Changing of titles and editing and translation/ Spoilers for Demolished Man

[sistermagpie]

Alla:
 
> And I would love to know what books titles were changed that way.

Magpie:
Let's see...I'm usually more familiar with ones that were changed UK to US because I've seen the US editions and there's usually no reason to change the title either way. (Sometimes the reason is some technical thing that one wouldn't necessarily remember.)

There's a lot more examples of US movies being changed in the UK. 
Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles (the TV show) was changed in the UK to Teenaged Mutant Hero Turtles.

One movie example I would think should hit the same note as the PS change. The US movie "Bonnie and Clyde" was released in the UK as "Bonnie and Clyde...Were Killers!" because B&C wouldn't automatically be known as such in the UK. But there's quite a few movie titles that get changed, sometimes for cultural difference reasons.

There are also examples of Australian books given different titles in the UK and the US. And definitely books in different languages being translated in a way that isn't really accurate. 

Looking around, it appears that Outlander was called Cross Stitch in the UK, which I didn't realize.

Alla: 
> And I found the change of title to be incredibly annoying. I mean, it is different because it is translation, but title translates perfectly and I can just see it be the situation where UK Publisher or vice versa decides to switch it and me being just as annoyed.

Magpie:
So the change was from "The Man Without A Face" to something else? I would guess one of the main reasons for that would be that that title or variations on it have been done before. And possibly that they thought it gave the wrong impression of the book--I can't tell not having read it.

Alla: 
> Another aside, Magpie could you tell me if these days in the editing world small publishing companies decide that it is totally Okay to publish books with little or no editing?
> 
> I am talking about m/m romamce genre and straight romance too. OMG sometimes when I read them I want to have a red pen in my hand, very very bad.


Magpie:
Oh! Definitely seems like people just doing a poor job and either not putting in the time and effort they should, or having really poor editors and copy editors. A major publisher would have an editor who writes editorial letters for actual rewrites and line-editing, plus copy editors.

-m