Harry Up Please, It's Time Warner

[steepholm]

The perpetually crepuscular attitude of many Eng Lit types towards children's literature never ceases to charm. A few days ago, for example, John Mullan (of UCL) was complaining that it was "all the fault of cultural studies" that academics paid children's reading matter any mind, and that they ought to be writing about Sterne and Milton instead. (Presumably this criticism doesn't apply to those analyses that use a cultural studies approach to, say, put Sterne in the context of the eighteenth-century cult of sentimentality, works such as - to take a random example - John Mullan's entry on "Sentimental Novels" in the Cambridge Companion to The Eighteenth Century Novel.)

This was all in the context of an HP conference up in St Andrews, an event reported the other day in a very badly-researched article in The Guardian as if it were the first time JKR's books had ever received attention from academics, like, ever.

Not that that's entirely surprising. Those of us who've been writing (and writing about) children's literature for decades have become used to the blundering appearance of pith-helmeted academics who stumble periodically into our Amazonian grove, declare it terra nullius, plant the flag of Yale or Oxford and then stumble out again. In fact, I wouldn't have mentioned it at all, had I not come across B. J. Epstein's article in the UK Huffington Post, which - in reporting all this, and doing a useful take-down of Mullan et al - also links to a story by my friend (from DWJ circles) Gili Bar-Hillel, Rowling's Hebrew translator, in which she recounts the bullying tactics used by Time Warner against the translators of Harry Potter. If you don't read any of the other links in this post, read that one.

Perhaps I shouldn't be any more surprised by Time Warner's bullying than I am by John Mullan's ignorant contempt. I'm simply more familiar with the latter.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I've noticed a similar level of bullying coming out of the equally foul US megacorp that thinks it owns the rights to JRRT's work via their equally foul bunch of lawyers.

It is high time that someone mentioned that many of the names in his books like Michel Delving are genuine English place names (Micheldelver in Hampshire) and that much of the folklore is traditional; also that names like the 'Hungry Hobbit' cafe had been in use for decades- long before any such rights could possibly have been contested.

It is also high time HMG and other governments worldwide put such greedy money grubbers firmly in their place.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've noticed that about the JRRT names too. I was raised in Hampshire, so Micheldever is familiar to me: though I was on still more intimate terms with Michelmersh (pron. Micklemarsh to disconcert visitors from Hollywood).

In a way this case was even worse, since they were bullying her into giving up words that she had invented.

[sheenaghpugh]

Time Warner are clearly shits, but I did feel impatient with that translator. Signing something he isn't allowed to read in advance or keep a copy of? Letting himself be badgered into altering the wording because they threaten not to pay anyone ELSE for the work they've done - like that's even legal? Then saying yes, the Catalan woman refused, but what did she get out of it? Her self-respect, maybe, and knowing she didn't act like a wuss.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

(Not that it's important in this context, but Gili is a woman.)

I see your point, and maybe in an ideal world she'd have felt strong enough to put worries about future employment aside, but given that she works as a translator professionally and the publishers who hire her were clearly capable in their turn of being leant upon, I can see why she felt she didn't have much choice. The law isn't really a lever at one's disposal unless one can afford to bring the matter to court, and multinationals operate in the knowledge that individuals can't afford to fight them.

[sheenaghpugh]

I've only worked casually as a translator but I do know a fair few pros and I really don't think they would have rolled over quite that easily. But frankly, if they do, then they will naturally be walked over - any trade needs to learn to combine against the bosses, because the first law of business is Bosses Are Bastards. Don't they have a professional society in Israel?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Now, that I can't say.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I think ancarett had to deal with something similar for her HP book, and there were all sorts of hurdles that she and her co-editor had to jump through when dealing with a films based on events that took place long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away...