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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 :)
... 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.
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?
You are right. But should it be wrong for someone who has brought a copy of the book but wants to read it in their native language to have access to that? Note that the book isn't coming out in other languages for months yet. I am sure the hardcore fans that download the translated version will also buy it once it is released.
Is anyone by any chance prohibiting these fine Czech and German people from buying the book in English and reading it at their leisure?
Oh, let me guess! English is your first (only?) language, isn't it? Not everyone speaks English. Even if they do, it is often much easier to read a book translated into your first language than it is to read one in your second. For most people reading is a time to relax and forget - it's easier to do that when you dominate the language you are reading.
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.
But translations require a certain level of creativity in order to localize the concepts and words into the culture in question. Different translators might make different choices in how to translate a particular phrase or concept thus resulting in a variety of qualities of translation.
A translation is definitely not an exact copy, and might have some merit independently from what it is translating. The question is, is it enough to call it a derivative work? I suspect not, but as IANAL, I don't know.
If it is though, then prohibiting the dissemination of an independent work is by definition censorship.
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
That's an interesting question.
One of the opinions often put forward on Slashdot is that if you 'own' a song in any format (record, cd, what have you), then you have a license to use that song on any media you desire (mp3, ogg vorbis, heaven-forbid... real audio). This stems from the argument that what you're purchasing is a license to use the intellectual property. The physical object (the disk or media) is actually incidental.
So, what is language? Is the language part of the abstract that forms the intellectual property? Or is it just another medium between the story and the physical pages the story is placed on?
If I purchase the book in English, do I have a right to an electronic copy of the book in Japanese? What about if I bought the American version of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone? Can I download a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, or is that a distinct work?
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
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?
I happen to speak 4 languages, and no, English is not my mother tongue. Working in a company that makes money translating, marketing and distributing foreign books gives me an insight into the mess that these people are creating. And, have no doubt, the local publishing houses WILL, at the request of the copyright holder go to every length imaginable to get the people responsible for this mess or they will lose the right to publishing the books. Can't read English properly? Wait a few months for the translation!
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
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.