What’s Going On Here?

"The media monitors at a Hungarian-language news site called Galamus have stumbled across something truly extraordinary.

Yesterday, February 27, Galamus published an article allegedly written by Kim Lane Scheppele about the new Hungarian electoral system. (It’s full of the usual slanted information, but more on the content another time.) More precisely, the Galamus article is supposedly the Hungarian-language translation of the English-language original by Dr. Scheppele.

Where was the original published? According to Galamus, as a guest post on Paul Krugman’s blog on The New York Times.

One small problem: the article was nowhere to be found on Paul Krugman’s blog. In fact, it was well over 24 hours before the English-language version showed up.

So we’re told that it’s a Hungarian translation of an article reportedly written by Kim Lane Scheppele – part one of five! – that appeared on a prestigious blog on The New York Times.

But what we had was a Hungarian-language article that at that point didn’t appear anywhere in English.

I’m not the only one who was impressed. László Szily, writer at the popular Cink.hu and founding member of the Ferenc Kumin fan club, posted a congratulatory piece praising the Hungarian accomplishment entitled, „Sajtóvilágcsúcs! A magyar fordítás előbb jelent meg, mint az amerikai eredeti.” Or, „Media world record! The Hungarian translation appears before the English-language original.”"