child we pick. It can be a young boy or a girl — after all, Bart Simpson’s voice is done by a woman. The applications so far have been 50/50 from boys and girls.

“Apart from finding Harry Potter, we will be keeping our eyes open for children who can play other parts in the film. Most of the roles will be filled from a pool of actors we’ve used before.”

Telegael is planning to shoot a simultaneous documentary on the process of finding actors and re-recording the Potter film into Irish. Entitled Ce He Harry?, the documentary will be broadcast on TG4 before the film on Hallowe’en night. Telegael hopes to keep the identity of the child chosen a secret until the broadcast.

Ni Ghadhra said a native Irish speaker would not necessarily be chosen. “We’ve had kids from all over the country looking to audition; not just people from gaeltacht areas,” she said. “We are looking for someone who has confidence and personality. The child will have a lot of lines to read but they will have a lot of help from the director.”

The first Rowling book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, has already been translated into Irish by Maire Nic Mhaolain. Harry Potter agus an Orcloch was published last year and is being used by Irish-language teachers in secondary schools. Bloomsbury, the publisher, has indicated that it will commission further translations.

Rowling’s agents keep a tight rein on translators and words such as quidditch, the flying broom sport, and muggles, the wizards’ term for humans, are generally retained.

Telegael is used to dubbing animation films into Irish, but this is the first time it has taken on a live action film. It may next turn to The Quiet Man, the John Ford film that was shot in Ireland in the early 1950s and retains a cult following. Paramount has agreed a fee for an Irish-language version and TG4 has agreed to broadcast it.

“We’re trying to get the money together, but it should be next after Harry Potter,” said Ni Ghadhra. “There are some small contractual issues to be sorted.

The second Potter movie appears to have been chosen for translation because TG4 had bought exclusive rights to the first Irish broadcast.

Additional reporting by Lynne Kelleher

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