Slashdot Mirror
Harry Potter in German, not Czech
The official translation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix into German is scheduled to hit shelves on November 8. But at the
Harry auf deutsch
site
(here's Google's
English), a community has sprung up to perform a distributed translation. Every volunteer works on five pages, with the aid of a
Potter-specific dictionary,
and after turning in a German version, works on the prose to ensure it reads smoothly. In an unrelated effort, some schoolboys who did a Czech translation and posted it to a private website have been
sued by Albatros,
the Czech publishing house who will have the official translation out in February. Looks like Harry is crushing more than
the Hulk.
Oh, and please don't post spoilers, it's still too early :)
That the story is...er...altered to some degree by that fanbase translation? "Ouch stoßen mich nicht dort! Meine Esel bereits Hurts!" besagtes Harry. "OH- Harry kannte ich Sie immer war ein GANZ spezieller Junge!" geächzter Professor Dumbledore. "Hey geben das Weibchen mir etwas von diesem voldemort liebend!" squeeked Professor Flitwick. ;) Never trust the fans!
I mean a Hairy Artist who works in clay sure don't sound like a childrens story to me.
At least he uses open source web browsers...
Hey idiot, Harry Potter is not your work. How and when they choose to choose to release the translated work should be up the the publisher.
I know this varies greatly between languages but won't the reader notice the 5-page "boundries" where the translator changes.
Most of the time there is never a 100% "correct" translation from one language to another and relies on the translator to make the judgement. This is not a problem when it's one person doing the translation as they would more likely to be consistent throughout the book, but when you have multple people it's bound to be very tricky.
People advertise when they break the law now ?
Why is this a suprise? I honestly would expect a publisher to do the same for any other independent translations of titles if they were planning on releasing official translations, whether it be J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, or Hillary Clinton.
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Write your own book, make it freeware and be happy. Harry Potter is not freeware, it is protected by copyright laws and international contracts for localisation / translation. It is, in the least, stupid, to be advocating what is, indeed, piracy.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
The summary says they're making a 'second pass' over the translated book to improve the consistency and correct flaws in individual 5-page groups. And, the fact that they have a special 'dictionary' containing all the necessary translations will probably improve consistency a lot.
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Does not fair use allow me to copy/translate a small sample (i.e 5 pages)? Taken alone this should be legal, there just happened to be a distributed control system, meaning that no 2 people release the same 5 pages.
... as an interesting side note, I believe the english Harry Potter books were the first english books to ever hit #1 on the German best seller lists before the German edition arrived.
You mean the publishing company that Rowling gave the right to translate and publish her work is suing someone who is releasing that is translating and publishing her work? How could they do that! Copyrights are evil! blah blah blah! [/slashbot impression]
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
I can't see JK Rowling endorsing the project, at least not officially, but this speaks volumes of how committed the fans are to her stories, and if I were her, I'd be proud.
Babelfish translation:
I wonder how many fans will be excited about being sued? Even if J.K. has a full right to do so, suing your fanbase isn't the smartest or most polite thing to do. In fact, since they're obviously intelligent and industrious fans (they're translating for God's sake, how many times have you done that for a book you despised?)they're probably the last people you're going to get good press out of. Suing "schoolboys" is like the RIAA suing college students, do it enough and you piss everyone away in disgust.
Thanks for witty reference to The Hulk jamie. What I want to know is how can ANYONE think that the publisher asserting their rights in this situation is a bad thing?
The very foundation of much of the opensource movement, the GPL license is about respect for law. These people distributing the Harry Potter work are not respecting the law. We can't have opensource without these very same laws.
pre-rebuttal: the case of the network wide 'search engine' and the college students was hardly the only such one that /. has complained about, and that one was quickly withdrawn after it proved to be untenable. additionally, that they sued for a enormous amount of money has no bearing on what they might have actually won.
Chinese is, after english the most spoken language, with 1.2 billion in mainland China alone. Chinese is also used in Hong Kong, Taiwan ROC, and countless international chinese worldwide!!
Rowling could sure make a couple of billion more if she releases a chinese edition.
Now, I'm just thinking how witches, wizards and Harry Potter magic would fit with the chinese culture. But well, if the rest of the world is reading it, then the Chinese would follow!
After all, who would watch Titanic many times without understanding a word in the dialogue?
The Harry Potter publishers were naive to think this wouldn't happen.
Yes I read that part, I guess it depends on the language. English being Germanic should n't be too much of a problem I guess.
The problem I'm thinking of is more subtle in that if you imagine converting the english version into an audio book even a persons voice and their inflections effect the mood.
So if you have different people just reading out the english, although word-for-word accurate would end up not being much fun to listen too.
The person doing the second-pass will probably have to do quite a bit of editing. What might be more useful would be of they had more than one translation of that section, the would choose one which "gelled" the most and required the least editing.
She's just jealous because when you say "Potter", more people think "Harry Potter" rather than "Frederica Potter" :-)
Hey -- there could be a crossover -- maybe Frederica could marry Harry! Certainly he'd be better than the losers like Nigel Reiver that Frederica normally goes out with...
I am surprised they let this happen
The thing is, exactly the same thing happened last time, when Book four was published.
At the time, (August 2000 BTW), some German fans started a distributed translation effort, as reported at the time in the Register
I would have thought, that the publishers would have learnt their lesson, and made sure that translations into the other languages where Harry Potter has a large fan base would be released on the same day as the english version, or failing that, not more than a month later.
Considering the huge volume of pre-orders that there where for book 5 in english, I think it was unreasonable to expect German fans to wait 3 months for the official translation, or Czech fans to wait 8.
Obviously some fans can read the book in english, but considering that the book is aimed at children, many will not, Instead they will ask their parents to read the book and give them the plot highlights. Is it not surprising that some of those adults are organising themselves to translate the book.
I am not condoning the what is happening, it is still a copyright violation, but it was entirely predictable, and IMHO, the publishers only have themselves to blame.
What is a private website? One with now external links to it? An intranet? While the auther seems to be implying that since it was "private" nobody should care, wasn't it on the "public" internet?
Lasers Controlled Games!
You may not believe it, but there are actually whole countries that make their people not only learn German but even force them to speak it 24 hrs a day! Oh, the humanity!
:-) )
(On a completely unrelated note: Take a look at the favicon on the Austria link above.
I don't speak navy-blue text on grainy, dark background image.
Nature abhors a vacuum...and apparently, so do geeks.
Although copyright law will definitely come down on the publishers' side, I assume that these translators aren't doing all this hard work in order to thumb their nose at the rights holders. If there was already a definitive German/Czech/Crotobaltoslavonian translation available, then this activity would be unnecessary. However, as far as the official translators go, well, if they can't keep up with amateurs working for free, then they probably ought to be trying harder or reevaluating their processes. If you leave a vacuum, expect someone else to fill it.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
It is an interesting project though, copyright issues aside. Wonder how good/quick a distributed translation would be?
Side note: Many professionals already use machine translation for a first step, but then there is the slow and careful process of crafting the book in a new language, adapting it to a local mindset, making it more than just a translation.
One typical example of the hard work of a translator is, of course, Tolkiens works.
Should the translator treat middle earth and the shire as *our* earth and england, or as a fantasy world?
In the first case, you want to keep references to english customs, manners and names. Otherwise you might want to adapt the characters and places to your local culture.
Now, Harry Potter is explicitly in england, so this is not such a problem, but you still want to check your cultural bearings.
A description of a typically normal (muggle) meal for example might be considered exotic (or gross) by a muslim, hindu or jew. Which is better: to adapt their menu so that the passage wont steal attention from the story, or keep it?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Heck, there was a slashdot story about this earlier...
It would be greatly amusing if the government got the idea of writing a harry potter book or two for "inspiring young kids toward great things." (i mean, JR Rowling has no power of copyright in china if the government don't give a shit about it) - like "Harry Potter discovers communism" or "Harry Potter vs. capitalistic pigs" or "Harry Potter and the red dragon Mao" something.
well, besides those, I eagerly await the harry-potter themed pornography that will soon surface around the world. I mean, making good stories with elaborate word-play into adult film of purely "uhh" and "ahh" and "ooo" and maybe "ouch" is a kind of translation, right?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
First of all, let me just say that I've never seen the fascination with HArry Potter. I've read more than my fair share of fantasy novels, some when I was a kid, some in my twenties, but I've never rated the Harry Potter novels to be even in the same league as, say, either the Chronicles of Narnia, the Middle Earth novels, the Dune series or even the Shannara books. Don't ask me why, I just can't seem to find the magic (pun intended) that others do in JK Rowling's creations.
Having said that, I'm not blind to how big a phenomenon Harry Potter has become. JK Rowling herself has said that she's surprised that the plot of this latest book wasn't leaked before its launch, even though the story was a closely guarded secret. Less than a dozen people had read the book before it went into production and the printing lines and distribution centres were closely guarded too to stop any copies of the book getting out before the official launch.
How many copies and how big an exercise are we talking about?
Well, the new book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, sold 1.7 million copies in Britain alone in its first week. The next best-selling hardback novel that week sold 6,500 copies. That isn't a small margin, it's a gulf.
Multiply that several times to come up with the number that were actually printed - 6.8 million for the original print run and 1.7 million for the second according to several sources. That's a lot of books. In fact, it's the biggest print run in history.
Now, if you had simultaneous launches in several languages then you'd have to have translations sorted beforehand (and worry even more about plot leakages), and have an even bigger print run to cope with all those foreign language versions.
Three words for you: never gonna happen.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
it's not "the right to use" it's "the right to fair use"
photocopying your favourite picture from a book to put on the wall is fair use
lithographing your favourite picture from a book to put on the cover of your book, isn't.
The reason there are no actual methodlogies described or proscribed is that "good" laws are worded such that it is left to a judge to interpret what is fair and what is not.
The aim is to avoid laws laws that say "you can use pictures from a book to decorate your domicile but not your published works" or "all electronics devices should have copy protection built in" because these tend to cause more trouble in the long run as cricumstances change.
For instance, in my county Nottingham, England, it is the law that every male of age must engage in weekly archery practice on pain of a fine. A law used by my friend who is a longbow enthusiast. (Some people get a bit cagey when you're out on the common with your longbow, shooting at trees).
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The People's Publishing House have been selling Chinese translations of the Harry Potter books since 2000. News story here. The Chinese translation of The Order of the Phoenix will be out in October - 29-year-old Ma Aixin is doing the translation, as the old translators were making the language too elegant and stiff.
By the time the editor has read 10 different versions of each section, he couldv made the minor modifications and be onto the next section.
liqbase
They might be missing something, though -- in French, at least, they don't do a straight translation. Rowling makes so many word-plays that a word-for-word translation wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable. The French translator is allowed the liberty of rearranging the games to work out properly in French. My absolute favorite is the Sorting Hat, translated to Le Choixpeau (sounds like "the hat," but words mean "choose-skin."). Also, Tom Riddle became Tom Elvis Jedusor, where Jedusor looks like "game of chance" or "game of spells" and the full name rearranges to Je Suis Voldemort. The houses of Poudlard become Gryffondor, Serpentard, Serdaigle, et Poufsouffle. In the collective translation, I'm sure we'll see some creative input on the word-plays -- but can they be consistent? I somewhat doubt it.
One thing the translators may be seeking to avoid is the over-(ab)use of this translator's power. A friend who had read the English version first threw her copy of Coupe de Feu across the room after one chapter toward the end. The translator had "corrected" something that Mme. Rowling wrote and reportedly has said in interviews that she wrote it intentionally. One surmises the twist may play a role in future books, though it hasn't thus far in Order of the Phoenix.
Would it be considered legal to download a translation if they had already purchased the english version?
We use that reasoning all the time when we 'translate' from our CD's to MP3 or OGG?
They should instead translate the book:
Hairy Troller and the order of Goatse
by The WIPO Troll
Much better plot and more action
The only way around this would be to hold up the release of the next book, everywhere, until all translations have been made. Will these German an Czech fans be happier with that plan?
your troll generator is sexist
Hermione gedeies. Harry gefingert Ginny. Die Schlanghause gewins die Hauskupf aber die Goldfogelhause gewins die Kwidietschkupfe. Herr Schnaps und Harry gebekommen gute Freunde. Siegfried Schwartz gebekommt Hauptmeister.
A lawsuit from Albatros? D'you get wafers with it?
... seems to be in the employ of the Ministry of Magic!!
Yer but I want to know which ones dawson?
Hermione does not die. Sorry to burst yer bubble...
I'll wait until they translate it into the original Klingon.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The rumor I heard was that she was so heartbroken when Stephen King died that she locked herself into her room without any food, and just wasted away.
Horrible tragedy, really.
hehehe, good one. You must have read the book!
You are talking about the one that doen't work in Galeon (and probably Mozilla)?
I think they had a game were you had to put a popular title or sentence, feed it through 4-5 university translation service and recognize it after it had been garbled beyond measure...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
It would be something for your wife instead of whoring around and sucking black cocks dry.
It's not Open Source Literature - at least not yet!
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
Look under the Dumbledore description :
"Hobbies: Kammermusik, Bowling"
Kammermusik I can understand, but Dumbledore playing BOWLING ?!?
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
I wanted to translate Tolkien into my language - it hasn't been done yet - and I wrote to local publishers but not one was interested enough to give me a reply.
Of course the solicitors who own the Tolkien estate require quite a bit of money for the rights, and there isn't going to be any profit if any when publishing it in my language (we have very little sales here).
I'm sad, because nobody is going to read Tolkien in my language.
That is not from Harry Potter. And this also is not from Harry Potter (though it could be...).
Now, Harry Potter is explicitly in england, so this is not such a problem, but you still want to check your cultural bearings.
Yet another ignorant person equating the United Kingdom with England.
Perhaps I should write a parody of it in my language and relevant to my country!
BERNE CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF LITERARY AND ARTISTIC WORKS (Paris Text 1971)
Article 8
Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall enjoy the exclusive right of making and of authorizing the translation of their works throughout the term of protection of their rights in the original works.
You want to argue fair use protection? Fine, it's arguably fair use to make a translation of parts of the work for your own or strictly limited academic use. Making a full translation of the whole work with the explicit intent to distribute it, while the rights owner is trying to sell her own version, is blatant violation. Mealy mouthed lawyerese that each individual translator is protected by fair use is dissembling of the most pedantic kind. The intent to violate is clear.
Discuss.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So you are saying that Harry Potter is not set in england, and is instead set in scotland/england/nothern ireland? That irritating little brat sure does get around.
No matter what field you're talking about, there will always be perceived vacuums, whether it's a lack of a translation for a particular language, or a version of software with a given feature. Accepting this "vacuum defense" is no different than endorsing anarchy.
Last time I checked, London was indeed well inside the borders of England.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
If I remember correctly, the main difference is that the german translation is only available to the translators and not available to everybody. The same thing was done with HP 4.
Sure, everybody has its own style to write a text. And then there are some problems with translating names (of persons and things). Should I translate "dementor" as "Dementor" or rather as "Geistsauger"? Do I need to translate the patronus charm? These were some of the questions that I was asking me when I did the translation of my five pages. (I didn't know about this HP-dictionary.) ... ;-)
And it's only now I recognized, how many english words for "zittern" exist: quiver, tremble, shake,
You englishmen do this quite a lot, don't you?
Honestly, I don't understand why Harry Potter is always compared to the Hulk. The Hulk is crap from graphics to story-line. It's unnecessarily overrated.
You own the copyright on the translation (unless otherwise agreed to in the contract for the translation),
This has some interesting effects when you're dealing with older works. If a piece of literature is originally in a foreign language but old enough to be copyright-free, the translations may recent enough to be copyrighted. So, for example, the original works of Goethe are free to distribute, but any translations done within the last few decades are not. (Although, in his case, several translations are also old enough to redistribute.)
from when I was judging ThinkQuest 2001. They were really, really bright. Needless to say they won a platinum award. Their contest entry is here.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Its.....Its.....Im not gonna tell you....but Dumbldore fights Voldemort (shiver) kool scean...when transfered to movie, I bet it rivals the yoda fight scean from SWE2....but it will be better cause the story is much better :-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
IP rights don't last forever. Someday in the future
Tolkien works would go into the public domain
and anybody would be able to publish them on
any language. I think that should happen in 2023.
BTW, I don't think that it is royalty problem.
It looks much more like underestemated sales problem.
This annoys the hell out of me. The consumers are working out of their own free time to fulfill a demand, something that the copyright holders ARE TOO LAZY TO DO.
They want their tidy profits, yet make no decent efforts to get the product out on time. The public is reacting to Harry Potter's own massive advertising campaign, and the German/Czech readers have to wait so much for the copyright holders to take their sweet time (and the official translator probably gets paid shit as well), that they take work into their own hands and redistribute it FOR FREE. They just want the product and would pay for it. This illegal distribution is the local publisher's own fault.
Screw them -- they deserve it. And for attacking their own fan base for greed, I hope their profits are minimal. I'll applaud the mass distribution of this unofficial translation up until the day the greedy publisher asholes have some real product to offer.
This is precisely the point of what would be wrong in addition to being not very consistent after everey 5th page with a community based translation.
I read both, English and German. The new HP obviosuly in English and I can say that 1-4 (which I read in German) are very, very accurately translated.
An accurate translation is certainly not a literal translation of a text, but rather a rewrite of the material in a different language by retaining the rhythm (the jazz beat, if you will) of the book and it's very hard to do, even if you're fairly fluent in both languages. While some translations of books are just awe aspiring others suck shit in a big way.
Kiddies, take a hint and wait or even better: If you have a grasp of English get a dictionary and work through the original version of the book. You get a free and very efficient English lesson kicked in in addition of the ability to spoil it for all your German only speaking friends.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Yes I read that part, I guess it depends on the language. English being Germanic should n't be too much of a problem I guess
Then like most guesswork you'd be wrong. For example a german poet might refer to a "tree". Now the meanings associated with trees in German culture are very different from those in British English culture. In German you would have associations with Germanic Mythology, the old folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, the modern german environmental movement. In english you'd probably think of things like Robin Hood and men in tights, "Hearts of Oak" and the british navy and various modern prejudices against anyone who cares about the environment (tree hugger). So that to a german or english speaker the word tree conjures up very different images. Thats why with even related languages (though German and English aren't as close as you probably think they are) it takes a skilled translator of literature to bring across what the original author possibly intended. You need to be well versed in the "culture" of both languages to translate effectively,
cheers and tschuess
Phil
No but, yeah but, no but...
There already was a trial in Holland, when
Russian author of parody to Harry Potter
(there are two series of parody to Harry Potter
written in Russia now) attempted to publish
Holland translation of his book. And he lost.
But I know other authors which do not object
against fan translations. For instanse L.M.Bujold
greatly appreciates her fans and doesn't ask them
to remove their translations (much better than
officially published ones) from their sites.
Problem is that Harry Potter is not a literature.
It is mass-media industry and most of its value
is done from marketing hype, not from quality of a
book.
Of course, Rowling does object free ride on her
costly advertising campaign and even free publications. Authors which value their works
more than their money do not.
nicht tschechisches bekanntgegeben durch Rogerborb auf Tue Juli 08, 10:30 morgens
von der Fremdschlüsselabteilung.
Die amtliche Übersetzung des Töpfers Harry und des Auftrages des Phoenix in Deutschen wird festgelegt, um Regale an November 8 zu schlagen. Aber am auf-Deutschaufstellungsort Harry (ist hier Englisch Googles), ist eine Gemeinschaft entstanden, um eine verteilte Übersetzung durchzuführen. Jeder Freiwilliger arbeitet auf fünf Seiten, mit dem Hilfsmittel eines Töpfer-spezifischen Wörterbuches, und nach dem Drehen in eine deutsche Version, liest Arbeiten über die Prosa zum Sicherstellen es glatt. In einer ohne Bezugbemühung einige Schoolboys, die eine tschechische Übersetzung taten und bekanntgegeben ihm zu einem privaten website von Albatros geklagt worden sind, der tschechische Verlag, der die amtliche Übersetzung heraus im Februar hat. Aussehen wie Harry zerquetscht mehr als das Hulk.
OH- und bitte geben nicht Räuber bekannt, es ist noch zu früh:),
(C) 2003 Rogerborg. You may distribute or sell this content without restriction. Oh yeah? Well fuck Slashdot. Fuck them up their stupid asses. Who gives a shit about who created the content? I translated it, so I own it now. Yeah.
Get the point? By your smug mealy mouthed editorial slant shall we judge you.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The largest issue is that making a good fluent translation requires an experienced highly trained professional. You don't become a translator just by learning a foreign language, you need to have native-level fluency in the source language to understand all the nuances of the work, and then you need to be a skilled writer so that you can express the same nuances in the target language. An amateur translation might tell you the plot, but it will not give you the same experience that a high-quality translation would.
Douglas Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot" talks, among other things, about the translation of "Godel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid" into various languages, and some of the problems the translators ran up against. It's actually quite amazing that it was possible to translate this book _at all_.
Harry Potter is probably considerably easier. (I haven't read it, hence the "probably") After reading Le Ton Beau de Marot, you can't help but have a lot of respect for good translators.
In Harry Potter, you've got such a range of made-up terms, words which are invented by the author, some of which need to be given translations, that you can't expect individual translators working on five-page sections to be able to maintain any kind of consistency.
For example, in Order of the Phoenix, Rowling invents a plant with a latin-sounding name, Mimbulus mimbletonia. What should this be rendered as in German? In English, it has resonance with words like 'mumble', uses the common English surname/town suffix '-ton', and it even refers back to to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner's use of the word 'mimble'. Different translators will approach the task of selecting a German equivalent differently. Some will leave it as is, others will try to select a different latin name that conjures similar imagery in a German mind.
Then you have Rowling's love of writing vocal tics, speech impediments, and dialect (hagrid's speech, for example), which basically requires her to have the character's voice in her head as she transcribes how he speaks. A hundred different German translators can't be expected to have the same 'hagrid's voice' in their mind as they imagine him speaking German, so you'll effectively find his accent changing from page to page as different translators render his speech.
I really can't see this effort producing a half-decent translation job.
I think there may have been a problem in the translation :)
By "I guess" in this context I meant "I'm not too sure".
Regardless I was really just talking about the language mechanics and converting sentance for sentance which may not be possible in some languages.
Your points on cultural aspects are of course correct.
The Czech publisher Albatros posted the following comment on its website (http://www.albatros.cz/article.php?sid=528) and I've taken the liberty to translate it, and hope I won't get dinged as well: > Before you run amok and start cursing Albatros please read this! First of all: It would have been enough if the translators informed us of their intent, and we would have come to an agreement similar to that reached between Harry Potter's German publishers and its "unofficial translators." They were smarter and more fair, and went directly to the publisher first. In our opinion, Harry Potter can, in our opinion, exist in unofficial translations on the web, but of course Albatros is bound by a contract with Mrs. Rowling and cannot support such activities - even if it wanted to. We must act according to the law and report the theft of copyright that occurred. These (web) pages (with the translation) were not redirected by Albatros, but out of incomprehensible revenge on the authors of the illegal translation. We are sorry that they did not have the courage to contact us, and we continue to refuse to pursue the case. If readers would rather look forward to the illegal translation instead of the book, we will respect their decision. Further complaints can be addressed directly to Mrs. Rowling. This entire misunderstanding occurred thanks to her. Albatros
Could jamie please explain why this is censorship?
It is censorship when agents of the state (whether or not prompted by a private entity, such as a copyright holder) use force or threats of force to stop someone publishing or distributing any information.
Note that it is censorship whether you approve of it or not.
As to the substancial point, of whether it should be legal to make unauthorised derived works, personally I feel that if copyright law's purpose is to encoursage the creation of works, then it should allow the creation of derived works that the copyright holder doesn't want to do themself; this would include translations that the copyright holder doesn't want to do - but the copyright holder would get the first chance to do translations.
What the hell gives you the right to translate a book (for which the local editor has paid a pretty high price) and distributing it without caring for royalties and profit loss for all parties involved?
If you think the law should be about protecting the wealth of corporations, this is a sensible attitude. On the other hand, if the law should be about protecting the rights of people, it isn't.
Some people are saying that an English to Germanic transaction would not be too difficult, but try to translate "aus" and you will be thrown for a loop. There is not direct translation for "aus", but a social translation is available. As in all languages, you cannot do direct word for word, but the societal linguistical equivalent.
Except Hogwarts for example is in Scotland. The books are set in the Great Britain at a minimum,
if not the United Kingdom.
And I heard that in the case of 28 days later, you can start playing the DVD on one day, and the movie will start the next day, after aeons of Fox advertisements that cannot be forwarded. This is to try to ensure that no-one buys the official DVD.
Yes I am, because the vast majority of the five books takes place at Hogwarts. Any self respecting fan of HP knows that Hogwarts is in Scotland not England. You can prove this from the text of the books. As such Harry Potter is set on the island of Great Britain, which is part of a country known as the United Kingdom.
Ignorant people constantly equate England with Great Britain and the United Kingdom.
Copyright things like these always have two questions.
The first is "Is it illegal?" You bet. Copyright protects Harry Potter and translating it without permission violates both US and their countries' laws. It's as illegal as every fansub.
The second is "Is it wrong?" Well, my answer has two parts. The first part is "Hell." The second part is "No." Of course you must take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt, but amateurs, people with a love of the story, beating professionals, people who do the work for money, doesn't mean that the amateurs are evil people simply because no money has changed hands.
Czechs beating the professionals by eight months is EMBARRASSING. One might ask is if it's right to sue someone for embarrassing you. Illegal as the translations might be, Jamie's comment, which many here are taking issue with, is on the money.
Of course, the real reason I made this post was for the subject line. 10 geek points to anyone who can identify it w/o Google.
How you like dat, you Potter freaks?
It's easy to generate outrage when it's your ox being gored, isn't it?
If all these people bought an English-language copy, what's wrong with them translating it to their language of choice and redistributing it amongst other people who also bought English-language copies.
Sounds like "fair use" to me. "I'll lose sales!" is NOT a valid response. The government has no requirement to protect business models - especially flawed ones.
15 year old girls are easier to crush.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It's the rage that triggers Bruce's tranformations.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Why do people always use the "but she's/Lars'/Elvis'/etc rich!" argument? It's not about money. It's about artistic control. It's about making sure that the translated work is as close to the original as possible. It's about having her work, which she has spent more than fifteen years creating so far, not get diluted by others trying to jump on the gravy train.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Let me guess. You're american :-) or at least someone who uses "I guess" in an American-English cultural context.
Even the mechanics are a bit of a problem. German grammar is quite different to English. It's true that Anglo-Saxon was a Germanic language, a branch of Old High German (I think but I'm not 100% sure) but it's changed so much over the years with various Viking languages and Norman French (which was a mix of old French and some other Viking languages) that there's not much relationship between them nowadays. Inflection and the Conjunctive case have all but disappeared from modern English and who nowadays knows when to use who and when to use whom.
All of this means that any non-human translation is going to be nowhere nears as good as a human for quite a while yet (IMO)
cheers
Phil
No but, yeah but, no but...
Harry steckte seinen Zauberstab rasch in seine Hose zurück und versuchte möglichst unschuldig dreinzublicken.
"English being Germanic shouldn't be too much of a problem"
Ha!
German sentence structure is *completely* different from English. German heavily favor passive constructions, in addition to sticking their verbs at the very end of the sentence. There are a zillion other differences, but trust me... this is not a trivial task.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
...or even the Shannara books.
You had already mentioned Middle Earth.
Did they happen to have a license from the Knowling or the publisher for producing and distributing a Czech version of the new Harry Potter book?
No.
The Czech publisher, Albatros, does- and has a legal right to sue them for infringement.
The German translation effort will run afoul the same situation at some point.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I could translate it into Czech in a week - but it would be damn near incomprehensible.
The point is not to bash out a version in the minimum amount of time possible, but to do it correctly, and well. The more dialects, wordplay, puns, etc. that a book contains, the harder it is to do it to a professional standard.
I have read the first three Harry Potter books in English and Spanish and my opinion over the translation is mixed. Although I can't give you an example off the top of my head, I do recall that there were some parts where the translator had completely missed the mark. To talk about "preserving Rowling" in a translation is a bit misleading as I generally find translators don't understand the context or connotations of many english phrases.
Having said that, somebody told me that the Polish translation of some of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are actually funnier that the english originals.
Worst translation every tho is Asterix (from French to Spanish). Depending on which volume you read, the dog (and some of the other characters) have different names.
nt
Actually, it never mentions in the books where hogwarts is, it's kept a secret. Just because it's filmed in scotland, doesn't mean it is set there.
Pfft - Sorry, what?
In A.D. 2003 ....
War was beginning.
Schoolboy1: What happen ?
Schoolboy2: Somebody set up us the lawsuit
Schoolboy3: We get signal
Schoolboy1: What !
Schoolboy3: Main screen turn on
Schoolboy1: It's You !!
Albatros: How are you gentlemen !!
Albatros: All your translation are belong to us
Albatros: You are on the way to pay us big time
Schoolboy1: What you say !!
Albatros: You have no chance to survive make your time
Albatros: HA HA HA HA
Schoolboy1: Take off every 'lator'
Schoolboy1: You know what you doing
Schoolboy1: Move 'lator'
Schoolboy1: For great justice
Half the cast have different names, entirely sensibly, because the names are pseudo-latin puns in their own right.
Obleix
Dogmatix
Getafix
Cacofonix
just to name the first 4 that spring to mind - all puns that would be lost if you kept the names.
I have to say, though, having read French and English editions back-to-back I found the English significantly funnier. OK, my French isn't great so I'm going to miss some of the jokes but I wasn't impressed overall.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Oh my, go and sue these 13 years old kids who are keen to share something. They need a special lesson, that publishing *anything* on the Internet will lead them to jail. I can understand, that for someone educated in England is easy to say something about waiting for a few months, when they do not know English. BTW my English is very basic, can You describe what does 'money translating' mean?
Wait until You will have kids and they will do this and many other things, like sharing files, getting movies. Would You sue Your own children? Try to imagine some more intelligent model - like: o. k. - here is Your unofficial translation, put it on our server and we will open it to anybody who places order for the expected book.
Until these stupid media distributing companies accept the new media and learn how to live with Internet, there will always be something called mess, but it is created by these companies - by the lack of flexibility and fear from lowering margins.
My point was more that the same character had different names in differnt volumes of the same language. All my spanish Asterix books are at home, but I know that between "Obelix and Co" and "Asterix and Caesar's Gift" The bard, The dog and The druid all change names.
Why not do something useful and translate five pages of the LDP?
Should the translator treat middle earth and the shire as *our* earth and england, or as a fantasy world?
In the first case, you want to keep references to english customs, manners and names. Otherwise you might want to adapt the characters and places to your local culture.
It already has been translated - frex "Merry" isn't really named "Meriadoc", the name was chosen so his English nickname would have the same connotation as his real nickname.
(Yes, I read the appendices, however if I were a real LotR geek, I'd know his real name & which language it's in)
Well, I think the flying car might have difficulty following it through the chunnel or something. I think it's fairly well implied it's on the same physical island, probably hidden by magic. Now whether it's in scotland, england, wales, or whatever, who knows.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Do you waaaaaant to come back to my place - bouncey, bouncey!
...I have to say that this is surely one of the dumbest examples of a dumb Slashdot discussion I have ever seen. It would be nice if Slashdot's editors could at least pretend they're trying to be unbiased. I mean, seriously--putting a story about publishers defending their rights against blatant copyright violation under the heading of "censorship"? Who are they trying to kid, here?
Because that is definitely what this is. Putting any unauthorized non-parody derivative work on the web is every bit!as much a violation of copyright as putting the Harry Potter ebooks on Kazaa. Frankly, I'm surprised that the German translators are doing this publicly, given that, as prior Slashdot stories have shown, apparently in Germany anybody or his dog can sue for copyright violation on behalf of a copyright owner without needing the owner's approval or even knowledge beforehand.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
There is also a Polish translation available ovet the internet. And to be honest, it was the first one to start. There are ten full chapters already there, there's a forum to discuss the translation and a chat link, on which somehow there are always few people.