[HPforGrownups] Re: Was US POA audio modified from UK or US print?

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 95357

On 6 Apr 2004 at 22:32, antoshachekhonte wrote:

> Um, not to defend either the US educational system or Scholastic, but I edit, for a living, 
> the posthumous works of a fairly well-known and quite dead American author. During the 
> author's lifetime and in the decade-plus since, every UK edition of said author's books has 
> been temporarily derailed by the British publisher's insistence that we 'Anglicise' the 
> spelling, style and vocabulary... The author always demurred, and so, in accordance with 
> tradition, do I.
> 
> And these are non-fiction works for theoretically educated adults, mind you.

Yes, and I'm sure it does happen with works in other countries as 
well - not just in the US. But for me, the difference relates to 
the specific types of books.

Now, personally I think the author was right to demur - and so are 
you on that basis - if he or she felt their words were important as 
written, that should have been respected. And, without knowing who 
the author is, or the works involved, there also may have been 
other reasons to object.

But, in general terms, I have much less problem with works of non-
fiction being edited in this way, than works of fiction. Why? 
Because in a work of non-fiction, the greatest educative value 
tends to be in the *substance* of what is expressed in the book. In 
a work of fiction, the greatest educative value tends to be in the 
literary style of the work.

I am not, for a moment, suggesting that non-fiction works can't 
have literary style - because they most certainly can, and many do 
- but it's likely to be their raison d'etre than in a fictional 
work.

I am a writer - I write both fiction and non-fiction. I'm not a 
particularly successful writer, but I have had non-fictional works 
published, and I have had fictional works accepted for publication 
(and am waiting, waiting, waiting! for them to appear). I have no 
real issue with my non-fiction being edited, as long as my meaning 
isn't appreciably altered - but it is painful to see my fiction 
edited, because in that case, the *meaning* of the text is only a 
small part of what I have written. The precise words are important 
as well as the precise meaning. Now, there are certainly some non-
fiction authors who get attached to specific words as well, and 
that's fine - but there's a lot that don't.

With specific regards to the Harry Potter novels - the reason why I 
don't like the idea that they have been edited for an American 
audience is because I think doing so *decreases* their potential to 
educate. While their primary purpose is to entertain, I don't think 
it's a good idea to make them less educational than they otherwise 
could be.

Now, my perspective is, as I said, that of an Australian. Books do 
not (generally - there may be occasional exceptions) get edited for 
us to understand them - that's mostly a commercial decision, our 
population isn't large enough to make it worth a publishers while 
to do so. So we get material from the US, and the UK, and lots of 
other places, in its raw form.

And Australian children have virtually no problems dealing with 
that reality. While I'd love to believe that Australians are the 
smartest people on the planet, I don't think that's actually true 
(-8 So if we can handle it, I certainly think other countries kids 
should be just as able to. Do Australian kids instantly understand 
every single word they see in US or British children's books? No, 
they don't - but they are used to working out what the word means 
by context - and if they can't do that, they are used to asking and 
finding out - and that increases their vocabulary. And this is 
considered a positive - most of the time.

Now - I grew up, reading *mostly* British children's books - kind 
of semi-classics, like Enid Blyton, W.E. Johns, Anthony Buckeridge, 
etc. If you want to really get me into a rant mode, ask me sometime 
about what I think of the modern 'politically correct' editing of 
many of those books (-8 Part of the reason I liked these books is 
because they gave me an insight into a different culture - not a 
particularly accurate insight at times, but the differences in 
language were a major positive. I actually find it quite hard to 
understand why anyone would consider that *not* to be a positive.

While children's books should certainly entertain - there's nothing 
wrong, in my opinion, if they actually are a little bit difficult 
for kids to read (*must avoid talking about Zones of Proximal 
Development...*). Editing the Harry Potter books denied kids an 
opportunity to increase their vocabularies, and that is a very odd 
thing to do, IMHO.

With adult books - I'm less concerned about that - because I'm less 
concerned with the idea of educating adults.

But a children's book publisher - called 'Scholastic', of all 
things, editing books in a way that reduces their potential 
educative value... very odd, in my opinion.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia