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Monday, August 13, 2007

French Harry Potter fan-translator won't be sued

Harry Potter's French publishers have decided not to sue a 16-year-old fan who produced an amateur translation of Deathly Hallows, the concluding volume of the series. The boy undertook to translate the book into French when he discovered that the official French edition would lag the English by three months -- he was worried that his monolingual peers would have their enjoyment of the book ruined by spoilers leaking over from the English-speaking world.

The boy has already spent a night in jail and was facing counterfeiting charges. After a firestorm of worldwide negative publicity, the French publishers -- in consultation with JK Rowling -- decided that suing this child was a losing proposition.

No word on whether the people who thought that putting him in jail for a night would get any kind of promotion, though. Link (Thanks, Mike!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:28:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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Support Bloggers' Rights! HOWTO: Get a link posted to Boing Boing Boing Boing Mobile powered by Winksite Fark rules! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States [and other countries]. Stats (About our stats) defeat censorware Policies Our first five years' worth of posts in one file	View a recent day: August 20 \| August 19 \| August 18 \| previous days \| by month and year Monday, August 13, 2007 French Harry Potter fan-translator won't be sued Harry Potter's French publishers have decided not to sue a 16-year-old fan who produced an amateur translation of Deathly Hallows, the concluding volume of the series. The boy undertook to translate the book into French when he discovered that the official French edition would lag the English by three months -- he was worried that his monolingual peers would have their enjoyment of the book ruined by spoilers leaking over from the English-speaking world. The boy has already spent a night in jail and was facing counterfeiting charges. After a firestorm of worldwide negative publicity, the French publishers -- in consultation with JK Rowling -- decided that suing this child was a losing proposition. No word on whether the people who thought that putting him in jail for a night would get any kind of promotion, though. Link (Thanks, Mike!) posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:28:50 PM permalink \| Other blogs' comments View a recent day: August 20, 2007 \| August 19, 2007 \| August 18, 2007 \| August 17, 2007 \| August 16, 2007 \| August 15, 2007 \| August 14, 2007 \| previous days \| all BB archives by month and year Email this entry to: Your email address: Message (optional):	Boing Boing Sponsored by: Your Text Ad Here Get BB by email: