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Bogus Harry Potter Book In China
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."
This is completely different because it's a parody - but it amused me:
The first chapter is available online - and is hugely funny..
I bet you this thing, sadly, is going to become some sort of rare ultra-expensive collector's item stateside in the very near future... ...and this is a shame. I for one don't read the Harry Potter books, but even I have respect for J.K Rowling and her story (not referring to Harry Potter here)...so to turn something as fake as this "new" book is quite the shame, and I think I'd be upset if I were Ms. Rowling.
and being void of his powers
They turned him into Newt Gingrich?
My sig sucks.
"Harry Potter, and the Wrath Of The Troll", wherein Harry Potter is turned into a slashdot editor that can't spell.
I think of this as a combination of a fan-fic and street-level gray-market good. It's the adaptation of a local culture to a global one, and I think it's vital. After all, just who did Disney pay and ask permission from to use the characters in Mu-Lan, or the Lion King, or any of the other non-Western cultural figures that they freely profit from?
'Harry Potter And Leoard Walk Up To Dragon.'
In other news, the fake versions of the sixth and seventh book will be titled "Harry Potter Slay Dragon", and "Harry Potter Steal Dragon Treasure".
The manuscripts were discovered when buyers found that each only contained 2 pages of text, and a lot of blank pages.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The BBC also has a report about this here
I never apologise, I'm sorry but that's just the way I am - Homer
... 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....
Actually the books are very sophisticated intellectually. The sophistication is generally lost on American readers however who are unaware of the cultural and litterary references that Rowling ads in for the amusement of older readers.
For example Hogwarts Castle is a parody of Mallory Towers. The use of Magic as a substitute for technological mod cons is a homage to the Flintstones.
This simply carries on a long tradition of British Children's works, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is an allegory of the New Testament. The Harry Potter series as a whole is an allegory of a series of works by Foucault. The Dumbledore character is an anegogical reference to Derrida. The Dursleys are of course a reference to Proust.
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(* The story has Harry getting turned into a fat hairy drawf and being void of his powers." *)
Perhaps they should have called it, "Harry Gets Married".
Table-ized A.I.
This is a case which we are aware of and, as with all piracy matters throughout the world, take this issue extremely seriously.
i am sorry, HUH? piracy matters? wtf does that have to do with this? This is more like infringement of copyright of the Harry Potter name, but there are other people writing fan fictions -- the only thing this author is guilty of is probabbly the fact that he pretended to be Rowling, but throughout the story it appears that he did not try to do that anyway, nor does people really think that he is Rowling because of the difference in writing style etc; so it just boils down to that a fan-fiction got published and we are taking it *way* too seriously because Rowlings believes it's taking away some of her money. good grief people.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Haryy's quest to continue to find He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as he journeys across the wild and exotic backdrop of rural China. Along the way he encounters the loveable but stern Master who takes him in and teaches him Leopard-Style Kung-Fu, the only Kung-Fu capable of beating the Voldemort's Dragon-Style. Armed with a quarter staff and the ability to make feathers float, he resumes his quest only to finally meet up with Voldemort against the oft-used-but-still-unappreciated-backdrop of the Great Wall. They challenge each other, make feathers float, then begin the fateful duel. Hilarity ensues. This book has dubbbed speech, or you can choose the subtitle option, where the english shows up at the bottom of the book as a footnote.