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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)

#181

Post by mdp2021 »

keybuk wrote: post #162
mdp2021 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> is preferred by

But International English is Oxford, not Cambridge. The convention came to be OED.

> So I think it needs no explanation which DNA would prefer

I do not understand. "DNA"?

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

#182

Post by joemi »

js2 wrote: post #69
pikminguy wrote: post #25

Earlier 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…

Counter example: I grew up using 12-hour time and still do to this day, with plenty of analog clocks all around, and yet I find it much easier and faster to convert between 24-hour and 12-hour time (just remove the leading 1 and subtract 2, if the hour is more than 12) than to parse an analog clock (identify which hand is which, convert the minutes to get an approximation, even more work if it's a stylized clock that might use roman numerals or not have any labels at all).

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

#183

Post by spoils19 »

BearOso wrote: post #152
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…

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.

The American version is more accurate and arguably better - I like to think the title was changed for our heightened intelligence and not the opposite.

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

#184

Post by _23sd »

ginko wrote: post #175
bitwize wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 !

Yes, and also I was thinking more of how executives think about it rather than audiences. Sometimes the reason for popular Japanese films not making it to the West (or not making it until many years later) is because the Japanese rightsholders are holding out for funding to make an alternative cut for overseas audiences and get a wider theatrical release.

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

#185

Post by pvaldes »

Intermernet wrote: post #52
Joeboy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess David Attenborough probably isn't so well-known in the US? It's apparently much harder to get people to show up for something without a big name attached. Edit: > Actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver was brought in to replace David Attenborough as narrator, as it was thought her familiarity to American audiences would attract more viewers.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_(2006_TV_ser…

David Attenborough is by far the most famous nature documentarist in the world. No one comes close. I'm not sure what name would be regarded as bigger.

I would put Jacques Cousteau and Felix Rodríguez de la Fuente in the same league. If we take in mind the risks that they suffered to film nature I would say that they score higher in the epic factor.

I'm not denying that Attenborough is a category in himself and a wonderful narrator of course.

Freeman and Sigourney are in a different category. Both are excellent actors and narrators in films directed by another people. Freeman is "the" voice in the anglosphere, but Rodriguez de la Fuente was "the" voice in the latinosphere. Everybody was trying to imitate their style and accent decades after their death. He was the leader in a wolf pack when nobody was doing that, and don't hesitate to escalate a clift to take a good shot of a vulture nest. He was not an actor that just arrives to a set, say their lines and go.

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

#186

Post by peoplefromibiza »

joemi wrote: post #180
pessimizer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ass…

> I'm not sure there's any reason to make that assumption.

analog clocks are modeled around the idea that the time is circular because that's the natural cycle of day and night (same concept of the meridian, plus dark hours, when there is no shadow).

I imagine that any alien civilization that lives on a planet that rotates around its star and has a light/dark cycle would measure time in a similar fashion.

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

#187

Post by joemi »

plorkyeran wrote: post #122
hotpotamus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you where one strapped to your body at all times? If you did, I bet you'd find it more intuitive.

I wore an analog watch for about 15 years and never hit the point where it was easier for me to read than a digital display.

Same for me. My house had loads of analog clocks when I was growing up, I had one for a watch for over a decade, but still it was always a little bit harder to figure out than digital for me.

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

#188

Post by peoplefromibiza »

pikminguy wrote: post #179
pessimizer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My experience is different.

When I am at the train station I can have an immediate idea of what time is it just looking at the analog clocks around (they are digital displays mimicking analog clocks) even if I can't read the numbers from afar.

Digital clocks are harder for me because I have to parse the information: is that a 6, 8, 9, or zero?

It doesn't make much difference in the end, bit having to actually read the number forces me to be precise and I can't rely on intuition.

The more I age, the more my vision deteriorate, the more I find analog clocks easier to read.

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

#189

Post by prometheus76 »

BearOso wrote: post #152
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…

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.

"Philosopher's Stone" also refers to a relevant part of alchemy, whereas "Sorcerer's Stone" has no poetic or referential weight to it. Sad.

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

#190

Post by rendall »

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…

Gotta love HN.

> The '-ize' prefix...

Since we're doing flagrant pedantry, let's go all in: don't you mean suffix?

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