Thursday, August 02, 2007

Thwarting young enterpreneurs

The Daily Telegraph (London) has published a short piece stating that the Chinese censors have closed down a group of teenage translators working on Herry Potter - the reason, as usual, being the never ending greed of the corporate world. Apparently, an official copy is coming out soon, translated in politically correct Chinese by the politically stale and state owned The People's Literature Publishing House, which - good communism aside - is thinking like a bloody capitalist business and is unhappy about the "free for all" five chapters already published online.

Blame the PLPH for the low levels of English among young Chinese - what better way to learn a language than translate a novel? The kids, if they were mine, would have been praised, paid and given full time employment in the same stolid publishing house, plus fully paid bachelor of arts in linguistics course.

But the world is not about giving the young a chance to grow into creative humans, but into corporate slaves. How sad!

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