A young teen fan of the Harry Potter series was arrested after it was discovered he had posted online a complete, yet unofficial translation in French of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The Guardian reports a 16 year old boy from Aix-en-Provence, France was too impatient to wait for the official French translation of the novel. The high school boy then set about making one himself after the English versions were released on July 21 and soon the “first chapters were available for download a few days after the book came out in July and the complete text was online within days…Police said they were ‘particularly surprised’ by the quality of the pirate version, which they said was “semi-professional.”
The teen was kept in custody overnight and has since been released pending further investigation. The official French translation of the book,”Harry Potter et les reliques de la mort,” is still being formally translated and will not be available until October.
Hmmm…lemme get this straight…he couldn’t wait for the FRENCH version…but could understand enough English to translate the UK Version??? Sounds like someone was trying to make a profit off his translated version…in which case…he deserves a decent amount of punishment.
Posted by DracoDaDeatheater on August 08, 2007, 08:05 PM
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instead of booking him they should hire him! And they say teens are lazy, LOL. I know it’s criminal but it’s not like he was making money off of it. He was sharing the results of a lot of work. He didn’t ruin it for anyone as people are going to read the real translation later and they have a choice of whether or not to read his version. The only people who hurt from this are the publishers who take so long to produce the official translation—although the fans will buy that one whether they read another translation on-line or not.
Even if HE wasn’t profiting…he deserves a hefty fine to deter this in the future…his translation can be downloaded by anyone who wants to make a bundle and sold to people who is desperate enough to pay for it…which I imagine would be many.
Posted by DracoDaDeatheater on August 08, 2007, 08:11 PM
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Wierd. You’d think he would just read the English edition he had. Le him be Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered! Joking. Its good to see loads more new coming in now! I need something to look forward to after school starts!
That sucks, I feel good for him, I mean he obviously wanted to help other fans, and it sounds like he need a pretty good job. Let him go, stupid police! Well I hope he gets out pretty soon.
I give him credit for doing it well and doing it fast. As far as spoilers, I’d be very surprised if everyone in any of the non-English speaking countries has not already been very spoiled since the story has been out so long anyhow.
I really don’t understand why this boy was singled out(unless he was careless enough?) and why this is headline news. Russian translators got first six chapters ready before the book even came out. And thousands upon thousands of people uploaded and downloaded copies of the book, and still do; this boy is just a drop in the ocean. It seems rather pointless to me.
And any talk of profit is insubstantial – it’s Internet. A few words in Google, and the book is on one’s hard drive, if he so wishes. For free. Who and how would profit from an illegal translation? Oh, these Muggles…
Are they just trying to make an example of him? I mean, I haven’t heard anything about all of the other people sneaking it online. He shouldn’t have done it but come on, who wouldn’t feel bad for the French kids that don’t get it until October?
"She's somewhere over there," said Ron, pointing along the shelves. "Looking for another book. I think she's trying to read the whole library before Christmas."
i would be so mad if it was ruined for me like that