Tintin, the intrepid boy reporter of comic strip fame, was at the center of an embarrassing diplomatic incident Wednesday night after politically correct Chinese translators renamed his adventures in Tibet Tintin in Chinese Tibet in deference to Beijing's iron grip on the annexed region.
Known as simply Tintin in Tibet since 1957 when it was first published in the West, the translating "error" has caused untold problems for the Belgian publisher Casterman, which has just negotiated a groundbreaking and lucrative deal to bring the adventures of the boy journalist to China for the first time.
The overly orthodox translation has caused awkwardness for Belgium's foreign minister, Louis Michel, a self-styled champion of democracy, who was in Beijing on Tuesday to toast the historic deal only to discover that he had walked into a diplomatic minefield.
"I am not a translator or a publisher and I don't speak Chinese," the minister said, urging the matter to be settled privately between Casterman and their local partners.
But Casterman signalled on Wednesday after a hastily convened meeting in Beijing that it would be insisting that the word "Chinese" be dropped from all future editions. The publisher also sought to play down the seriousness of the incident.
"We are interested in the Chinese market but we are not interested in ... politics," Casterman's Willy Fadeur said.
Fanny Rodwell, the widow of Tintin's Belgian creator Herge, is a personal friend of the Dalai Lama and she did not attend the launch ceremony in Beijing.
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