The heirs of Swedish Astrid Lindgren, who died in 2002, have been filing lawsuits for years against mistranslations of Pippi Longstocking’s iconic intro song. Our Dutch text also came into view. That is in fact a translation of the German version by Wolfgang Franke from 1969. But some iconic sentences from our text, such as “two times three is four” and “it does its own thing”, do not appear in the Swedish original. The judge has therefore ruled that the German translation is a copyright infringement. The relatives of the now deceased Franke had to pay compensation to the relatives of Lindgren.
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Listen to the original intro here:
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Our Dutch version will therefore also be adjusted. The infamous sentences have now been replaced by “Here comes Pippi Longstocking, because that’s my name” and “Here’s Mr. Nilsson, because that’s his name”. The version has since been translated into many languages and is therefore the new, official Pippi intro.
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