I Don't understand why publishers localize a book, instead to add a footnote..
And translations are even worst.. .
Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
171–180 of 326 posts
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#172I'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…
I think the attitude that Japanese popular culture should ideally be completely rewritten for overseas release (a la Godzilla) is still common within Japan itself, but thankfully US publishers and film distributors have mostly realized audiences don't want that. It's still enough of an issue that you're right to be cautious, though 1Q84 is a big enough title that the translation would be heavily scrutinized. A lot of…
The Japanese don't care much for Roland Emmerich's 1997 Godzilla. Because the rights to the character are owned by Toei, that character occasionally appears as a joke in Japanese Godzilla films as "Zilla" (because he is pathetic and not a god).
The current Western Godzilla from 2024 on fared better with Japanese audiences, but they consider him too fat or something.
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#173By far the stupidest Americanization I've encountered is when Netflix changed "The Great British Bake Off" to "The Great British Baking Show". They are honestly recording 2 versions of every intro for this?
This Captain Disillution video shows the lengths the producers went to apply that title change to the show
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#174‘Disused lavatory’ has been changed to ‘unused lavatory’ and I’m not sure why. As an American it baffles me that an American editor would change the word disused but not the word lavatory. One other thing. I’d rather have characters say ‘What do you mean?’ than ‘Whadd’ya mean?’ Again baffling. Whadd'ya mean is an accent, not a word choice. Changing it in text is as ridiculous as writing 50 as "fifdy" when it's an Ame…
Speaking of the "disused" part:
https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2018/06/disu...
(and yes, I am that Paul)
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the attitude that Japanese popular culture should ideally be completely rewritten for overseas release (a la Godzilla) is still common within Japan itself, but thankfully US publishers and film distributors have mostly realized audiences don't want that. It's still enough of an issue that you're right to be cautious, though 1Q84 is a big enough title that the translation would be heavily scrutinized. A lot of…
The Japanese don't care much for Roland Emmerich's 1997 Godzilla. Because the rights to the character are owned by Toei, that character occasionally appears as a joke in Japanese Godzilla films as "Zilla" (because he is pathetic and not a god). The current Western Godzilla from 2024 on fared better with Japanese audiences, but they consider him too fat or something.
I think they were referring to the heavy edits the original 1954 Godzilla film underwent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla,_King_of_the_Monsters!
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you're right that analog watches are better tools that's not what Adams was saying. "We all know, really, that [analog clock face] is a lot more instantly meaningful to us than 15:39" which is just wrong. Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout.
Funny you should use 15:39 as your example. I find the translation I have to do from 15:39 to 3:39 pm to have much more friction than reading a digital or analog clock in the first place, both of which I can do with equal ease. The problem of course is that I'm not used to 24-hour times, so I don't equate 15 with any particular time of day. Similar to how I have to translate C to F to make sense of C temperatures. No…
I didn't pick 15:39 that's the quote from Douglas Adams. He pretty clearly went with a hard to read digital time to emphasize the point that he (and according to him everyone else) can more readily get useful information from an analog readout. My own watch is a digital 12 hour display and that is more useful to me.
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#177His argument about digital watches did not age well. My kids have known how to understand a digital clock since they were toddlers, but even now, in elementary school, they require entire lesson units in school on telling time from a clock face. Beyond that, he argues that pie charts tell us more about the relationship between things than tables of numbers, and a clock face is "the world's most perfect pie chart." Bu…
seriously, I am a GenXer who grew up with mostly digital clocks and I still have to stop and think to get a time out of a clock dial. But then again as Adams said elsewhere, Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so. That one still rings true, especially if you're a freelancer like me who never needs to get up and go to an office at 9AM.
If I just want a sense of progress of time, especially within an hour, an analog clock works just fine for me. It obviously is more work if I want an exact to the minute time for logging something, and then it must be converted.
On the other hand, analogue might probably slightly easier if I just want to get an to the nearest 15 minutes approximation of the time. If reading from an analogue clock, I'll probably say it is 3:30, but would say it is 3:27 if reading from the digital clock, as reading it exact is faster than rounding it. I have had people seem bemused by my telling them the precise time like that, but like, I'm not going to make more work for myself to make the time less precise to better match tradition.
But unlike some other people I know, I don't have much difficulty understanding the progress of time with a digital clock either. 13:54, and the equivalent clock face both give me equally good impression of how much time is left until until 14:00, and I feel no need to translate either into the other for that purpose.
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
It loses a lot of connotation, too. Philosopher's implies abstract, referring to the stone's elusive, impossible nature: having never been discovered, only theorized. In a story where everyone is a sorcerer, it dumbs that down a lot. It could be one of their kidney stones for all it matters.
To be fair, everybody in that world is a wizard, not a sorcerer.
These are fictional classification of fictional magic users anyway. Actually did she ever clarify what exactly a sorcerer is in her universe?
(In the D&D model her wizards seem to operate more like sorcerers, but of course D&D doesn't make the rules for everyone).
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you're right that analog watches are better tools that's not what Adams was saying. "We all know, really, that [analog clock face] is a lot more instantly meaningful to us than 15:39" which is just wrong. Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout.
> Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout. More from outside knowledge than from the digital readout itself. There's no way to tell from a digital readout there are 60 minutes in an hour or seconds in a minute, or that there's a 12-hour period that means something (and no hints to guess.) There's no evidence that the time represented on a digital readout changes at a constan…
I don't think you're getting how important the word instant is in this context. An analog clock might be better for decoding an unfamiliar time system. It might be better for teaching children how we count time. It might implicitly contain more information. It might be better in a thousand ways. None of that matters.
For whatever reason I get a faster and more accurate sense of what time it is from a digital watch. I am not alone in this. Therefor the assertion that an analog readout is more instantly meaningful for everyone is wrong.
Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you're right that analog watches are better tools that's not what Adams was saying. "We all know, really, that [analog clock face] is a lot more instantly meaningful to us than 15:39" which is just wrong. Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout.
> Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout. More from outside knowledge than from the digital readout itself. There's no way to tell from a digital readout there are 60 minutes in an hour or seconds in a minute, or that there's a 12-hour period that means something (and no hints to guess.) There's no evidence that the time represented on a digital readout changes at a constan…
> If you found an alien digital clock written in alien language, it would take you forever to figure out anything about it; it would take a while to figure out anything useful even if you knew it was a clock. If you found an alien analog clock, it would be immediately obvious what it was and what it was doing, and you could use it to help you understand the alien digital clock.
I disagree with this. This seems to assume that an alien analog clock would look/function more like our analog clocks than an alien digital clock would look/function like our digital clocks. I'm not sure there's any reason to make that assumption.