The American Editors are Idiots! Is JKR an American Editor, therefore, an idiot?

[Haggridd]

No: HPFGUIDX 16176

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Doreen wrote:
> 
> > Sorry, but JKR made ALL of the editing changes "by herself."
> > 
> <snipped JKR quote> 
> 
> JKR:
> 
> > I have had some criticism from other British writers about 
allowing 
> any
> > changes at all, but I feel the natural extension of that argument 
is 
> to go
> > and tell French and Danish children that we will not be 
translating 
> Harry
> > Potter, so they'd better go and learn English.
> 
> JKR again:
> 
>  And they were literally words 
> that
> > meant something utterly different - like 'jumper', which means 
> 'pinafore
> > dress' in America. 
> 
> Doreen adds:
> 
> > Ahem ... does this make JKR an idiot?
> 
> Our Lady and Creator is, of course, not an idiot, but She is not 
> omnipotent nor infallible.  I respectfully disagree with her 
judgment, 
> and I doubt her complete honesty ("mum" is not "literally [a word] 
> that mean[s] something different).  Sorry, but I do.
> 
> I also don't think this kind of change is comparable to translating 
> the books into French and Dutch.  Translating expressions like 
> "jumper" or (this one made me laugh) "pop my clogs" (what Harry, 
> according to Hermione, wisely failed to do upon seeing the Grim (PoA 
> 6)--the U.S. translates it as "kick the bucket") is more comparable 
to 
> translating to a foreign language, though I think a glossary would 
> have been a more enjoyable solution; also, in both of these cases, 
> context would rapidly make it clear.  Just think:  if I hadn't 
bought 
> the UK edition, I never would have learned the expression "pop one's 
> clogs," and just think how much less meaningful my life would be.
> 
> Amy Z

> 
> --------------------------------------------------
>  The Whomping Willow was a very violent tree that
>  stood alone in the middle of the grounds.
>                  -HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Hear, Hear!  Well said, Amy!  Otherwise, why should we not then change 
the Elizabethan blank verse of Shakespeare, or comb over Dickens, the 
Brontes, and Conan Doyle for those nasty British locutions and 
eliminate them for the more understandable language of The National 
Enquirer?

Haggridd
> --------------------------------------------------