[Sca-cooks] Ahhh...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Thursday, June 26, 2003, at 09:54  AM, sjk3 at cornell.edu wrote:

>> Mine arrived yesterday. I'm holding off until I can sit down with 
>> both of
>> them (and the son has the dumbed down American version).
>
>      I'd be interested to hear the differences between the versions.  
> Is
> the "dumbing-down" just a matter of vocabulary (a pain, and a waste of
> the publisher's time as far as I'm concerned, but bearable if your 
> budget
> won't support two editions), or is there more?

Just out of curiosity, why would a shift in slang terminology (unless 
I'm vastly mistaken as to the extent of it) be such a terrible thing? I 
don't even think the differences are all that great; it's just enough 
to get American kids, whose school organization is rather different 
from that of their counterparts in the UK, but who, frankly, supply a 
goodly chunk of Rowling's bucks, can understand the books a bit better. 
Is the popular slang terminology of the teenagers of the UK any more 
sensible, erudite or descriptive than that of the USA? I very much 
doubt it. And Rowling is by far not the first author to experience this 
and deal with it.

To be honest, I think most of the objections to a "translated" version 
are the result of snooty exclusivity. I wouldn't think this about 
Shakespeare, but for this material, I really don't see any harm.

Adamantius, who hates the fact that his kid's school has found it 
necessary to divide the grades into "houses" just in the past couple of 
years