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When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

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Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#71

Post by 47282847 »

shagie wrote: post #64
evilduck wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. Some translations are modern takes on an existing language translation like translating the King James Bible into modern English as literally as possible, while some take their own liberties with interpreting the original text as it was written and come up with somewhat dramatically different results. Translations b…

> Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. The start of the gospel of John is one that is particularly thought provoking for me because we can more easily grasp the meaning of the original words. https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. en archē ēn ho logos kai ho logos ē…

Why not translate it as “consciousness“? Seems quite obvious to me?

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#72

Post by 47282847 »

watwut wrote: post #33
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Children a quite capable of understanding something was written at a different time. Even if some person is certain that this is not the case, the child's parents hopefully are capable of explaining this to their children. :-)

Even if it was the case, but it is kind of massively easier to pick a book where you do not have to explain that. Sometimes you just want to read a book and children books are not all that much fun for adults anyway. You might not want to then have to go into explaining that racism was normal for the author, but we think differently jadda jadda ... it is additional completely pointless complication for what was suppo…

If you do not find it fun to read with your children and enjoy the stories equally you may want to consider picking different books or doing something else with them. They will pick up on it, and grow up to think you do not like to spend time with them - and later take that “truth” turned core belief to other relationships.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#73

Post by bityard »

djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

I'm okay with someone taking an older work and editing it to suit their own (necessarily personal) ideas of political correctness, but only so long as it is made obvious somewhere on the cover and title page that it is not the original work.

Anything else is fundamentally underhanded.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#74

Post by shagie »

47282847 wrote: post #71
shagie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. The start of the gospel of John is one that is particularly thought provoking for me because we can more easily grasp the meaning of the original words. https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. en archē ēn ho logos kai ho logos ē…

Why not translate it as “consciousness“? Seems quite obvious to me?

It likely came that way via the Vulgate ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate ) which was a translation of Greek into Latin in the fourth century. It was the official Catholic version in 1545 - 1563 (the KJV was translated in 1611).

in principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum

Though going back to logos - even that word changed meaning over the the centuries from Heraclitus (5th century BC) ( https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/17-the-heraclitean-logos/ https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/12/logos-of-hera... https://modernstoicism.com/heraclitus-and-the-birth-of-the-l... ) to the neoplatonist school (3rd century AD)

The early Christian church traditions were a battlefield of dueling scriptures and philosophies.

Some books that I'd recommend on that area. Note that my approach to the Bible isn't one of a believer but rather as another work of ancient philosophy (which was my favorite philosophy class of my almost not getting a CS degree) and stoicism is the branch within there that I've read the most of.

https://www.amazon.com/Stoicism-Early-Christianity-Tuomas-Ra...

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Christianities-Battles-Scripture...

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Scriptures-Books-that-Testament/...

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#75

Post by creer »

djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

How did we ever manage with paper print? The mind boggles. (We managed with later printings and later revisions. Which is one reason people sometimes seek an earlier edition or printing.)

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#76

Post by ewoodrich »

GJim wrote: post #50
NeoTar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the book. If it is a novel, then clearly not. A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's ultimately a decision for the author/publisher for each book. Is this a living text that should be kept up-to-date, or a historical record - after all, a book which lists all of the heads-of-state in 1958 is also valuable for different contexts. Perhaps more impo…

> A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's a book, not a web page! I have old astronomy books that indicate the visual appearance of Mars changes due to seasonal vegetation! This was obviously updated in later editions; the old edition remains as an important historical record of what we once thought. > if a book says something dangerous Old editions of the 'Hom…

> I have old astronomy books that indicate the visual appearance of Mars changes due to seasonal vegetation!

Well that's fascinating, do you happen to have an example of such a textbook that could be found online?

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#77

Post by NeoTar »

HalfRadish wrote: post #67
djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

This captures a new problem that's sort of sneaked in with the advent of digital publishing. In a print book, you can make corrections or revisions in a new edition, but the old edition is still potentially out there, in libraries and private collections, preserving its own history. In a digital publication, if you make a revision, the old edition disappears by default; older versions are only preserved if someone do…

But an advantage of digital texts could be that you buy a text in 2024, and it shows you all revisions of the text from 1948 to 2024…

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#78

Post by Clamchop »

djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen.

This doesn't suit the concept of all books, particularly non-fiction references. The article name-drops _The Joy of Cooking_, which is a suitable example of a book that strives to be useful and that benefits from new editions gently reworked to be correct and current.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#79

Post by brendoelfrendo »

pessimizer wrote: post #57
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society. It is, if nothing else, convenient that I don't have to say one of the worst slurs in American English every time I discuss Agatha Christie's body of work. It's worth noting that, for that reason, the book was released as "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of th…

> Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society. As a black American, I'm forced to care about the efforts of people to retcon pervasive racism out of history, or relegate it to one-dimensional "bad guys." This will not save my children from racism, instead it will make them absolutely bewildered by the pervasive racism they will face, and…

Perhaps this will make my willingness to alter a title seem somewhat arbitrary, but I do agree on the whole. I don't think that media should be edited to remove racist or otherwise outmodded content; for example, I would never suggest altering the language of Huckleberry Finn, or the racist content found in some classic Looney Tunes. We can and should be forced to reckon with the history of racism, and our children should be taught context alongside content. Perhaps what got me in this instance is the use of modern "woke" terminology to refer to, in the case of Agatha Christie's novel, a decision that was made decades ago. Further, I don't think it's correct to assume that all editorial decisions are made in pandering to the "woke zeitgeist," whatever that means.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#80

Post by djoldman »

Clamchop wrote: post #78
djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen. This doesn't suit the concept of all books, particularly non-fiction references. The article name-drops _The Joy of Cooking_, which is a suitable example of a book that strives to be useful and that benefits from new editions gently reworked to be correct and current.

That's fine. Each edition is a new work and should be frozen when completed.
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