Personally, I don’t mind word swaps if they clarify a potentially confusing situation.
I think in the first book (Brit. version) there is a line having to do with Harry wearing a jumper.
Now to an American, this implies Harry is cross-dressing; 99 out of a 100 people here are not going to know a jumper is a “sweater”. No problem changing this word.
Likewise with torch. I know that’s British for flashlight but most here would assume it was the oil-soaked rag and wooden club item. Changes the imagery somewhat, doesn’t it.
Now if they mention someone eating kippers, that reference would stand if I were editor. No way anyone would confuse kippers with something else; at worst they wouldn’t know what it was and be forced to look it up.
So my friends, like so much else in life, there is no black-and-white answer to this.
I don’t know. If I thought publishers were changing words in books especially for me, just in case I wouldn’t understand, I would feel kind of patronised. But some of the above posters seem to suggest it’s something to be proud about. All part of being the largest market in the world.
“Don’t go confusing us with any of them there furrin words! We’re the biggest so we don’t have to learn them!”
Put yourself in the place of a UK child. I read 100s of US books as a child, chock full of Americanisms. And yes, on occasions it did confuse me, and I still come across things that suddenly make clear things that I had completely mis-understood in a book years before. But it all added up to a better appreciation of the book and a better understanding of American society. An education. So what’s wrong with wanting the same for American children?
It’s not a matter of dumbing down for America. There is nothing smarter about the “Britishisms” used, it’s just that these words make the work more authentic. It emphasises that the book is not American, these people are different. Expunging them panders to the sadly too common belief in the US that all people are either just like, or aspire to be just like, Americans. And insular attitudes like that ultimately lead to dumb things like US middle east policy.
Actually, the American version of Order of the Phoenix keeps the word ‘jumper’. I think they’re trying to Americanize things less now, because of the uproar about it.
It’s not dumbing down because they’re changing words to American English, it’s dumbing down because they’re changing the words. I’d feel just the same if you took an American kids book and changed all the vernacular to English phrases.
You know, once upon a time, I didn’t know what a sweater was. Frankly, it sounds like some sort of torture device. But when I came across it in a book, I found out what it meant.
I don’t think American kids are dumb. I think they can cope with new words. Don’t tell me you have such a low estimation of your country’s children.
gex gex, they’re not new words. They’re common words, in a completely wrong (from our perspective) context. It’s not that we don’t know what certain words mean. We know what the word “pecker” means. It means “penis”.
Now, I certainly object to Americanizing words that have no American English counterpart (like Philosopher’s Stone). But do you honestly expect an American child (or his/her unknowing parent) to understand or research British slang?
“Kipper” is a new word to most American readers. Upon looking up in the dictionary, I learned what it meant.
“Jumper” is not a new word to me. It means a one-piece outfit with a vest-like garment on top and a skirt on bottom. Little girls wear them. ([sub]And so do grown women; work with me here.[/sub])
In cases where a British word has no equivalent meaning in the U.S. (for example, kipper), then it’s OK to leave it in. Any American reader who doesn’t know what a kipper is can look it up; last time I checked every American library had at least one dictionary in it.
In cases where a word or phrase means one thing over there and another over here, it only makes sense to change it for the sake of clarity. NOT dumbing down; just clarity. “Jumper,” “torch,” and “keeping our peckers up” {snicker} come readily to mind.
There’s plenty in the Harry Potter books to make American readers realize it’s British without confusing them. Hermione once says something like “It’s awful having a pee when Moaning Myrtle’s about,” where an American girl Hermione’s age would say “It’s terrible trying to go pee when Moaning Myrtle’s around.” Both sentences make perfect sense to American readers, but I note that the first one was in the American version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Finally, I dread the day that Ms. Rowling writes of Hermione or Ginny or Luna or whoever wearing a “trainer.” For speakers of Quenn’s English who don’t know, in the US a “trainer,” in this context, means “traning bra.”
Surely the point is that those same words would not be translated in an American book when it’s sold in Britain or Australia. The British and Australian kids cope well enough, why shouldn’t American kids be able to?
To be more specific, children should be rewarded with a satisfactory experience after reading a bazillion page book. They shouldn’t be met with out-of-context slang that is not available to them outside of British PBS programs shown at 1:00am, if at all. Certainly, they should be challenged when they read. And they should be confronted with ideas and words they have not encountered before. But there is a line that needs to be drawn - in this case the American publishers drew that line too far on this side of the Atlantic, which is unfortunate (“philosopher’s stone” being the ultimate example).
However, the fact that British publishers don’t draw that line with American imported books isn’t a valid reason. British and Australian children should be met with equal opportunity for satisfaction after a challenging read. The last thing a child should encounter is frustration and a sense of futility when doing something enjoyable.
You’ll have to forgive my use of understatement. Perhaps I ought to have said that Anglophone readers outside the USA seem to enjoy reading American books and watching American films very much even though the vernacular has not been translated for them at all. They don’t complain of “frustration and a sense of futility”, they learn that things are said differently in other English-speaking countries.
There is an assumption here that an American audience would be inhibited in a way that doesn’t seem to apply to kids from other countries. If you don’t feel the need to defend that, then that’s fine, but you shouldn’t pretend that that is not the point people are making in this thread.
Futile Gesture: Hurrah! I agree with your post. (Although I’m not sure our stupid Middle East meddling would have been prevented by using the author’s words in Harry Potter. )
What’s “foreign” about kippers? I’m a native Californian and, while I don’t say “kippers” every day, I’ve never run into anyone who didn’t know what I was talking about when I said, “I had kippers for breakfast today.”
I found out what an “electric torch” was by reading Sherlock Holmes – which wasn’t Americanized – when I was a kid. Similarly, there was a time when I didn’t know what “trainers” were (I had no idea that in American is meant “training bra”), nor what a “jumper” was. I looked them up.
There seems to be two camps: One (to which I belong) believes that learning is a good thing, and that reading an author’s intended words is a good opportunity to expand one’s vocabulary. The other group seems to think that education and entertainment do not belong together; or that at least it is inconvenient to combine entertainment with an opportunity to learn.
Actually, I think in the original version Hermione said, “have a slash”.
I don’t know. How do you expect a British child to understand or research US slang? How does an American child understand or research US slang? How on earth did we manage before the internet???
IMHO the proper thing to do is have the British text with footnotes. e.g: Then Harry lit a torch(1)… then too k the lift(2)
(1) a flashlight
(2)elevator
That way you get teh original text and also a learing oppertunity. Assuming, of course, kifs can handle footnotes.
N9IWP, that would be ideal, and a solution to satisfy both parties.
Futile Gesture, I honestly don’t know how to answer your question, as the Harry Potter books are probably my first experience with books with modern British language use. I really can’t think of other contemporary books that I might have run into.
I do remember reading An Indian in the Cupboard as a child, and being massively confused by the constant use of the word “minute” in reference to very small proportions. At the time, I was reading at a very high level, and that one word in particular discouraged me. Maybe I’m a futilist. Several years later we read it in class and I figured it out from context - but it did take me several years between readings.
In the long run, you’re probably correct. But in the short run, I identify with the younger reader who’s a couple years ahead of his reading age group who is unable to decipher the context, and gets frustrated.
This is bullshit. Since I began reading as a toddler, I always read a variety of American, British, Indian, Canadian, etc. books. I learned very quickly that people use words differently. I didn’t find it “confusing.” I didn’t find it “unsatisfactory.” I didn’t find it “unrewarding.” I learned, damn it. Yes, sometimes I stayed confused about a particular word for some time, but that happened just as often with purely American books as with any other. This is what the language learning process is all about, folks. It’s bullshit and patronising to believe that an American child (like I was) can’t be thoroughly entranced by a story just because some of the words are used differently. Frankly, I’m insulted, and I refuse to give any of my money to the American publisher of the Harry Potter books. I get mine from Amazon.uk.
In Gilbert & Sullivan’s one-act opera Trial By Jury, there is a song called “Be firm, my pecker”. For obvious reasons, companies performing this particular opera on the western side of the pond routinely change that line. As I understand it, the word “pecker” refers to one’s heart.
I have always wanted to get my hands on a set of British Potter editions. Anybody know where these can be procured stateside?
Same thing with music. Being a Beatles fan since birth, I enjoyed Penny Lane, despite the fact that I didn’t know what a plastic mac was for many years.
I agree with your post. (Although I’m not sure our stupid Middle East meddling would have been prevented by using the author’s words in Harry Potter. 
)
