Is it the writer or the American edition editor doing this? I noticed the idiom swap was a lot more rampant than I'd realized when I started reading UK editions of works by British authors.
Atherton clearly knowa there are differences of terminology - she refers to the torch/flashlight issue in one of the books - so perhaps she's not to blame after all.
Yep. British books are routinely translated into American idiom, and not just YA authors. I hadn't really noticed before I got into the habit of Brit picking my fic and then it stood out like a sore thumb. Now I only buy UK editions of books set in the UK to avoid the idiom switch.
I'll have to keep an eye on that in future then - thank you!
It simply hadn't occurred to me that this would be common practice - give the noise made by the media over the Harry Potter thing, I'd assumed it was an isolated case....
What Bees and Brews said. You just have to look at Harry Potter and the SORCERER's Stone to see that editors do this garbage a lot. Even when they really do not have to. Most readers can figure out from context.
Especially now that we get metric tonnes of British media here. BBC America, etc. It's not like people are generally stupid. Even kids (which HP was aimed at,) can figure things out. But yes, it's incredibly common for American editions to have stupid changes in them. HP was particularly awful because they changed character names for language issues. I'm sorry but a French kid could understand "I am Lord Voldemort" there was no need to change him to Tom Elvis Jedusor (Je suis Voldemort) he's ENGLISH. It's habitual I think in international publishing.
If it helps at all, UK editors sometimes do the same thing to American books. I once read a Captain Underpants book that changed 'Doctor Diaper' to 'Doctor Nappy' and got very offended that the editors thought I wouldn't know what 'diaper' meant.
Particularly ironic that one, since it's one of the words that used to be used in British English but went out of fashion here while being retained in the US.
If it helps at all, UK editors sometimes do the same thing to American books.
If anything it's even more stupid to change things that way round, given the aheer amount of US media that we're exposed to here...
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What an insult to the American reading public :(
Atherton clearly knowa there are differences of terminology - she refers to the torch/flashlight issue in one of the books - so perhaps she's not to blame after all.
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It simply hadn't occurred to me that this would be common practice - give the noise made by the media over the Harry Potter thing, I'd assumed it was an isolated case....
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Seems to me it's rather an insult to their readers - as you say most folk could probably understand a few unfamiliar terms.
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I shall look on the authors of such with a kindlier eye in future then. I wonder if many of them are grinding their teeth at the daftness of it...
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If it helps at all, UK editors sometimes do the same thing to American books.
If anything it's even more stupid to change things that way round, given the aheer amount of US media that we're exposed to here...
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