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 :)

Comments

What Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

A sentence started with "hey idiot" can surely be considered as flamebait - not worth to read.
People should learn to argue before flaming around.

Of course it's a violation of copyright and regarding the czech case, definitely not any kind of censorship.

This article points out again (and again and again...) how important it is that slashdot editors *READ* the news before submitting it.

Inconsistancy in tone/style between translators?

[msgmonkey]

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.

wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

People advertise when they break the law now ?

What?

[JanusFury]

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.

Re:What?

[radish]

All those things are (IMHO) fine. What is NOT fine is ripping a R1 DVD to divx and putting it on your website for R2 users to download. Likewise, it is NOT OK to photocopy someone else's copy of a Japanese magazine. If someone set up a translation service where I gave them my copy of the book in english and they provided me with a translated copy that's fine, but there has to be that initial purchase, otherwise it's simple copyright infringment. Putting the translation on a webpage does not ensure that the reader has purchased a legitimate copy to begin with.

Censorship???!!??

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Could jamie please explain why this is censorship? 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? Is anyone by any chance prohibiting these fine Czech and German people from buying the book in English and reading it at their leisure? Or has the state censored the book to remove parts of the it?

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.

Re:Censorship???!!??

[Moridineas]

I don't think anyone REALLY cares about individual user's. It's true that some people would probably want you to buy an mp3 version, a cd version, another mp3 version,of a song etc etc...but at the bottom line is the fact that individual use is not what scares content owners. What scares content owners is Napster, Kazaa, DC, etc. That's why Apple was able to come out with their iMusic system which DOES allow for copying (with limits)

Re:Censorship???!!??

[TragicallyMisunderst]

Because it's not really copyright violation, it's , erm, fair use. Or art. Or civil protest. Or entirely justified as the evil publishers make too much money. Or maybe it is copyright violation but (except where the GPL is concerned) copyrights are bad, m'kay?

At least, those are the kinds of Slashdot responses you'd be getting if it were a piece of music. Isn't hypocrisy great?

Good business/Bad business

[MisterMook]

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.

Re:Good business/Bad business

[Anonymous Coward]

suing your fanbase isn't the smartest or most polite thing to do

Neither is stealing from your favorite author.

Respect for Laws

[Moridineas]

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.

Slashdot over the edge.

[mumblestheclown]

Slashdot has always endorsed tolerance, if not tacit support for intellectual property law violators. For the dozens if not hundreds of articles with little editorial innuendos such as "I guess we'll just all have to move to freenet" to the repeated duplicity of imporing "blame the users, not the technology" and then raising hell when infringing users are gone after, slashdot (editors, and then the lap-dogs of the forums) have shown an ethic that should be denounced. With this article--this blatant advertisement for illegal activity (or activity with clear illegal intent - if you disagree, you fool nobody)--slashdot shows its extremism.

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.

Same day release dates

[mr.henry]

I hope this doesn't come off as too 'Jon Katzy,' but the internet has made irrelevant this common practice of premiering something in one country and delaying it's release (often for marketing purposes) in other countries. For example, 28 Days Later was released in the UK on Nov 1, 2002, but they waited until June 27, 2003 before the US release. The DVD-R of this title has literally been floating around the internet for months. Who wants to wait?

The Harry Potter publishers were naive to think this wouldn't happen.

All to predicable, the publishers are at fault.

[chrestomanci]

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.

A private website?

[John Harrison]

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?

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

[ThreeDayMonk]

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.

Re:Whats the bet...

[aziraphale]

Of course, your somewhat bizarre German aside (the occasional english word in there makes me think you might have used BabelFish to generate this text), you're actually providing the best argument against the (thankfully relatively few) slashdotters on this thread who think that there's nothing wrong with a community-led translation of a book. It is possible for somebody, in translating a book, to add or change material substantially. In distributing their translation of the Harry Potter book, this group would be claiming that their translation was a faithful reproduction of J.K. Rowling's original work - but if they had added or altered material in the process (even to the extent of adding pornographic material, as you so amusingly suggest...), they could be doing Ms Rowling something of a disservice in the eyes of Germans who read that translation.

This is why copyright protects an author's right over derivative works, including translations - it should be up to the author/publisher to select who is allowed to make the official translation, giving them some means to control what is put out in the author's name in other languages.

Re:Inconsistancy in tone/style between translators

[DataCannibal]

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