> Is it just pure ego/stubborness that Scholastic doesn’t own up to their error
> and rename any subsequent pressings to the correct title?
Are you kidding? The editors at Scholastic probably insist that they made exactly the right choice. They would probably say, if asked, “Hey, we knew this book series would be a big hit if we just changed the name and Americanized some of the terminology in the books. The heck with those geeks who insist on not changing anything from the author’s manuscripts. What do they know about editing?”
The editors at Scholastic who decided to buy the American rights to the books (who are probably the same ones who decided to make the changes) have presumably gotten big raises over their decisions. I presume that Scholastic wasn’t the first publisher in the U.S. to be offered the American rights. I presume that several other American publishers turned down the American rights.
It’s not just Scholastic. I was amazed when visiting relatives in the States to see that not only did the DVD sport the title “…Sorcerer’s Stone” (no surprise) but the actors in the movie spoke the words “Sorcerer’s Stone.” We saw the movie on the big screen in Canada. That, plus the DVD, and we have the “Philosopher’s Stone” with the actors saying “Philosopher’s Stone.” So they actually had to reshoot the scenes twice. All that effort to, what, protect kids from mulisyllabisity?
I first heard of this phenomenon about a year ago on public radio, listening to a British author bemoan how all difficult or unfamilar words or cultural references were savagely edited out of her novels for the American editions. I was appalled. This is apparently s.o.p. for children’s books these days, that is if the book isn’t completely Disney-fied.
How are children ever supposed to learn if they are never exposed to anything new? I remember finding odd terms or words in books like ‘Mary Poppins’ or ‘Peter Pan’ as a child, but where they were not clear through the context, they still in no way distracted from the story. It certainly never bruised my ego in the slightest to have to look something up. On the contrary; I delighted in learning new words, terms, concepts.
Some days it really does seem to me that there is a conspiracy in this country to make us all stupider.