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Chinese version of Harry Potter goes on sale
By Jin Bo (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-10-15 10:05
Chinese Harry Potter fans will finally have the chance to read the sixth
title of the boy wizard series, created by English writer J.K. Rowling, in
Chinese from Saturday.
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" in simplified characters is
premiering across China. According to the People's Literature Publishing House,
the publisher, all the 800,000 copies of the first printing were distributed to
hundreds of Xinhua Bookstore branches in the country's major cities.
Translation, proofreading, editing and other procedures needed to speed the
book's release have taken three months to accomplish.
"It would have been ideal timing if it had come out two weeks earlier, for
the National Day holiday, when most people had more time to read books, but
there was not a single day that could have been compressed," said Wang Ruiqin,
the book's editor.
Wang said "not a single word was deleted" from the translation of the English
text.
The Chinese edition is priced at 58 yuan (US$7.25), which, though much
cheaper than the US and British editions, is still twice the price of most
Chinese titles. Even so, the publishing house was confident the book would sell
well.
"Many other children's book publishers have postponed one month or longer the
release of their new titles to lessen Harry Potter's influence on their sales,"
said Li Chunkai, head of the publisher's distribution department.
The Chinese editions of the five previous Harry Potter titles have sold more
than 7.14 million copies so far on the mainland.
To guarantee that this book will at least score as high as the previous ones,
the publishing house has tried many defences against pirates, by using a special
kind of green paper with the use of nuclear technology. Both national and local
authorities of intellectual property protection have vowed to provide any help
they can.
(China Daily 10/15/2005 page2)
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