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Harry Potter in German, not Czech

Posted by jamie on from the foreign-key dept.

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 :)

11 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. What Censorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. Inconsistancy in tone/style between translators? by msgmonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. wtf? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People advertise when they break the law now ?

  4. What? by JanusFury · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    using namespace slashdot;
    troll::post();
    1. Re:What? by radish · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  5. Censorship???!!?? by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
  6. Respect for Laws by Moridineas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Slashdot over the edge. by mumblestheclown · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

  8. Same day release dates by mr.henry · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

  9. Re:Good business/Bad business by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    Neither is stealing from your favorite author.

  10. Re:Whats the bet... by aziraphale · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.