Editions Gallimard has recently communicated to the proofs of your Dutch edition of the book by Rene Vienet, Enrages and Situationists in the Occupations Movement.
At the first reading, my friend Jaap Kloosterman established that this translation is so far from the text that it could not even be a question of correcting or improving it; and that, moreover, the annexed documents have been subjected to multiple surreptious deletions, which directly reveals a spirit of censorship.
Miss Termeer, who appears to have taken two years to arrive at such a lamentable result, despite her reiterated promises to meet Vienet so as to clear up with him the diverse difficulties that she encountered in her translation, finally did not submit her work to the least verification and never gave us the occasion to see her manuscript, before you gave it to the printer. It is thus only now that we, called upon to certify the proofs, find out that the work is perfectly useless.
I am distressed for you, but I must indicate to you, in the name of the situationists, our formal refusal of any publication of this falsified translation. Knowing your house's reputation for honesty, I dare to believe that you do not want to over-ride it. If this must nevertheless take place, we will oppose ourselves to it publically, using the means at hand, which are not negligible.
From now on, and in case you ever have the intention, according to the terms of our previous exchange of letters,[1] of publishing a translation of my book The Society of the Spectacle, I advise you that I am no longer disposed to authorizing you to do so, your translators being too suspect and their wild imaginings being too quickly sent to the printer by you.
Please accept, dear Sir, my distinguished salutations.[1] See the letter dated 9 March 1971.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969-1972. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! July 2005.)