# Should "old" Books Be Re-Written **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 12, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774 "2009-07-12T18:46:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/41 "2009-07-13T19:29:52Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > What annotation is good for is _enhancing_ one’s appreciation of a work, **not for making the unreadable readable**. (How would you annotate the Uncle Remus paragraphs I quoted earlier?) It doesn’t \*\*need \*\*annotation–just try reading it aloud, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly what the author was going for. (The same goes for Chaucer–much more intelligible when you read him out loud.) It’s perfectly readable, if not with the same speed you could use for a text written with mainstream/modern spelling. ---
**Author:** ![gladtobeblazed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@gladtobeblazed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gladtobeblazed)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/42 "2009-07-13T19:32:50Z")
Perhaps we should let old books die out peacefully. If there were any good ideas in the book they will eventually be rediscovered by a future writer. If I were a writer, this is what I would want to become of my work. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/43 "2009-07-13T19:37:16Z")
Not to \*fully \*appreciate the work. Without the annotated versions, how would I have known that the Man in White Paper riding with Alice in the train is Benjamin Disraeli? ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/44 "2009-07-13T19:43:30Z")
Leave them be. Classics remain classics by withstanding the test of time. Annotations are good, though. StG ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/45 "2009-07-13T19:56:59Z")
> [@gladtobeblazed](#): > > Perhaps we should let old books die out peacefully. If there were any good ideas in the book they will eventually be rediscovered by a future writer. If I were a writer, this is what I would want to become of my work. Ooh! If it’s too hard, nobody else should even try to read it! Who makes the decisions about which books should live & which should die? (Edited to add: Apparently all of them should die–as soon as they become “old.”) If you’ve finished your education, don’t worry. Nobody will ever make you try to read anything difficult again. Permit the rest of us our amusements. Here in Houston Frakking Texas, we’re looking forward to the [Shakespeare Festival](http://www.houstonfestivalscompany.com/hsf/index.html). Ever since 1975, crowds have braved our sticky August nights to watch Shakespeare plays in Hermann Park. With the original words! ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/46 "2009-07-13T20:15:54Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > It doesn’t \*\*need \*\*annotation–just try reading it aloud, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly what the author was going for. (The same goes for Chaucer–much more intelligible when you read him out loud.) It’s perfectly readable, if not with the same speed you could use for a text written with mainstream/modern spelling. This I agree with—and books written in earlier centuries were much more likely to have been written with reading aloud in mind. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/47 "2009-07-13T20:49:57Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > Leave them be. Classics remain classics by withstanding the test of time. Annotations are good, though. > > StG This, too. ---
**Author:** ![Redwing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@Redwing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redwing)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/48 "2009-07-13T21:49:52Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > \*\*Annotation \*\*is a great idea. “Translating”/updating and, god forbid, bowdlerization are unacceptable. Note the quotation marks–when a language has evolved to the point where the old version no longer intelligible to a current native speaker, then translation is acceptable. (\*Beowulf \*should be translated; \*The Canturbury Tales \*should be annotated.) Honestly, I expect that any translation (no quotes) requires annotation. Translation is, at best, a loose art, and much that fails to translate well can be completely lost without it (such as puns, especially obscure ones). Scanning what Project Guttenberg has of CT, I can argue both sides. He certainly isn’t writing the English taught in Mr. Johnson’s 7th grade in Minnesota in the mid to late 80s. OTOH, I can read it, but, and it’s a big but, I’ve been caught reading poetry for pleasure. The annotations used by the text at [Project Guttenberg](http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/cbtls12.txt) are enough to get me through things like “ferne hallows couth”, but there seems to me to enough instances of words that are outside of the dialect that I use that I can understand the desire to find a copy with the translations in-line and the original in the annotation. I agree that when a dialect isn’t understandable, it requires translation (which seems like a tautology to me). The question seems to be where, and how, do we draw the line between what is, and is not, understandable? Do we wait until only graduate students can afford to spend the time and effort to get the tools to understand a text before we allow it to be translated, or do we do so earlier, when more people can fairly critisize the translation, because the tools to understand the original form are simply uncommon, and not yet rare? > [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > It doesn’t \*\*need \*\*annotation–just try reading it aloud, and you’ll figure out pretty quickly what the author was going for. (The same goes for Chaucer–much more intelligible when you read him out loud.) It’s perfectly readable, if not with the same speed you could use for a text written with mainstream/modern spelling. I like Dunbar and Burns, both of which I think require reading aloud to fully understand. While Chaucer may be along the same lines, the bit I quoted above is equally opaque aloud or on the page. Like I said above, and want to emphasize, when the dialect is far enough removed from common use that one needs a specialist dictionary to understand it, and works in it must be annotated at almost every line, it may be time to look at putting out translations of those works, lest they be lost to all but the scholars. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/49 "2009-07-13T22:34:24Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I was tempted to mention _The Faerie Queene_. I read some parts of it in an anthology once and rather liked it—but the version I read had modernized the spelling. Later, when I tried to read some of it in the original spelling, I found it too hard to be worth plowing through. > > I don’t want it in prose; I want Spenser’s poetry. I just don’t want to have to struggle with that antiquated spelling. I wouldn’t consider modernizing spelling or punctuation to be at all the same thing as rewriting a book. Even with modern books spelling and punctuation will be adjusted to match local norms for the US and UK editions. In an academic setting it may sometimes be important to have the original text, but for general audiences I don’t see any good reason not to update the spelling. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/50 "2009-07-13T23:47:49Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I wouldn’t consider modernizing spelling or punctuation to be at all the same thing as rewriting a book. I agree completely. What I’d like to see are _Authors_ “updating” earlier editions of their books. Say, one character in the book compares another character to being much like Celebrity X. When the book is written, Celebrity X is a well-known reference. Thirty years later, Celebrity X is an obscure nobody (or has gone on to do work that make the original reference muddied, confused, or no longer appropriate), and it would only take a moment to select a more appropriate Celebrity X for the new printing and update it. Ditto things like prices- when Character A (in a story with no fixed historical setting) is whinging about paying 50c for a can of Coke or whatever, a minor change to account for inflation in later editions would seem to be in order, IMHO. I just finished reading Paul Theroux’ _Great Railway Bazaar_ (excellent read, BTW) and in the Introduction to the edition I have, he mentions that he gave psuedonyms to most of (all?) the people he spent some time with in the story, and one of them later contacted him and said he loved the book and his friends and family recognised him from the description, and he was quite happy to have his real name used. So Mr. Theroux acknowledges this in the Introduction (along with the person’s real name), but in the actual text of the book itself, the name remains unchanged and is still the psuedonym. I know there are various reasons for doing this (Artistic Integrity, Cost, etc etc), but part of me thought “Look, the guy said ‘You can use my real name if you like’, he’s only in one or two chapters, why not make a small change here and there to keep it fresh?” Just a thought, at any rate. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/51 "2009-07-14T00:32:52Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > What I’d like to see are _Authors_ “updating” earlier editions of their books. Say, one character in the book compares another character to being much like Celebrity X. When the book is written, Celebrity X is a well-known reference. Thirty years later, Celebrity X is an obscure nobody (or has gone on to do work that make the original reference muddied, confused, or no longer appropriate), and it would only take a moment to select a more appropriate Celebrity X for the new printing and update it. Ditto things like prices- when Character A (in a story with no fixed historical setting) is whinging about paying 50c for a can of Coke or whatever, a minor change to account for inflation in later editions would seem to be in order, IMHO. I just heard a book on tape where the author’s introduction explained how he’d decided against doing exactly that. He referenced a few celebrities and talked about money quite frequently. But it was a well written book, and by paying attention to both the amounts of money and the characters’ reactions to the values thrown around, it was easy to tell what was “a lot,” “a little,” and “an obscene amount of money.” Same with the celebrities, the way they were name dropped clearly explained their importance (or unimportance) in the world of the book, even though the same names have definitely faded over time. As to the larger question, what’s meant by re-writing and what’s the purpose? If it’s a good story that is now completely inaccessable without annotation, I hope someone re-tells it. But I wouldn’t want it passed off as the real thing. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/52 "2009-07-14T01:49:19Z")
> [@Redwing](#): > > I like Dunbar and Burns, both of which I think require reading aloud to fully understand. You are talking about Robert Burns? It takes more than reading aloud, since much of his work was in Scots, not English. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/53 "2009-07-14T16:02:55Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I wouldn’t consider modernizing spelling or punctuation to be at all the same thing as rewriting a book. Even with modern books spelling and punctuation will be adjusted to match local norms for the US and UK editions. In an academic setting it may sometimes be important to have the original text, but for general audiences I don’t see any good reason not to update the spelling. I think the big distinction between localized versions of modern books and “updating” older texts is that the former is under the author’s control, while the latter is not. Consider Emily Dickinson–when her poems were originally published, they had a lot of the punctuation changed. It wasn’t until fairly recently that they were published with the punctuation she’d originally used–which some people see as making a noticable difference in some poems. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/54 "2009-07-14T16:15:14Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > \*\*Annotation \*\*is a great idea. “Translating”/updating and, god forbid, bowdlerization are unacceptable. Note the quotation marks–when a language has evolved to the point where the old version no longer intelligible to a current native speaker, then translation is acceptable. (\*Beowulf \*should be translated; \*The Canturbury Tales \*should be annotated.) Personally I agree with you, but disagree with the cutoff point. Shakespeare is perfectly readable to me, Chaucer is certainly readable, though I use that term loosely, but mostly just painful, to wit – Whan that the Knyght had thus his tale ytoold, In al the route ne was ther yong ne oold That he ne seyde it was a noble storie, And worthy for to drawen to memorie; And namely the gentils everichon. Oure Hooste lough, and swoor, “So moot I gon, This gooth aright; unbokeled is the male, Lat se now who shal telle another tale, For trewely the game is wel bigonne. Now telleth on, sir Monk, if that ye konne Somwhat to quite with the Knyghtes tale.” The Millere that for dronken was al pale, So that unnethe upon his hors he sat, He nolde avalen neither hood ne hat, Ne abyde no man for his curteisie, But in Pilates voys he gan to crie, And swoor, “By armes and by blood and bones, I kan a noble tale for the nones, With which I wol now quite the Knyghtes tale.” Yeah, I’ll get through that book in about 3 months of reading the same word four times (exaggerating of course, it flows okay if you get into it, but fixing the spelling isn’t exactly a sin here). Or am I misinterpreting what you mean by “translation”? ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/55 "2009-07-14T16:32:10Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Yeah, I’ll get through that book in about 3 months of reading the same word four times (exaggerating of course, it flows okay if you get into it, but fixing the spelling isn’t exactly a sin here). Or am I misinterpreting what you mean by “translation”? Well, I’d definitely object to a wholesale “translation” to modern English. Updating just the spelling of each individual word you could make a case for, but I still think there’s the potential you’d be missing out on a lot. I had a small heart attack in college when I found out that my Chaucer class was going to be using the “untranslated” versions of the works we were reading, but once I actually tried reading some of it, I found that it really wasn’t that hard, and it got progressively easier the more time you spent on it. In my experience, once you get rolling, all you need are footnotes for words that have fallen out of common usage. (Small side note: footnotes \>\>\>\>\>\>\> end notes. People who use end notes should be subject to summary execution by being dragged out into the street and shot in the face repeatedly.) ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/56 "2009-07-14T19:06:40Z")
I can’t read Dostoyevsky in Russian, so I read much of his stuff in English. All the same, I enjoyed reading _The Godfather_ much more in English than I did in Spanish. Here are the distinctions: if I were to converse with a real Russian, he’d probably tell me that there’s a lot I missed, because I didn’t _really_ read Dostoyevsky, I read a work of fiction that was translated. There are certainly contexts that were missed in translation, and I’m certain that maybe I’m lacking a certain appreciation for the writing that a Russian would have in his native tongue. It’s still better to have read and missed than to never have read at all. The same certainly goes for _The Godfather_ in Spanish versus English, but as a piece of contemporary pulp fiction, it’s less important. I’d not bad an eyebrow at (for example) **Nava** if she claimed to have read _El Padrino_. So if someone were to rewrite _Romeo and Juliette_ in modern English, I’d look at it very much as a translation. Perhaps you’ve read story and gotten a lot from it, but you’ve still not read “Shakespeare.” I’d say the same thing about **Nava** if she’d only read it translated into Spanish (of any era). (And now I’m going to commit myself to reading Don Quixote in Spanish.) Given all the above, it’s certainly not unimaginable to write “translations” of old works for modern audiences, with the understanding that they’re not reading the original. Aren’t there already simplified versions of classics for young readers? ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/57 "2009-07-14T20:38:44Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > What I’d like to see are _Authors_ “updating” earlier editions of their books. That way, they can deal with pesky problems like whether Han shot first? (I know, that’s a movie, not a book) You’d think that would solve the problem, because you’re obviously not losing any of the author’s original intent, but there are still squeals from hardcore fans when a word of the original is changed. For the most part, though, it’s irrelevant, because the “hard to read” classics are mostly by authors that are now dead, and hence unable to update their works. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/58 "2009-07-14T23:38:20Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > I think the big distinction between localized versions of modern books and “updating” older texts is that the former is under the author’s control, while the latter is not. I don’t think this is true, not unless the author is a big name. In most cases I am pretty sure the publishers handle the localization on their own. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/59 "2009-07-15T15:15:53Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I don’t think this is true, not unless the author is a big name. In most cases I am pretty sure the publishers handle the localization on their own. The contract between the author and the publisher spells out how this works. Typically, the author doesn’t even know the book has been translated for a foreign market until the check arrives for the sale of rights in another country. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774/60 "2009-07-15T15:32:58Z")
I don’t mind some abridging/translating/even bowdlerizing (sp?) for kids. Grade school kids should be able to read about Huck Finn & Jim’s adventures w/o “Nigger this and nigger that”, BUT it should certainly be the real version when it’s taught in high schools. Being a Monster Kid, I’d have killed for the children-level but faithful rewrites now available of DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN. Bram Stoker & Mary Shelley are tough slogging for a 4th grader! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-old-books-be-re-written/502774.md?page=4)