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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)

#231

Post by retrac »

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…

They didn't just change the title from Philosopher's Stone. It was lightly edited throughout to nix Briticisms. You'd think they were translating it from the Ancient Greek edition and wanted to smooth over the culture gap. (A real translation, by the way!)

All the more amusingly (or insultingly?) the Canadian release was the UK edition. Canadian English is much, much closer to American than British in its spoken form, so most of the worries about Briticisms would apply to Canadian children. Somehow we managed to read it, despite the strange and foreign speech and ideas.

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

#232

Post by jawilson2 »

kuang_eleven wrote: post #209

It's interesting, I actually do think there is value in regionalizing media to an extent, primarily low-level word change between dialects. For example, changing "Go throw the wellies in the boot of the car parked on the pavement before we get petrol" to "Go throw the rainboots in the trunk of the car parked on the sidewalk before we get gas" for an American audience. Higher-level changes are less justifiable, like t…

> Go throw the wellies in the boot of the car parked on the pavement before we get petrol

When I first read HGTTG in 5th-6th grade, it was exactly this kind of language that drew me to it. It enhanced the humor for me, and it would feel dead to regionalize it, and lose an integral part of the character.

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

#233

Post by jollybean »

retrac wrote: post #231
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…

They didn't just change the title from Philosopher's Stone. It was lightly edited throughout to nix Briticisms. You'd think they were translating it from the Ancient Greek edition and wanted to smooth over the culture gap. (A real translation, by the way!) All the more amusingly (or insultingly?) the Canadian release was the UK edition. Canadian English is much, much closer to American than British in its spoken form…

Canadian English is closer to American English, but Canadians (at least up until recently) 'get' Britishisms, or at least, the tone if not all of the specific vocabulary, to a great extent.

Edit: excluding Quebec where cultural references are completely different.

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

#234

Post by adolph »

capitainenemo wrote: post #31
NeoTar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great argument for using the 24h clock ;-)

Ever seen the 24h analog clock? :) https://m8y.org/images/24.svg

This is very nice as it addresses the zero-index nature of time by going 0-23 instead of 1-24. Time would be much more comprehensible if all clock were marked that way.

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

#235

Post by jakub_g »

Melatonic wrote: post #195
archerx wrote: post #2

From my experience in the media industry some producers/higher ups like making arbitrary changes to a work/show/whatever just so they can say they had an impact, or to say that they made that change at the end, most of the time it ends up making the final product worst.

There is a joke among audio engineers that they need to have a button specifically for this - I forget the exact name used ( I have heard several) but essentially it is a button that does nothing. The Exec or higher up asks for a very small tweak and the engineer obliges (by pressing the button) and then plays it back again. Nothing has changed but the Exec feels satisfied.

There's a HN classic for that: "Just remove the duck"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9137736

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

#236

Post by capitainenemo »

adolph wrote: post #234
capitainenemo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever seen the 24h analog clock? :) https://m8y.org/images/24.svg

This is very nice as it addresses the zero-index nature of time by going 0-23 instead of 1-24. Time would be much more comprehensible if all clock were marked that way.

Hm, I think most countries that use 24h time systems use 00:00:00 to 23:59:59

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

#237

Post by jollybean »

spoils19 wrote: post #183
BearOso wrote: post #152

Earlier 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.

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.

This is some good irony right here!

Aside from the fact that there can be nothing more 'accurate' in fiction than the Author's own words ... the 'Philosopher's Stone' has mythological reference that 'Sorcerer's Stone' obviously doesn't.

And using American words for 'the toilet' that the characters may not have used themselves, is not 'more accurate'.

And it mostly has little to do with intelligence.

As a reminder to everyone - America is a very big place, with a lot of different people, often with different roots, migration status etc..

It's feasible kids from New England would adapt to the English version without any fuss, but beyond that, a lot of this vernacular would just be 'very foreign'. We're talking about kids with limited vocabulary to start with, not the guy with an 'English Accent' in the documentary.

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

#238

Post by dwringer »

jawilson2 wrote: post #232
kuang_eleven wrote: post #209

It's interesting, I actually do think there is value in regionalizing media to an extent, primarily low-level word change between dialects. For example, changing "Go throw the wellies in the boot of the car parked on the pavement before we get petrol" to "Go throw the rainboots in the trunk of the car parked on the sidewalk before we get gas" for an American audience. Higher-level changes are less justifiable, like t…

> Go throw the wellies in the boot of the car parked on the pavement before we get petrol When I first read HGTTG in 5th-6th grade, it was exactly this kind of language that drew me to it. It enhanced the humor for me, and it would feel dead to regionalize it, and lose an integral part of the character.

My thoughts exactly. The Britishisms add extra color and absurdity while simultaneously bringing the characters more to life. Besides, archaic and excessively formal language is almost a hallmark of British humor as I interpret it.

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

#239

Post by joemi »

pessimizer wrote: post #205
joemi wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The only assumption is that analog means a gauge of some sort with a pointer or pointers moving between symbols, rather than a series of symbols that change for digital. I wouldn't have any problem with assuming a circular gauge (because we calculate periodic things using circle math), but it's not necessary.

That's kind of a big assumption, IMO. Why does it need symbols? Perhaps a hypothetical alien species has an analog clock that keeps track of times with shades of color. Or audio tones. Or it uses a gauge, but the gauge vibrates and the vibrations mean something.

Combine that with the fact that their time system might not be based on a fairly regular rotation of the planet. Perhaps they value some other less regular measurement more. Or perhaps their planet does not have regular rotation. How might a time system evolve and be portrayed in those cases? How can you be sure that an analog display would be easier to interpret than a digital one?

Similar to how a 12-hour analogue clock does not necessarily imply that we actually have 24 hours in our days, an alien analog clock could potentially be vastly different than the same alien's digital clock.

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

#240

Post by t-3 »

jollybean wrote: post #233
retrac wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't just change the title from Philosopher's Stone. It was lightly edited throughout to nix Briticisms. You'd think they were translating it from the Ancient Greek edition and wanted to smooth over the culture gap. (A real translation, by the way!) All the more amusingly (or insultingly?) the Canadian release was the UK edition. Canadian English is much, much closer to American than British in its spoken form…

Canadian English is closer to American English, but Canadians (at least up until recently) 'get' Britishisms, or at least, the tone if not all of the specific vocabulary, to a great extent. Edit: excluding Quebec where cultural references are completely different.

As an American that grew up reading Brian Jacques and Terry Pratchett, I don't think there's any difficulty in understanding Britishisms, even at a very young age. Even unbowdlerized Shakespeare isn't very difficult, it's mostly phonetically similar and the speech patterns are still present.
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