I had an email over the weekend from Helen, who is a little frustrated at the removal of Australian terms from romance novels set in Australia:
I have a topic to suggest. International heroes, or, false advertising: why are
you labeling him Australian, giving him an American name and calling him a
rancher?American cultural imperialism! It drives me crazy. Corrugated iron roofing
is called ‘ripple iron’, properties or stations get called ‘ranches’…
and dear God almighty, a Sheriff? I hope he’s flown in from the USA cos
I’ve never met one in Australia.Why do editors assume that Aussie authors have to be ‘translated’ for the
US reader to comprehend – and then even in Oz, we have to read the
Americanized version! With the Crocodile Hunter, Curtis Stone and those fake
Aussie steak houses, surely you can cope with the odd unfamiliar word. I’ve
never seen a bowl of ‘grits’ or been to the strangely named ‘homecoming’
but I can cope when my characters encounter them.Do you reckon we could persuade editors to stop sucking all the flavour out
of books and let authors write with a bit of local lingo? Here’s the
example that ticked me off below: Masters of the Outback – I can’t get over how American the blurb
sounds – but I ‘m sure you could find a sqillion others:
These powerful Australian men are ready to claim their brides! A rugged rancher – Clay has come home to restore his family’s ranch and find a wife. Virginal Caroline seems the perfect choice. And knowing she’s forbidden makes Clay want her even more. A tempting tycoon – Businessman Quade returns to outback town Plenty in search of a bride. Feisty Chantal is everything he’s not looking for. Yet even Quade can’t deny their explosive chemistry! A commanding cop – Spirited new arrival Amy has got under gorgeous Sheriff Angus’s skin. She’s determined to put herself in danger’s path and he’s sworn to protect her. Could that protection turn to passion?
Now, see here, Helen. You’ll drink our Coke and watch our movies about ranchers and sheriffs and you’ll LIKE IT. My cultural imperialism does NOT make my ass look fat. Got that? Just kidding!
Seriously. I thought it was as silly as anyone that the first Harry Potter book was renamed for the American audience, and that words like “boogies” were removed. But over the weekend Hubby and I were talking about how much more I know about Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand (for example) merely from speaking with romance readers from those countries.
So imagine my surprise when Helen says in Oz, they don’t use the word “ranch.” I had no idea! I’m all for local flavor, but “stations?” Really? So I asked for more info. I’d only encountered that word once, in a Harlequin Presents (I think) set in a New Zealand sheep station – and I thought “station” referred specifically and only to sheep.
Helen says,
Lol… yep, ‘cattle stations’ or ‘sheep stations’. There’s even an expression “playing for sheep stations”, meaning that people are playing a game or sport too seriously. eg “Jeez mate, lighten up, you’re not playing for sheep stations ya know!” Possibly the word ‘ranch’ might be used nowadays by immigrants or people who are marketing to the USA, or breeding American saddle horses and the like, but it’s definitely not part of the local lingo.
I’ve often wondered if it’s ‘just me’ who gets so frustrated, or if other readers feel the same way. I read a lot of British authors and fortunately they aren’t usually subjected to the same abuse as Australian/New Zealand authors are.
I’m spoiled by reading on a digital device with a dictionary so when I encounter a word I don’t know, even a very old Britishism every now and again, I can look it up with to gestures of one finger (not the middle one, I’m not flipping off my Kindle). I enjoy learning new words and finding out how different English speakers refer to various things – and it doesn’t distract me. If anything it adds another layer to the setting through the language.
I’m not saying one blog entry will change all the ranches to stations and the ripple iron will start showing up as a sound effect in a rainstorm, but does it bug you to know that words are changed for your reading experience, if you’re reading a romance set in Australia for the US audience? Or would the words you don’t know distract and confuse you? Have you encountered this type of language replacement? What do you think?
This must be something they started in the last 15 -20 years. I remember as a teen reading Harlequins about Stations and Brumby and the Outback. (I think there was even a book called ‘Outback bride”) This led to a love of all things Australian, my reading “A town called Alice” and other Aussie hits of the 19(mumble mumble).
But it was not just Aussies that Harlequin introduced to this teenage mind. There also used to be “harlequin’ female protagonists who were South African during the height of Apartheid apparently written by South Africanners. With those books the use of language was interesting, subtle racism coming out between the lines. It might be an interesting study for some college student to look at how the racial inequality was presented in those books.
So I think ‘Americanizing’ stories, dumbs them down. And in the long run, Dumbs down the readers. I would rather see the true ‘conflicts’ of a society slipping out between the lines, and make my own decisions, than have an editor slap literary white wash over it for my ‘American eyes”.
I’m proud to say I did the tape course on contemporary Australian dialect, aka the real Kath and Kim (ad nauseum, so addictive) and am not in the least bit afraid to encounter Aussie-isms. Though those ladies do tend to prang the odd adage… Still, bring on the slang.
What did drive me nuts, however, was an otherwise quite enjoyable Blaze trilogy by Kate Hoffmann set in the Outback, which went too far in the other direction and made me feel as if I were reading a remedial antipodean vocab textbook at times. Copious slang as proof of research or in lieu of deeper cultural atmosphere really gets up my goat—to quote a philosopher.
Maybe they do it because it is easier and cheaper for them to. If we can read books from sci-fi and paranormal fantasy authors that come with a glossary and a pronunciation guide, we can look up a few non-US words online or in a dictionary.
Wake up publishers. We enjoy the story and we enjoy the hunt for new information.
I agree with others that it’s an insult to American readers to think they are too dumb to figure out the differences in terminology. And that further, they don’t want to read that terminology. It used to not be that way. The old Harlequins in the 1970s were pretty much all written by British authors. I didn’t know what a flat was, or a bonnet or boot, but gee, it wasn’t that hard when put into context. Trainers got me for a bit and my mental version of a jumper was quite different than theirs. But I sure didn’t have any trouble reading Jilly Cooper, Britishisms and all. (I still have a secret crush on Rupert).
I have a friend who has relatives living in the UK, so I got the benefit of reading Harry Potter (and a lot of Lindsay Davis) without the stupid Americanisms. It’s not like it was hard to figure out.
Cat Marsters!
I nearly bought a house in the village of Ugley! was put off by the sign at the village hall “The Ugley Womens Institute” I kid you not.
Darlene Marshall-yup that’s what virgin books did to my cowboy book-made it ‘British’
I think I may be in the minority here on this one. When reading books set outside the US, I enjoy many of the cultural and linguistic differences. But only to a certain extent. If I am not familiar with the words or unable to determine their meaning in context, my enjoyment of the book goes down and I will not buy the author again (I’m not talking about a couple of unfamiliar words/phrases, but when I feel I need a dictionary to understand the work). If this happens, I usually assume that the book was not written for an American audience (not a bad thing at all, just not what I’m usually looking for when I pick up a romance novel) or that the author/editor/etc. did a poor job of addressing their audience. I feel the same way about Science Fiction and Fantasy. I rarely even look at the glossaries/appendices included to define unfamiliar terms. But I also agree that these translations are often taken too far (do we really need to replace lift with elevator or petrol with gas?).
Haven’t read all these comments, yet, so I suspect that I am merely repeating what others have said: as a Brit, I like to learn about all those strange American customs like ‘proms’, in American English, when reading books set in the USA. Learning about the subtleties of other cultures is always interesting, the ways in which they are like our own, and the ways in which they are different.
I would expect most American readers to feel the same, and to want to get the true flavour of novels set in Australia, New Zealand, Britain or anywhere else.
It’s pretty condescending to expect readers of popular fiction to be too dim or ignorant to be able to cope with the occasional unfamiliar word or turn of phrase. I say ‘popular fiction’, because I don’t think it happens with non-fiction: none of the American editions of my own books has had a word changed: they are exactly the same printings, just bound in a different cover and given different images on the dustjacket. Even spelling is left unchanged, so the US editions have words like ‘colour’ and ‘theatre’ in them. This sounds very much as though publishers are expecting non-fiction readers to be much more open to accepting books written from outside their own culture than readers of novels, and that really is quite insulting to the latter.
A couple of years ago I was reading Asking for Trouble by the late Elizabeth Young (wonderful, wonderful author) and I came across an entire sentence that threw me for a loop. The author was from Surrey and the book was set in London, and while I had consumed some British media (mostly in the form of movies, which may or may not have been made by British writers/producers/directors, or in the form of classic literature a la Austen), this sentence might as well have been Sanskrit for all the sense I could make of it. Oh, I got the general idea, but I wanted to know what it really meant.
Cue asking a British friend of mine, after she agreed to lend a linguistic hand, “What does ‘any passable totty, or do you just grit the old todger and think of the dosh?’ mean?”
Thinking about it now, I’m not sure that Kindle would have been able to help suss out that sentence for me. But even without asking my friend I got the general message that the author was going for with that sentence, and was able to thoroughly enjoy the book even without the “translation” into American English. In fact, I think maintaining the actual language of the book adds to the appeal of it—when I read the book it’s really easy to hear the characters voices in my head, and the authentic language lends them the proper accent. Makes them more real for my experience. Personally I think that keeping with the slang and the language of the actual location is a good thing, and if that means that the reader has to stop every now and then to check on a word or phrase…well, that’s just an opportunity to learn, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, that’s kind of famous. Well, infamous. The joke is that Ugley, and especially Ugley Green, is gorgeously pretty. Real chocolate-box stuff. I walk the dog around there sometimes (I live a mile or two away).
Weird, this. Only today I was reading the newest Dresden Files book (and wishing we got the much-more-evocative US cover) when a few spellings caught my eye. I remember the UK spelling of ‘grey’ but US spellings of other words, which puzzled me. This was a UK edition of an American book: why had some spellings been changed and not others?
I read a lot of American books and have to say that while most ‘Americanisms’ are things I can work out, some have puzzled me for years. I actually had to have an American friend visit my house and eat a digestive biscuit before I learned that it’s the same as a Graham cracker (which I had assumed to be some kind of rusk from the way it was given to a small child in a book, IIRC one who was teething. I was hardly ever allowed digestive biscuits as a small child and it seemed bitterly unfair to me!).
Things like trousers and lifts and boots and flats are words my US friends have no problem translating, because they’re not stupid. And yet I distinctively remember one morning at my first RWA conference, my roommate staring at me in incomprehension and telling me in her Texas drawl, “You woke up all British this morning and I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” I had to break it to her: I wake up British every morning.
About the Chinese students who use a Western name – that happens in Europe too. I teach German as a Foreign language so i i often have Chinese students in class. Some will introduce themselves using a Western name, some their Chinese names. Some would insist on using the entire name when calling on them, some just the first name. I used to be very confused by it but a student kindly explained to me that everyone who learns English gets to pick an English name which is used in english class. Also he told me that the name you used (ie the full name at once, or just the first name) made assumptions about the relative status of the speaker to the one called…. the long and the short of it is, I now ask all students (not just the chinese) what they want to be called, and go by that.
Let me also add that this tendency to translate things is not restricted to English. I am Austrian and Austrian German has some distinct usages, words and so forth, although the written form is not very different from the German spoken in Germany. Most of the major publishing houses are in Germany though, so if an author wants to make a living from his/her books, a German publisher is much preferable. Unless that writer is very very successful, these writers hav to use the German German throughou, even if their book is set in Austria and the German terms are really grating. It annoys me no end!
Oh, and of course wrong German also annoys the heck out of me. There are 80 million native speakers of German out there, surely a writer could ask one to check their quotes?? It is really fairly easy finding native speakers of many languages – just call the international office of a university nearby and you will be amazed what a treasure of languages you will find.
Actually, the most annoying americanism I’ve seen in a book recently was one set in Britain with the characters playing cricket – and it was very clear that the author had never watched a cricket match, spoken to anyone who had watched a cricket match, or even read a book in which cricket was played.
In the book, the ball was pitched rather than bowled, and apparently from a standing start – no run-up. An innings was referred to as an ‘at-bat’ (what?), and there seemed to be an awful lot of them. And I have never seen a cricket game in which ‘a group of people raced across the […] lawn to see who could capture the most runs’.
It drives me nuts, and, if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s just not cricket! If you are going to put in local colour, at least make sure you know what the colour is! I can understand getting the little details wrong in a game you don’t know (there were plenty of smaller details which I didn’t bother mentioning above because they were borderline, or because they were related to more complex rules, and I’m not trying to be mean-spirited here), but honestly, anyone raised in Australia, or Britain, or any Commonwealth country where cricket is played, knows more about cricket than this. You don’t even have to like sport – it’s impossible not to grow up aware of at least the basics.
… So yes, I’m rather glad I haven’t run across any Australian ranchers called Clay in my reading. I don’t read romance to raise my blood pressure, but I reckon that would do it…
Catherine
You betcher billy can it bothers me. I do NOT need overseas terms clarified, Americanized, sanitized, debogeyized or anything else-ized for my provincial American eyes. For pity’s sake, aren’t we homogenized enough? Long live culture.
(stalks off muttering)
I still remember my absolute fury after a few “helpful” Southern women told Sandra Schwab they couldn’t understand a thing she said in her workshop. Sandra speaks PERFECT English with a lovely English accent. She’s not even vaguely hard to understand. Even if it were true, to be so rude as to tell her so was just beyond the pale IMO. I’m mad thinking about it now and it’s been several years . . .
I can only speak for Americans here. While we may not be dumb, we are easily flustered by foreignness. Case in point- the pronunciation of the Russian prime minister’s last name (Medvedev, stress on the second syllable). Even Hillary Clinton, who is certainly an educated and well-traveled person, stumbled over it on television and then gave up. Essentially no American public figure pronounces it correctly to this day– almost everyone says MED-ved-ev. Nor did this tendency originate in the U.S.—speakers of English have been mangling other languages with abandon for years (consider how Firenze became Florence).
Anyway, that’s my thought on the matter. It’s nice to hear that a significant number of people here are interested in how the other half (or 98%, whatever) speaks.
believe36? I’d never have believed 36 people would care about this.
I didn’t realise ‘fall’ was used at this time. I can only say that it feels wrong in the context of the period. Joanna Bourne makes a good point here in regards to using the word ‘driveway’ instead of ‘carriage way’ or ‘drive’:
Apparently Beatrix Potter used to fight with her publishers about her books, in that they felt some of her word choices were inappropriate for the children reading them. She disagreed, and insisted, and the books were published with her words.
So a hundred years later (more or less), my English teacher was able to tell our class that her daughter learned the word “soporific” at age 5 by reading Peter Rabbit with her mom. (Although I had to google it to spell it correctly.)
So, Kalen, how do you pronounce your name? KAY-len? KAH-len? Kah-LEEN? Killin? I’m not trying to be snotty, but I giggled over your account and then realized that I might pronounce it incorrectly myself. I’m guessing KAY-len.
That whole “American readers want to feel safe” bullshit just pisses me off no end. I don’t believe it; I don’t believe any publisher or editor has any stats or facts or figures or anything at all to back this up – it’s just something they assume, because they’re sitting in New York, and for some reason when you’re sitting in New York, everyone between you and LA is stupid.
Asshats.
Anyway – on a related but tangential note – I also hate it when wonderful, acerbic, mean-spirited and but-gustingly funny Brit comedies are remade for American TV, but of course Americans can’t handle the full flavor of British humor (like we can’t handle full bodied British beer) so they have to remove all the stuff that made the British originals so funny. The American Office is funny enough, but it’s not nearly as funny as the original – because the original is a lot sharper, pricklier, more cringe-inducing, less sweet. They tried to remake Absolutely Fabulous – only they couldn’t have lead characters who smoked and took drugs and swilled alcohol and banged strangers. Patsy and Edina had no redeeming qualities, which made them funny – and unfit for American TV. I’ve heard the remake of Life of Mars wasn’t bad, but I’m sure they toned down Gene Hunt’s character.
I love books and movies about Australia and about New Zealand (and yes, I know they’re quite different) and if I read a romance set in either country, I don’t want to feel like I’m in Idaho.
And also – the ad oveer.r there for The Master and the Muses? That’s a glorious cover.
Is it weird that the way that’s written makes me think that Caroline and Chantal are their last names and they’re really called Virginal and Feisty? 😛
And, yep, another American here who wants untranslated/non-Americanized books only! (Reminds me I need to replace my early Harry Potter books with the proper versions. As I understand it, like the last two have no (or almost no) changes in wording; but the first one—they changed the title. Yeesh.)
But even besides books I watch a lot of British and Canadian, etc. tv shows and movies (some Aussie stuff, too, when I can) so all that stuff is pretty normal to me. My own word choices can even be a little British when I’ve been watching a lot of Doctor Who….
And even the stuff I don’t know I can LOOK UP without any trouble.
Some people argue that an American author writing in, say, in a British setting (or the other way round) can do the non-dialog parts of the story in her normal vernacular (depending on tense and style, of course) and as long as the dialog is correct for where the characters are from it’s okay…but I feel like that doesn’t have the “flavor” of a work that totally reflects its setting, so I like it less. But wrong dialog is a total deal-breaker for me. (Spelling, however, I don’t really mind not matching. Some people are very attached to their “u”s or the lack thereof. That’s cool.)
I must add that some newer historicals I’ve read don’t put me in Regency England. Not naming authors. If they didn’t throw in a few words like riding habit, cravet, chamberpot, or carriage, I’d think it was contemporary. It’s watered down and pretty boring.
Funnily enough, the Australian YA authors I read (Melina Marchetta, John Marsden, etc) have the correct Australian terminology. I know Marsden usually has a glossary, but I don’t remember the others having one. And like others have said: either the context let’s me know (though I’ve learned a lot by now) or I look it up/ask someone. And when none of that works (or I’m just too lazy), then I miss one f-ing word. It’s not like the whole book suddenly falls apart cause I don’t understand how other people say “trunk.”
THIS.
I really don’t get why they take something “foreign” and then have to remake it. The Departed is a SCENE FOR SCENE copy of Infernal Affairs. They just recently decided to make an American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Let the Right One In, for heaven’s sake.
Another facet of this is a statistic I read a number of years together (and I believe hasn’t changed much.) The number of books translated from something else to (American) English is vanishingly small compared to the number of books translated from American English to something else. We like to export US culture but we don’t like to import others.
There was a very unfortunate and short lived experience with one of the most popular Australian comedy series as well: Kath and Kim. The Americanisation broke my heart.
It went from being a show about Kath and Kim the ultimate mother and daughter combination of hornbags, to Molly Shannon and Selma Blair. And Sharon was completely written out. Apparently America doesn’t like ugly people on their tv. No wonder none of us bothered watching past the first episode.
Actually now I’m thinking about it why are Australian characters constantly saying “mate” and “fair dinkum”? Very few people talk like that anymore. Unless you count Alf ‘stone the flaming crows’ Stewart. We’re more likely to use the word “bogan”. Maybe this is me showing my age as a 20-something BUT really Australia, like any other country, has a whole new collection of colloquialisms.
I want authentic writing. I admit, most of my down under slang comes from three sources: 1 – Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, in which the Moon is used as a penal colony, and an intelligent computer (a fair dinkum thinkum) assists Lunies (Lunar inhabitants from everywhere on Earth) in revolting against Earth. 2 – Neil Anthony’s Ace Dyson series. Donald “Ace” Dyson is an Aussie troubleshooter for “Pacific Rimfire Corporation.” In twenty novelettes we briefly meet his old boss who is replaced by Retired USAF Colonel Ruth Webster as Ace gets in and out of trouble. The interplay between Ace and his American boss explains a lot of different terms and attitudes. Lots of sex, though there isn’t any between Ace and his boss (just beaucoups of tension) until the twentieth story. 3 – The Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee movies. How accurate a portrayal are those?
moral39
@ehoyden, I’ll happily name some authors for you. Starting with Julia Quinn. Who apparently thinks that Britain was using decimal currency in the Regency era.
@rudi_bee I always like to think of him as Alf ‘flaming galah’ Stewart. But you’re right, none of the Australians I know speak like him!
If i encountered Australian words, I would probably not understand them, so it’s ok for me to get the american ones, which i’m more familiar with. But I completely understand Helen’s frustration, because I get so angry when “spanish” characters on romance books say expressions like “mia cara” (which is italian) or their “spanish” speech is plenty of mistakes.
Suze—that’s how I learned ‘soporific’ too! I quoted the line “It is a well-known fact that eating too many lettuces has a soporific effect on baby rabbits,” to my teacher, and she smiled patronisingly (I was five) and asked, “Yes, but do you know what soporific means?” “Yes,” I replied, probably just as patronisingly, “it means something that makes you sleepy.” She was astonished and later reported it to my mum, who gave her a level look and explained that when I read a word I didn’t know, I asked about it, and wasn’t this normal? Apparently it wasn’t.
And as for US remakes of British shows, I’ve just seen that Being Human is to be made over. Noo! Where will my lovely Mitchell with his fingerless gloves and WWI hygiene standards be? Can they possibly keep George the same combination of hopelessly nerdy and really fanciable at the same time? What will Annie do all day if she can’t make endless cups of tea? And where will they live if it’s not an old pub?
This sort of thing keeps me awake at night.
somewhat of a tangent, but hell, i’m still reeling over “aluminium” being the original/correct/what-have-you spelling of “aluminum,” a word i’ve been using, since, like, ever. well, not often, but still. (i just learned this a few weeks ago when joining a conversation between an aussie friend and a new zealander friend in a chat room when they were discussing nz dialects. heh. “jandals.”)
dozens of other elements kept the “i” in “-ium,” why change aluminium? are we americans so weak an extra syllable would do irreparable damage or something? i can live with dropping the “u” from colour, armour, and flavour (et ceter-our :P), but taking out aluminium’s second “i” changes the pronunciation pretty noticeably.
[/word nerd] (ok i admit it, i’m never really “[/word nerd]”)
I had a similar response to the blurb about these books too. Though I am Australian I have not recently read many local romances, probably too scarred by the over the top outback caricatures in too many older books. I could not believe them at all. Seeing this I thought I might see what a more modern take would be like and just gagged! Sorry they lost my sale.
Also, I am personally terrified of Vegemite sandwiches. Ah, one of winter’s pleasures. Vegemite toast. Hmmm…
I must admit I still don’t know what “tony” means in the American vernacular. Or “jonesing” (is that how you spell it?) I get a real jolt when I read “mom” in an Oz or UK book. And when someone is described as being pissed I have to remember they are angry not drunk.
Add me to the list of those annoyed with ‘Americanization’ of other settings. One of the big pluses of reading books set in other locales is learning new lingo and terms.
I agree, changing terms in these books makes you feel a little “off kilter”. You know they’ve been Americanized and it’s INSULTING! Why not leave the novel, after the usual editing, as it is and simply add a glossary at the end? Save time, save money!
This thread is making me smile. I truly don’t think publishers/editors/agents are giving readers enough credit.
I’ve just been rejected by a NY publisher who loved the book but ultimately passed on it because although the story is set in the US, the heroine is a Brit and the hero Canadian, making it feel like an import. The editor says “…you know how Americans only like their American heroes and heroines…”
Huh.
Cause y’all hated Bridget Jones and Harry Potter, didn’t you?
😉
Kinsey—Why do you assume that people in NY don’t know the rest of the world? I’ve lived here for 6 years, and I can tell you, most people are not FROM here. A large majority of the editors in my company grew up in the Midwest or South, myself included. So to say that we feel everyone between NYC and LA is stupid…well that just shows how informed you are.
Maybe this is why my book hasn’t sold into the US yet? I’m Australian writing about a girl from eastern Europe who’s in love with a Scottish lad trapped in the body of a ferret.
I thought I covered all my bases but clearly not! LOL!
Ah well, you’ll have to duck over the border to Canada to get a copy.
And sorry . . . ripple iron? Stone the crows, never heard of it, cobber!
Suze, ours was a soporific household too. Heh. Still is. Zzzzzz.
Keziah, I don’t know what “tony” is (although I’m sure the Urban Dictionary would provide several accurate and/or inappropriate definitions), but “jonesing” is when you really have a craving for something. For example, I’m jonesing for my first cup of coffee. Zzzzzz.
I think what all of this discussion has demonstrated to me is a) context clues are your friends, and b) every person has comfort levels and hot button examples. A “money where your mouth is” strategy may be required here, as it often is. Support those authors, lines and houses that get it right for you!
(And please stop mentioning Life on Mars! I love John Simm so hard right now it’s positively distracting!)
Thank heaven someone mentioned The Thorn Birds! Because when the mention of never before hearing of Aussie livestock farms being known as such I thought, “Good gosh! Has everyone forgotten Drogheda? Or am I just—shudder—that old?” I grew up in a strict Irish Cath family. That one was a scandal and I think the very first romance I ever read, stolen illicitly from my father’s night table and read on the sly so as not to get caught. I may have been all of 12 or so when I read it.
But seriously. Just because you like to read fluffy tales does not mean you have fluff for brains. Books are, after all, a form of entertainment. I don’t want to read quantum physics for fun and escape from the everyday hum-drum. Doesn’t make me a ditz just for reading light things when I am needing a break.
Tuning in a bit late here.
It’s even worse with actual translations. Harlequin has a policy—a policy!!! – to ommit any cultural references to America/Australia/England from her translations into other languages. This means references to tv, music, radio, and other more social cultural stuff. They don’t ditch everything, but they ditch the things they think we’d not understand.
I did a small experiment, and the Dutch Harlequins (though they are smaller sized paperbacks) have in general 20-30 pages less. That’s a lot of omitting.
It drives me crazy, and it’s the reason why I only buy harlequin 2nd hand anymore, and only when I don’t have enough money to buy new books in the original language.
What baffles me even more, is that Harlequin only accepts book in english. So where do Dutch, German, French and Spanish romance authors have to go?
This really is my biggest beef with category romance, not the often similar plotlines, but the flattening of the story in translations. It’s horrid.
On a sidenothe, there is a similar thing happening with Flemish (the Dutch variant in Belgium) and Dutch in the Netherlands. Belgium authors almost never get popular in the Netherlands because it’s flemish. There really isn’t such a big difference (written that is, I’m glad they subtitle the Dutch tv shows in Flanders).
I totally get this, but it’s impossible for a writer to know which perfectly period words will hit readers as wrong and which ones won’t. If the word is period, I think the writer deserves a “get out of jail free” card. I find myself looking stuff up in the OED all the damn time, and I’m constantly amazed by what is period for my books and what isn’t.
This issue is only compounded IMO by the words that aren’t period, but feel period (like Hellion [1845], which I see used all the time in Regency books). I’m continually in mourning for Lummox [1825], and I long ago made the decision to use Mount anachronistically (as a synonym for horse/the animal you’re riding it dates to 1856).
Kalen is my middle name, and yeah, it’s KAY-len. The fight was about my first name (which is Tonda, like “Honda”, but with a “T”; the teacher insisted on calling me “Tonya”).
I share your pain. Love that show!
“Tony” means the same thing as it does in England+= “having a high, or fashionable, tone” (you just don’t see it used here much). “Jonesing” = craving.