--Raymond Mortimer, cited by Mencken in The American Language

Warning: this entire entry is devoted to a lengthy rebuttal on the subject of the US edition of the Harry Potter books. You don't need to have read any of the books to follow it, and there are no spoilers. However, if this sort of thing bores you, come back tomorrow, when I expect to break the recent "bi-daily" streak. I don't want to miss the last day of the year, after all...

Yes, the horror indeed! You see, I believe that once a book has been published in the English language, the time for style edits is past. There should be no such thing as an "American edition" or "UK edition" - only an English-language edition, and if that edition happens to contain idiom of the writer's home nation, tough luck.

I don't see it that way. As I understand it, J.K. Rowling (or her agent) presumably pitched the series to a number of publishers, in various countries. Bloomsbury acquired the right of publication for England, while Scholastic acquired the right of publication for the United States. Their respective editorial staffs then went about the usual job of preparing the work for publication, treating it like any other book, which, in the case of Scholastic, meant translating the thing into American English. Had Rowling felt this to be unacceptable, she could have tried to find another publisher who would agree to print the thing with 'kerb' and 'colour' intact. Obviously, she opted not to. Perhaps she was even in favor of the adaptation; I couldn't say.

None of this is particularly out of the ordinary, and it works both ways. I remember running across a UK edition of a Hardy Boys book as a child. Naturally, it had been translated into British English. Which was an interesting experience, but, again, doing so didn't make the book better or worse. It did make it more suitable for the audience the publisher was trying to reach, which, ultimately, is what matters.

One interesting thing about Columbine's position, as given in the paragraph cited above, is that it implies that if Scholastic had been quicker on the draw, and had gotten its edition out first, then the British publishers would have been the ones publishing the adultrated, "dumbed-down" version. After all, she implicitly grants that style edits are okay -- it's just that once a book has been published in the English language, that's it, right?

Put another way, Shmuel: Suppose I wrote a book with heavy Cajun Louisiana idiom and it was published by a small press in that state. Later a major U.S. publisher decides to pick the book up and distribute it nationally - "but these half-French phrases have got to come out," the editor says, "no one in New England will understand them." I'd be raw-ther peeved. Wouldn't you in the same situation? Can you imagine any of the excellent writers who use Yiddish idiom heavily being forced to curb their tongue for the benefit of the goyim?

Specifically, what would happen if someone wrote a book with heavy Cajun Louisiana idiom, and a major U.S. publisher liked the thing, but felt that certain phrases had to come out, because they wouldn't be understood in Boston?

Well, the author might feel peeved, but the author is likely to feel peeved about any sort of editorial directive. Frankly, that is the author's problem. The author will have to decide whether maintaining her artistic integrity is worth losing the publishing contract. That is the author's decision to make, and it applies to all editorial matters.

Furthermore, the author will have to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the publisher is right. The publisher is not in its business to lose money, after all, and capricious changes in the text to suit its whims would not be likely to further that goal. If changes are suggested, there is likely a good reason for it. The author might not want to accept it, but there are editors whose editing abilities are at least as good as the author's writing abilities.

Yes, there are books that use idiom brilliantly. There are also books which try to use idiom, with horrific results. If authors ran the world, the market would be overrun with the latter. Fortunately, there are editors on the front lines to prevent that, at least to some extent. In general, editors aren't interested in tearing down the "excellent writers"; if they're any good, they know the difference between writing that works, and writing that doesn't.

(Yes, I can think of many examples of bad editing off the top of my head. I can also think of many more examples of bad writing. The crux of this may be that I don't really believe is that the author is more likely to be right about her work than the editor.)

Obviously, if particular American phrases were integral to the plot, I'd need to be sure that they were translated culturally in such a way as to preserve that plot in the British version. Or, if that were unacceptable, I might have to find a publisher who was convinced that the writing was brilliant enough to find a market in the American version, and that it hinged on the words staying as-is. (And if this were, indeed, the case, publishers would no doubt notice that. Bridget Jones's Diary comes to mind as an example in the opposite direction.) Barring that, I might be forced to conclude that the thing was unsaleable in England. Which just might be the case.

Admittedly, I'm only being half-serious about this, though, and I don't consider it to be important to my argument.

But, anyway, that's my twopence.