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Bogus Harry Potter Book In China

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the how-to-make-some-ebay-scratch dept.

elveu writes "Chinese Harry Potter fans have been blessed with the fifth book early -- only it's not the real one. The title translates to 'Harry Potter And Leopard Walk Up To Dragon.' The story has Harry getting turned into a fat hairy drawf and being void of his powers."

1 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. People seem to be taken for granted.... by cyberon22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... that this book is poorly written. Direct translations from any language usually sound horrible. Chinese-English translations are particularly difficult because many language constructions in Chinese just don't have English equivalents. The same goes for English text simply translated into Chinese.

    So while the article linked above mocks the book on the basis of its first sentence. I'd be curious to know if the author (who is seemingly a native English-speaker) has read the original Harry Potter books in their Chinese translation. Is this one really worse???

    Frankly, I'd imagine that if this thing is selling as many copies as the author claims, it's either because it's well written, or because it's fooling a lot of people. And if it's fooling a lot of people, that probably means it's well written. Either that or Rowling needs to get some better English-Chinese translators....