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Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

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Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#161

Post by morelisp »

Freeboots wrote: post #126
mordechai9000 wrote: post #111

I've always been annoyed they replaced "Philosopher's Stone" with "Sorcerer's Stone" in the title of the Harry Potter novel, for American consumption. It feels kinda of insulting, frankly. I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It…

Sorcerer's Stone is particularly annoying i agree. Not like philosophers' stone is an existing mythos highly relevant to the story or anything. Another that bugged me was Northern Lights -> The Golden Compass. Apparently NL was too abstract for American audiences? Oh and Harlequin -> The Archer's Tale.

Moreover, "The Golden Compass" was illustrated with the wrong type of compass.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#162

Post by keybuk »

mdp2021 wrote: post #156
Intermernet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone had to say it ;-)

The '-ize' prefix is official International English - OED English. No partisanship (for example) necessary (in fact, '-ize' in OED is a Graecism, not, say, an Americanism). Trying anyway to link the idea to the context: there is no need to translate a Local Language work into an International Language transposition - no need already per se. But especially, it is most normal for works of arts to written using specific…

'-ize' might be preferred by Oxford, but '-ise' is preferred by Cambridge. So I think it needs no explanation which DNA would prefer.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#163

Post by morelisp »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #127
mordechai9000 wrote: post #111

I've always been annoyed they replaced "Philosopher's Stone" with "Sorcerer's Stone" in the title of the Harry Potter novel, for American consumption. It feels kinda of insulting, frankly. I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It…

Well, they didn't translate the pun in the title of 1Q84, at least, so they at least have some respect for the reader.

Possibly unintentionally it still works, just as a visual pun instead of an aural one.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#164

Post by djur »

Retric wrote: post #144
leoedin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think much like reading is abstracted to a point where the "shape" of the words conveys the meaning (and you can muddle up the inner letters without much loss of information), when you use digital clocks enough the subconscious meaning of the shape of the numbers is what you see. I don't have to do a manual conversion to understand from the 16:54 on my phone screen that I have 5 minutes until 5pm - I just "know" th…

Except you just gave up a lot of precision doing that conversion. 16:54 might be 5 minutes and 0.1 seconds or 5 minutes and 59.9 seconds. If you can get that same feel for 16:54:36 then sure, but I personally don’t.

I can't say I've ever taken the second hand into account when looking at an analogue clock to check the time, nor do I usually find myself reading the minute hand more precisely than 5 minute intervals. I've certainly watched it slowly approach 12 when waiting to get out of class or something like that, but I could just as easily watch a number count up toward 60.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#165

Post by inkywatcher »

gordian-mind wrote: post #136
pessimizer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody is a xenophile, some people are nationalist types who get annoyed (rather than aroused) whenever they hear a foreign accent, and may even have trouble understanding them. You're not going to change channels if you hear an American accent, but they very much will if they hear an Australian one. One out of every six big US movies would be black if it were proportionate to population, but they're not. The…

> The reason is because black people will watch white movies, but white people don't watch black movies. What happened to "people just want to be represented in movies"? Simply put, since there are more whites than blacks in the U.S., then every film-maker has an incentive to represent them more to reach a broader audience. This is absolutely not because "white people are more bigoted", which is laughable when you co…

> surely

Would you mind substantiating this?

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#166

Post by dionidium »

One of the things I like so much about the movie Rounders is that it respects its audience enough to drop unexplained references throughout without elaborate explanation (in a way you hardly ever see in mass media). Many about poker, but many other little gems, too.

Consider the line, "Like Papa Wallenda said, 'Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting." If you don't get the reference, you aren't missing much, but for those who do it's such a delightful little moment in the film, made better by its lack of supporting explanation. Thank god they didn't add clunky exposition to inform the viewer about the Wallendas.

Another favorite: when Michael is walking back into KGB's place, the place where he previously lost all his money, he says: "I feel like Buckner walking back into Shea." Who is Bucker, what is Shea, and what does it have to do with KGB? The film takes the chance you'll get it.

There are lots and lots of poker terms and references, too, most introduced without elaborate fanfare on the theory that a smart audience will pick them up as they go, but it's these random lines -- "In the legal sense, can fuckin' Steinbrenner move the Yankees?" -- that have always stuck with me.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#167

Post by pessimizer »

gordian-mind wrote: post #136
pessimizer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody is a xenophile, some people are nationalist types who get annoyed (rather than aroused) whenever they hear a foreign accent, and may even have trouble understanding them. You're not going to change channels if you hear an American accent, but they very much will if they hear an Australian one. One out of every six big US movies would be black if it were proportionate to population, but they're not. The…

> The reason is because black people will watch white movies, but white people don't watch black movies. What happened to "people just want to be represented in movies"? Simply put, since there are more whites than blacks in the U.S., then every film-maker has an incentive to represent them more to reach a broader audience. This is absolutely not because "white people are more bigoted", which is laughable when you co…

I don't understand the argument that you're making. Black people expect not to be represented in movies, and so seeing someone like themselves is not essential to appreciate them (although a token certainly helps.) White people are alienated from movies they don't see themselves in. Therefore movies made for white people will not lose black audiences, but movies made for black people will lose white audiences.

You seem to be supporting that opinion, but angrily.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#168

Post by morelisp »

dymk wrote: post #55
vrc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why the continuous motion ones are so sought after and pricy. The mechanical continuous motion watches are really marvelous feats of engineering

The movement is still quantized if you look close enough.

Your eyes will quantize the display before the mechanism does.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#169

Post by danachow »

Adraghast wrote: post #103
coldtea wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face. I'd say that's a failure to teach them analog time as toddlers, not digital time being inherently superior.

Digital time is inherently superior. Analog time requires the extra cognitive step of translating to the numbers being represented. Digital time skips that process and shows you the numbers directly.

This thread has devolved into what sounds like a bunch of web devs that think that makes them experts on perception and psychophysics.

But on this point there isn’t anything inherently more abstract about Arabic numerals as a representation of numbers than the angles of the hands on a clock face (ie a short hand to the right is 3 and upright is 12, etc is a pretty efficient way to convey a number). As for what can be read quicker probably has overwhelmingly a lot to do what was learned in youth. Similar to stenographic shorthand this can probably be acquired but there just isn’t much incentive to do so.

There isn’t necessarily any extra “cognitive step” in the pattern recognition of a clock face vs that of a numeral.

I don’t know much about research on this particular area but there is some in the related area of written language.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#170

Post by bitwize »

I used to grow up watching Danger Mouse, one of the most British cartoon shows. I still have fond memories of it and the dialog holds up well, acquiring nuance that went over my head as a kid, that I can appreciate as an adult. I learned about London landmarks -- Baker Street, Willesden Green, the Tower of London -- through this show, and even things like what a pillarbox is. Britishisms like that were always namechecked, and everything seems to have been made with a sense of British pride.

Danger Mouse got a "modern" reboot in 2015, and by comparison it's awful. It's more colorful and garish, the dialogue is more rapid fire and less funny, and though it sometimes features new landmarks like the Gherkin, it has less of a British identity. Later on I found out that the producers copped to making a more American style cartoon, which is what the market seems to want.

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