German edition of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is also CC licensed!

Backup, the German edition of my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has just been published by Heyne. Down and Out was the first novel released under a Creative Commons licensed, distributed for free on the same day the book was shipped to stores -- and I'm pleased to announce that Backup is the first German translated novel to be released under a CC license on publication day!

Random House is also working on a German translation of my second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, working with Michael Iwoleit, the translator who worked on Down and Out.

Many thanks to Johannes and Evelyn at Monochrom for their help in translating the oddball concepts like "Whuffie" and "Bitchun Society." Link

• [kaosdevice]

  When it is translated into Pig Latin then, and only then, will I be impressed.

• [Eduardo Padoan]

  When it is translated into Pig Latin then, and only then, will I be impressed.
  Your wish is an order:
  http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/dialectp.cgi?dialect=piglatin&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcraphound.com%2Fdown%2FCory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom.htm

• [LaHaine]

  I can’t stand it when an English title is translated into another English title. This happens quite often with foreign movies and books.

• [Nils]

  Lahaine is right, but as Backup is widely used in German, this is much less ridiculous than most translated movie titles.

• [Aaron]

  Same here.

  (Ok, I actually can’t stand re-titling in general, but that’s for another rant…)

  But, hey, it could be worse.

  When the White Wolf roleplaying game “Exalted” was translated into german, they retitled it as “Die Hohen”, which technically means “the high ones” or “the ones up high” but sounds sooooooo stupid. I don’t have any proof of course, but I’ve long suspected that this pretty much killed the german line.

  So, well, it really could be worse… ^_^

  Aaron

• [LaHaine]

  @Philipp Lenssen: Another example is the movie Antitrust, that was translated as Startup.

• [Peterus]

  Cory do you have any evedience on how does CC affect your book sales?
  (I’d be great ammunition against copyright supporters – creative individual who just don’t want copyright protection… and makes money without it.)

• [Cory Doctorow]

  Peterus, I wrote a column about this:

  http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/09/cory-doctorow-freekonomic-e-books.html

• [Philipp Lenssen]

  I’m late to the party, but also wanted to comment how I think it’s funny & slightly silly that one English title is “translated” into another English title.

  “Miss Congeniality” was transformed into the apparently-dumbed-down English “Miss Undercover” here :)

  There’s many more cases of these, does someone have a list?

  The trend in general is to not translate e.g. movie titles in the first place. “Star Wars” was “Krieg der Sterne” (literally: “War of Stars”!) in Germany during the original trilogy, but is now just “Star Wars” for the follow-up trilogy (parts 1-3).

• [Peterus]

  Thank’s a lot for posting this link.
  It’s just what the doctor ordered :).

• [Clif Marsiglio]

  Peterus — I wonder how much the CC impacts these sales vs. the fact that there is a built in audience of ‘copyfighters’ that buy the works regardless of the quality of the work?

  I can safely say I bought two of Cory’s books because of this. At the same time, neither were my cup of tea (of which I’m not commenting on the quality because I’ve been a firm believer that art should not appeal to everyone or it wouldn’t be considered art).

  Cory — thanks for posting the Locus link…it was informative (even if a bit one sided!)

• [Florian]

  I just downloaded the German PDF from Random House’s Website. It’s great news that a German publisher as big as Heyne does something like this. But, Cory, is there a reason the CC license isn’t mentioned in the book? (Well, it isn’t in the PDF…)