Oct 09, 2023 06:00:00

A case where a publisher inserted a ``soup advertisement'' into a translated novel by a popular author without permission.

Terry Pratchett, an English science fiction/fantasy author and bestselling author in the UK in the 1990s, changed publishers to produce translated versions in Germany in the early 1990s. Mr. Pratchett cites the reason for this as ``When creating the translated version, the editor inserted a soup advertisement into the main text.''

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Mr. Pratchett's work has been translated into 36 languages and enjoyed around the world. In Germany, a publishing company called Heyne was initially in charge of producing and selling translated versions, but after publishing more than a dozen books, Mr. Pratchett transferred the publication of the German version from Heyne to Goldmann. ) announced that it would change its name to a company called ).

According to the blog of Mr. Jeffrey, a German citizen living in Poland, it was mentioned in the 1994 science fiction and fantasy annual magazine ``Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994'' that Mr. Pratchett would be switching publishers. is. Mr Pratchett said of his reasons for changing publishers: ``There were many reasons for switching to Goldman, but one that was very personal to me was Hayne's policy of inserting soup advertisements into the text. It may have been in the book, but I remember seeing it in Sourcery . My editor was pretty disgusted by it, but the company promised they wouldn't do it again. 'Therefore, I had no qualms about leaving Hae In.'

According to Mr. Pratchett, several black lines suddenly appeared in the text, saying, ``Our hero must be pretty hungry by now. A nutritious soup would be much better.'' It is said that advertising text such as '...' was inserted. The image below is a page of the German version of 'Sourcery' that Mr. Jeffrey shows as an example. In addition to being unnaturally painted in black, there is also a page where 'Treimon (a character in the work) spends his time reading ancient documents. 'Maybe we were actually pretty lucky. But there's also a hint here to remind readers to get proper nutrition.' The stairs they were on weren't very suitable for taking a break, but you can still take a break, so let's take a 5-minute break and make some soup.'' In the bottom right corner, there is a message saying ``5 Minute terrine.'' )', and contains unnatural sentences that do not originally exist.

In addition to Pratchett's works, similar content is also included in parts of the

Star Trek series and non-series novels. On the blog of Johannes Freudendal, a software developer from Germany, the German version of Star Trek owned by Mr. Freudenthal is shown as an example, as shown in the image below. Again, the same icon as 'Sourcery' is attached to the bottom right of the blacked out page.

“I remember that was standard practice for Hayne at the time,” Jeffrey notes. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was common for inexpensive paperback genre novels to include paid advertisements in order to extract additional revenue. This continued into the 1990s when paperbacks became less expensive, and it is thought that Hayne continued without any changes to its system as a remnant of this.

According to Mr. Jeffrey, it is unclear whether Mr. Pratchett's departure is related, but such advertisements are no longer seen in novels published after 1994.