Mita Masahiro said: “Once a book goes out of copyright, it’s bound to be translated horribly right away. We’ve got to extend copyright beyond the author’s death to prevent this.” As soon as Saint-Exupéry’s work entered the public domain, Mr. Mita immediately produced a horrible translation of Le Petit Prince. When I confronted him about this at a Japan Writers’ Association meeting, he mumbled unintelligibly and sidestepped the issue.
(a translation of this tweet)
