Many Vietnamese poets have voiced their disappointment after Vietnam’s state-owned textbook publisher made changes to the language in their poems without asking them for permission before printing the works in grade-one textbooks.

Parents have reported to Tuoi Tre many instances in the Vietnamese Language textbook for first graders in which the words of many poems differ from the originals.

One of them pointed out that the Vietnam Education Publishing House had replaced a word in a poem composed by Do Trung Quan, a prominent poet, with another and thus shifted its meaning from “childhood” to “every afternoon.”

The publishing house, under the Ministry of Education and Training, similarly altered the meaning of a poem by famous writer Tran Dang Khoa by changing a word referring to a friend in a colloquial manner to a more formal word.

The publisher admitted to “editing” these poems, explaining that the new words contain letters and syllables first graders have been taught while the originals do not.

“We ‘edited’ the poems to make them suitable for the lessons,” Nguyen Van Tung, a senior editor at the publishing house, explained.

The authors of the poems already gave the green light for the modification of their works, Tung said. The proper acknowledgements can be found in the book, he added.

But the poets insist they were not consulted before.

“Nobody ever asked me for my approval,” Ngo Van Phu, whose poem was “edited” and printed in the textbook, told Tuoi Tre. “They did it at their own will.”

Do Trung Quan also said the publisher had not contacted him for permission before his work was edited.

“I have only heard of the adjustments from my children, friends, and acquaintances,” Quan said.

The publisher is allowed by law to include these works in textbooks but it should not adjust the language without the poets’ prior consent, a former chief writer of textbooks has said.

“Vietnam’s intellectual property laws permit textbook publishers to print verses or stories that have been publicly released without asking for the authors’ permission,” said Prof Nguyen Minh Thuyet, former vice chairman of the Vietnam National Assembly's Culture and Education Committee, who has written several Vietnamese textbooks. “But they must not alter ideas or change the meaning of a specific work.”

Thuyet added that adapting poetic wording may distort the author’s message, so they should “respect the originals” when using poems in textbooks.

“Publishers can only ‘edit’ a poem with its writer’s approval.”