Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 992 posts

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#581

Post by furyofantares »

tedunangst wrote: post #145
furyofantares wrote: post #132

The changes all look fine to me, and many of them probably make me more likely to continue reading Dahl books to my kid. I mean, none of the old language would stop me in my tracks but it adds up. There's plenty of options and I'm always picking the ones that I find the best, in many cases having a bunch of outdated language will cause me to pick something else next time.

What are you going to do with all the old books?

I certainly don't re-read every book I have over and over again. Mostly they're decoration.

The replies about burning them are incredible when my post only said I'm less likely to keep picking the book up.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#582

Post by tsol »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #524
mensetmanusman wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your decision may be contributing to the crisis of identity of women who do want to raise a family though, and who have been crushed by a culture who pushes college and helping capital owners as the meaning to life.

My understanding is that this crisis of identity is actually on men, because men aren’t now the sole breadwinners and also don’t have girlboss feminism to bolster them. Men attain less education and are more prone to crime, homelessness, and addiction. The traditional role of a man is an emotionally closed-off breadwinner, and this doesn’t work in a world where women can rival men in breadwinning but also don’t have…

Both groups can have a crisis of identity? Conservative women aren't looked upon very positively in popular culture, this isn't much of a reach.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#583

Post by ImaCake »

rgmerk wrote: post #491

Rewriting stories for children to reflect the values and anxieties of contemporary culture has occurred forever. For instance, see “The Family Shakespeare” by the Bowdlers. Interestingly, critics seemed to pan it for similar reasons to HN’s commentators, but the book sold well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_Shakespeare I’m considerably less dogmatic about this than I used to be. Enid Blyton was a staple of…

It's actually such an old practice that historians of Rome read ancient texts on the assumption that they have been edited/revised/embellished multiple times.

It really puts into content the people in this thread saying this is the end of free society.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#584

Post by [deleted] »

dboat wrote: post #514
lotsofpulp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either I am completely out of touch, or this comment is nonsense. A screech is a high pitched sound, nothing more unless otherwise indicated.

No, the person you replied to was correct (for my region and presumably his). My knowledge of the term mirrors his and I'm kind of disappointed to see so many people asserting there is no common, derogatory, gendered use of the term just because they are unfamiliar with it. I see a lot of people with no knowledge or experience with this common usage. That's fine, but it's arrogant to assume things you don't know are…

[deleted]

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#585

Post by oska »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #555
mandmandam wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> pointing out that Jewish people are heavily involved in the media isn't inherently anti-semitic 'Jews are controlling the media' isn't antisemitic? 'der Stuermer' was depicting caricature Jews with long noses just for the fun of it? And yes, fictional conspiracies were a big deal in antisemitic propaganda - 'the protocols of the elders of zion' is just an example.

You're twisting the words of the person you replied to - you've changed 'heavily involved' to 'controlling'.

And regarding The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The whole point of that book is that it was passed off as not being fictional. It was fraudulently presented as a real text.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#586

Post by [deleted] »

loeg wrote: post #567
dboat wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the person you replied to was correct (for my region and presumably his). My knowledge of the term mirrors his and I'm kind of disappointed to see so many people asserting there is no common, derogatory, gendered use of the term just because they are unfamiliar with it. I see a lot of people with no knowledge or experience with this common usage. That's fine, but it's arrogant to assume things you don't know are…

> I'm kind of disappointed to see so many people asserting there is no common, derogatory, gendered use of the term just because they are unfamiliar with it. Maybe worth reconsidering if your understanding of the term is truly "common." > That's fine, but it's arrogant to assume things you don't know are nonsense. It also seems pretty arrogant to assert you know better than everyone else.

[deleted]

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#587

Post by ojintoad »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #146
DanHulton wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Screeching" in english (at least North American english) is typically a gendered derogative. You generally wouldn't say a man was "screeching", not unless you also wanted to imply he was effeminate. By avoiding the word, you avoid insinuating the target's gender is part of the issue, and/or avoid insinuating that the target is effeminate when they "should not" be, i.e. you avoid homophobia.

Either I am completely out of touch, or this comment is nonsense. A screech is a high pitched sound, nothing more unless otherwise indicated.

There's definitely associations embeded with words that we apparently have measurement systems for.

It'd be really cool if someone familiar with what I'm linking to below could comment, especially regarding the word screech and its related forms!

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1720347115

https://github.com/chainsawriot/sweater

https://kawine.github.io/blog/nlp/2019/09/23/bias.html

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#588

Post by _heimdall »

vineyardmike wrote: post #544
aflag wrote: post #113

I'm a non-native English speaker. What's wrong with screeching?

In addition to what others said, it’s just not a common saying in modern English. If you described someone annoying as screeching, older people likely would understand but most would find it strange language for today.

At 34, I can't imagine that someone 10 or 15 years younger than me would find it strange for me to say something about a car's brakes screeching

Also, what should us older people call a screech owl?

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#589

Post by pasquinelli »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #531
josephg wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah; I don’t know why it’s taken people so long to realise this. I know it seems to people on Twitter that everyone is on twitter, but that’s really not true. About 10% of people in the USA use Twitter daily - which is a huge number of eyeballs. But that still leaves the remaining 90% of people choosing instead to enjoy our short time on this planet. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outrage over Hogwarts…

The thing with hogwarts legacy is that the minorities who are affected are like 1% of the population. Even if 100% of them loudly proclaimed anything anywhere on any social media platform, it would barely affect anything simply because they’re so small compared to the rest of the population. This is in the same sense that only a minority of the population are severely immunocompromised to the point where Covid is sti…

i think people have gotten a lot more aware and accepting of trans people in the last couple decades. i think the real reason why people don't seem to be bothered by the harry potter game is because most people get that whatever j.k. rowling thinks or says or does doesn't really harm trans people, that she didn't make the game, and that playing a game is just playing a game.

actually, i take that back: most people don't know about j.k. rowling's opinions. and even so over the last couple decades they've become much more aware and accepting of trans people.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#590

Post by twothamendment »

Animats wrote: post #465
faeriechangling wrote: post #209

Of every change the ones to Augustus Gloop not being called "enormously fat" and instead being called "enormous" are the most jarring as his story is a moral parable about the dangers of gluttony. Even if you think such moral parables are wrong, the phrasing change isn't simply just aesthetic, it's fundamentally changing the story's narrative.

Last year, it was the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine.[1] [1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/19487821/thomas-the-tank-engine-...

I started reading examples from the article to my wife and she brought up the fat controller. When my son was young we watched all the older, UK Thomas episodes on YouTube. We preferred the narrator and the fat controller to the US version.
Post reply on HN