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Velorien comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Its purpose might simply have been to slow down the rate of high-level spell development and use. We know that the greatest body of magical lore would have been lost with Atlantis (going with the theory that the Atlanteans created the Source of Magic) and that magical research appears to largely be the province of individuals. The Interdict of Merlin would be like going to medieval Europe and saying "OK, you can carry on developing science/natural philosophy/etc., but you can't read any classical works, and if you want the latest research, you've got to get it in person rather than reading your fellow thinkers' texts".
Is anyone here familiar with the "Labyrinths of Echo" sequence by Max Frei (the first book of which has recently been butchered into English)? That has the central premise that magical power is fuelled by the magical axis running through the the world, and that overuse of said power has nearly drained away the soul of the planet. As such, the protagonists are a magical police force dedicated to protecting the ban on high-level magic so that the heart of the world can recover and the all-too-near apocalypse can be averted. I wonder if the Interdict of Merlin is based on a similar idea.
Feature rather than bug, I think. They don't call them "Every Flavour Beans" for nothing.
It appears to me that the original purpose of the Interdict was as a form of DRM for strong spells. If you want to disseminate a spell, you can't just take a book, magically duplicate the book, and pass it out to all your friends. Learning a powerful spell thus required a willing trainer to teach you the spell, and you couldn't duplicate the knowledge contained in your mind until you knew the spell well enough to teach it yourself (and teaching something is harder than just being able to use it).
If you take this as a starting point, it's just basic classism at play motivating Merlin. All the wrong sorts were getting literacy and learning spells from books, taking away from the right sorts, who had learned from tutors, exclusive clubs, and networking with other powerful wizards. And it probably worked exceedingly well for several hundred years until those damn four decided to start up a school and accept everyone to be taught.
I'd think of it as being more like "don't spread nuclear design secrets" than DRM, given the nature of powerful wizardry.
Is it actually that bad? I haven't read it in English yet, but if the translation is at least semi-decent, then I can start recommending it to friends.
I will admit to having read reviews rather than the actual thing (having read the original in Russian). However, the reviews are pretty damning in terms of translation quaity. To give one example, the translator apparently didn't twig that, in the Cyrillic alphabet, "X" is pronounced "KH" rather than "ECKS". As a result, every single name containing an "h" sound (of which there are many, including major characters) has had it swapped for an "x" sound. This is a level of incompetence that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't read the reviews first-hand.
...Huh. By itself, that doesn't seem that bad: it's not as though the exact pronunciation matters to someone who hasn't read the original. But it is a pretty frightening warning sign.
It's pretty bad in that it forces you to pronounce lots of awkward "x"s in names that were meant to be euphonic. But yes, the main issue is that a translator making such an epic mistake can't be trusted to maintain accuracy or faithfulness elsewhere.
Also, a separate review criticism is that the translation fails miserably to capture the cheerful, whimsical style of the original narration, instead giving it a completely different and much less gripping narrative voice that ends up clashing with the content of the story.