Sorcerer stone v Philosopher Stone WAS: Hermione

[Miles]

>> Magpie:
>> Yes--but I'm disagreeing with the idea that assuming a 9-year-old
>> would automatically look at a book with "Philosopher's Stone" on the
>> cover and say, "I'll check out this book to see if it's about a boy
>> who can do magic" is the same as assuming they're stupid.

> Magpie:
> Except that's *not* the assumption. And Philosopher's Stone isn't
> obvious if by obvious we mean "this is a book about wizards." The
> Philosopher's Stone isn't exclusively linked to wizards, especially
> not child wizards learning magic at a school.

Miles
Your assumption is, that the title of a book should make clear what kind of 
book it is, right? Or at least you defend this idea concerning Philosopher's 
Stone.
I think it is a very crude way of imposing marketing criteria on works of 
literature. And I totally disagree with this way of thinking. Just think 
about books now considered as world literature. Would you consider it 
appropriate to rename Fahrenheit 451 because it does not indicate what kind 
of book it is? Or The Magic Mountain? Or Gone with the Wind? "The O'Hara 
Drama - A Family in the Civil War" would have been much better ;).

The next point is, that books are usually not sold on big, disordered heaps, 
but in shelves according to genre and age range. So the said 9yo kid would 
find Harry Potter among books of Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer-Bradley and 
C.S. Lewis. And I really doubt kids are repelled by "Philosopher" on the 
back of a book if they find it on the fantasy shelve in their bookstore.

So who is meant by changing the title in order to avoid misunderstandings? 
The shopkeepers? This would really be an insult. They didn't bother to 
change the title in the translations. For example, the first German 
translation came out in 1998, the same year the book was published in the 
USA. In German it is "HP und der Stein der Weisen", 'Stein der Weisen' being 
the German term for Philosopher's Stone. And this is the point: The term 
"Philosopher's Stone" exists, it is an important historical concept, 
"Sorcerer's Stone" does not exist.

I don't think the problem is that the US publishers "americanised" the book. 
The problem is that they commercialised it without regarding correctness and 
logic.

Miles