In August I have been at the Nordic Permaculture Festival. I have been part of the core team organizing the festival, but during the festival I was more or less there to shot pictures and videos. While concentrating on the task I couldn’t listen to the lectures – you either work or don’t.
Afterwards it took me about 20 hours to check the shots, evaluate them and cut it to the final product, which I then put on Youtube.
After one day of publication an e-mail arrived from one of the festival teachers. She found that their book was put into wrong context and that the video needs to be edited (as if video editing is simple). Then the interviewed person mailed that the video must be taken offline immediately and the parts about the book to be edited out.
I had some thoughts about it and came to the conclusion that if I’m going to start cutting chances are that other people will also start requesting edits. The other problem is: I can’t just upload a new video to Youtube at the same video URL. I get a new URL. Which means that every site the video is embedded in needs to change the embed code. More work.
The original problem: the typos
In the interview we were talking about a book "Monivuotiset vihannekset" that got translated from Swedish to Finnish. The book was financed using crowdfunding. The Finnish Permaculture Association paid 100 € to support the book. For the money the association's name will be put int he book. When the book arrived I realized that the association’s name was misspelled. And according to the interviewed person there were a lot more typos and that a second edition is on its way.
I make a lot of typos in my blogs. But I don't sell a book that was translated by 3 people and crowdfunded. I also don't ask people for money to put their names up here and then misspell it. Kind of a difference, or?
Is it about truth?
The things is: we were speaking the truth. The book has a lot of typos and the association’s name is misspelled. I waited during the whole festival to hear a “sorry for the typo you get a second edition for free”. But non of the 3 translators said anything. Nothing.
It heavily feels like censorship what happened to me. If it start there, what will be next?