German Potter fans take down book 5 translation
July 9, 2003 at 6:05 PM ET
Cheeser
CBBC Newsround
Over 3,000 Harry Potter fans in Germany have been translating Order of the Phoenix in small chunks
and posting them online, but now the German publisher - who earlier turned a blind eye - has ordered them to stop:
The German language version isn't out in the shops until 8 November, so while they wait, fans of the book have started translating it using a website.
Around 1,000 Potter-heads have been converting it, each taking a small chunk of the English version and turning it into their own language. Only when someone translated some pages were they allowed to read the sections that other people have worked on.
Publishers Carlsen don't want them to do it, and said that anything on the Harry auf Deutsch site was a breach of copyright.
Earlier this week, the Czech company with Potter publishing rights sued a group of teenagers for posting their own translations online.