Know Tea

The local folks know that with the previous six HP books, we have ordered the UK editions from Amazon.co.uk. This has seemed really geeky to a lot of people I’m sure, and puzzling to others. Why go to all that trouble and expense? Well, it’s not really any trouble thanks to Al Gore and his wonderful invention of the Information Superhighway. And it’s not really any more expensive, especially since the pre-order price was 50% off retail (even with shipping, the total comes out to less than the US retail price). The only bad part is the wait. As many of you know, this time, since it was the last in the series, we didn’t wait. We picked up a copy of the US edition last Saturday at Waldemart. But the real one arrived on Wednesday:

So, what’s so different about it? For this particular release, other than spellings, not much. It seems that a decision has been made to present a more or less unified edition, with the glaring exception (in the US edition) of references to “The Sorcerer’s Stone.” It’s the Philosopher’s Stone. It still irks me that Rowling allowed Scholastic (the US publisher) to change the title of the first book. The Philosopher’s Stone is the foundation of alchemy, and alchemy plays a huge role in the structure of the entire series. This alchemical connection (or should I say “connexion”?) is lost with “Sorcerer’s Stone.” It doesn’t make any sense at all.

But the title is not all that was changed in the first several books for the US market. Oh no. You can read more about it in the article “Harry Potter, Minus a Certain Flavour” from the New York Times. (If you’ve never registered at the Times, you will need to before you can read this. It’s free and it will take you right to the article when you’ve finished.) I want to highlight this quote from this op-ed piece:

By protecting our children from an occasional misunderstanding or trip to the dictionary, we are pretending that other cultures are, or should be, the same as ours.

By insisting that everything be Americanized, we dumb down our own society rather than enrich it.

That’s it in a nutshell for me. Levine (the US editor) was afraid that American children would run across unfamiliar terms while reading the books. Well, in the words of Matt Foley, motivational speaker (living in a van down by the river), “whoop-dee-freakin’-doo!” Imagine that, children actually having to look up unfamiliar terms they encounter while reading. Sounds like (gasp!) learning! About another culture! No, we can’t have that happening.

I remember learning what an electric torch was from reading Prince Caspian. And I didn’t even have to look it up: I figured it out from the context. (Abeka people, close your ears: he’s sounding awfully whole language right now.) Collins (the publisher of the Chronicles of Narnia back then) didn’t change it to “flashlight” for the US market. And why should they? Edmund would never have said “flashlight.” He would have said torch. Just like Oliver Wood would never have told Harry that a Beater’s bat looks like a baseball bat (as he does in the US edition): that would have meant nothing to Harry. It looks like a Rounders bat. And Harry would never play Quidditch on a “Quidditch field”: it’s the Quidditch pitch, for crying out loud!

In a post from the other day, I put up a funny Berlitz ad from Germany, which I gave the title “Why good diction is important.” In speaking or singing, “diction” refers to one’s clarity of pronunciation. In writing, however, “diction” refers to an author’s choice of words. A writer uses words the way a painter uses colors. Changing an author’s diction changes the overall feel of that author’s work. Things get lost in translation.

I know that penniless Rowling was happy to agree with whatever changes Levine suggested when the books were first published. Let’s hope that successful Rowling (whose net worth is now greater than the Queen’s) insists that, in future printings, the only differences between the US and UK editions are conventions of spelling and punctuation, not changes to her original choice of words.

More in a future post. For now, I think I’ll go find my copy of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Secaucus. Or maybe Oliver Goldsmith’s The Preacher from Pascagoula.