Bitchin' Blog Posts
Ripple Iron on the Stations
by SB Sarah | by SB Sarah | June 01, 2010 | Tuesday at 2:09 pm | 165 CommentsI 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?
Filed: General Bitching, Random Musings, Ranty McRant
Tagged: sheep, romance, kindle, harlequin, england, canada, australia
Jane said on 06.01.10 at 02:21 PM • [link]
I actually really, really enjoy the Australian/New Zealand set books and am sorry when the stories are “Americanized.” I heard from someone that the excellent Bronwyn Parry Romantic Suspense books are not in the US yet because they are too Australian. Too Australian? That’s like saying the Larsson books are too Swedish. Back in the heydey of chic lit, I used to order my books from Amazon UK because I loved the British version of the chic lit books.
Elizabeth Young was one author I enjoyed. She was bought for the US market by Avon and they “Americanized” her books. I had previously purchased the UK version and thought there was definitely something “lost in the translation.”
Camille M said on 06.01.10 at 02:22 PM • [link]
It happened to Harry Potter- originally English but ‘translated’ into American. I did’t and still don’t see the point in that.
That was exactly what I thought.
I’m Aussie and I’ve not yet come across this in romance- when I do I will be thoroughly confused and then pissed off. Maybe not in that order. Or perhaps I already have and can’t remember the experience because it was so traumatizing my mind has blocked it.
library addict said on 06.01.10 at 02:29 PM • [link]
They do that with British books as well. I hate when I am reading a book set in England and the characters talk about their apartment instead of their flat, etc.
Learning new terms is half the fun of reading “foreign” romances. We have enough novels set here in America. If I’m reading one set in another country it would be nice to feel as if it truly set in another country.
Soviet69 - Why, yes, I would love to read a contemporary romance set in Russia with Russian terminology.
Faellie said on 06.01.10 at 02:31 PM • [link]
I recently read an ebook by a US author which is set in contemporary England and the author’s note for which specifically thanked 3 English readers for checking the local details.
The book then went on to make numerous egregious errors, including spelling “Hereford” (nearest town to the SAS HQ) as “Herriford”.
If I hadn’t been reading on my nice new laptop, the book would have definitely hit the opposite wall at an early stage.
Terry Odell said on 06.01.10 at 02:42 PM • [link]
I have a Brit crit partner, and until recently, also had an Aussie one. We often had to translate for each other, but my Aussie character (I hope) has enough of the flavor of his speech when he’s on the page. I read a lot of British mysteries and I love trying to figure out what stuff “really” is.
Ben P said on 06.01.10 at 02:47 PM • [link]
Late last year I began reading a romance set in New Zealand and written by a New Zealand author and had to put it down due to massive WTFery.
There was crap in there like “police cruiser” (Maaate it’s called bloody police car so spare me that bollocks.) and other americanised bits that completely ruined the flavour. If a novel is set in the US, fine. However americanising a novel set elsewhere and, above all, written by a foreign author is like travelling to a foreign country and yet eating only McDonalds. Why bother? Now being a rancher is a fine thing and romance does love it’s Texans. But a sheep farmer is a sheep farmer. Ask the sheep. They know this.
Intimately.
Rubbish like that is going to spawn an entire new romance sub-genre:
The Potemkin Village Romance.
Ben P said on 06.01.10 at 02:49 PM • [link]
Utter crap. I wrote “it’s” instead of “its”.
Abject despair. Love the one your with.
Helen said on 06.01.10 at 03:00 PM • [link]
hmm, I did a bit of googling and discovered there ARE Sheriffs in Australia. Well. You learn something new every day…
Faellie, despite the Americanization of many terms, one thing that Aussie authors are good at is creating authentic places and people - I guess that’s part of the reason I choose them, because I can feel ‘at home’ in their stories. The outback characters written by authors like Bronwyn Jameson and Barbara Hannay and ring very true to me and they have an amazing knack for capturing the ‘feel’ of the country.
And Aussie blokes make such great heroes!
Bronwyn Parry said on 06.01.10 at 03:01 PM • [link]
Yes, we have graziers (never ranchers) on sheep and cattle stations, farmers on dairy farms and wheat farms, and they drive utes and 4WDs, not pickups or SUVs. Oh, and in winter they wear jumpers under their drizabones, not sweaters… although my heroes wear leather jackets, because I really don’t want an American reader to be jerked out of the story by their image of a hero in a jumper ;-)
Here, we see so much in books, TV and movies from the US and UK that it’s naturally easy to translate the various terms, and we have plenty of mental images - even those who haven’t travelled - of various locations overseas. That’s probably not so much the case in the US, and perhaps that concerns US publishers. Not all of them are aware, after all, of the awesomeness of the Bitchery and the smart, savvy women who read romance novels!
Bronwyn Parry said on 06.01.10 at 03:05 PM • [link]
Helen, yes, we do have sheriffs, but the role is very, very different to the US role. IIRC they are court officials, not law enforcement officers. No guns, no deputies… and probably no donuts ;-)
Deb said on 06.01.10 at 03:11 PM • [link]
I read lots of mysteries from other countries and I don’t see half of the “translations” that I notice in romances from other countries. Surely we’re all bright enough to pick up meaning through (as they say when evaluating the reading levels of school-age children) “context clues.” Sadly, it seems that many publishers assume their (mostly female) romance readership can’t figure out that a “flat” is an apartment or a “buscuit” is a cookie or a “lorry” is a truck, etc. It seems to me that the romance genre really takes this “translation” stuff on the chin: Everything has to be spelled out for us poor bubble-headed romance readers.
Sigh!
Sycorax said on 06.01.10 at 03:13 PM • [link]
The bit in the blurb that made me burst out laughing was the idea of an Australian town called Plenty. That’s so American. Aussie towns have names like Burrumbuttock, Wollongong, Mullengandra, Wodonga or Gundagai. We have the most boring, unimaginative state names imaginable, but luckily a lot of town names are based on Aboriginal words, which makes for truly interesting maps.
It does seem that American publishers have very little respect for the reading public to think they’d be so easily put off by an unfamiliar word or two. I find it especially insulting that they do so with children’s books. In my experience children are more adventurous readers than adults and are used to learning new words as they go. Sorcerer’s Stone indeed…
HeatherK said on 06.01.10 at 03:17 PM • [link]
Most Australian or New Zealand set romances I’ve read have involved CEOs and boardrooms, not cattle or sheep “ranches” or stations. Diana Palmer has a book called “The Australian” and it has a cattle station (I went and double checked). If I’m going to read a book set in a foreign (at least foreign to me) setting, I much prefer regional dialects to be used. I want it authentic, not Americanized. I think that’s why I don’t try to keep my southern expressions from creeping into my writing (if it’s set in the south, of course), because it wouldn’t feel right otherwise.
As for knowing what author comes from what country, I admit I generally don’t know unless I take the time to look up info on the author. However, I do agree that if an author is from the location in question then he/she should be able to write it and be true to themselves and their location.
Elizabeth said on 06.01.10 at 03:17 PM • [link]
I’m a midwesterner by birth, and have lived in the Northeast USA since . . . many decades.
I learned that livestock are raised on “stations” from romance novels read back in the 1970’s. The new-to-me vocabulary helped me imagine a far away place. I wish i had kept some of those Harlequin romances! Sure, I needed to use a hard-copy dictionary to look up the new words (“joey” was another), but that was some of the fun.
I am very disappointed now when lingo is sanitized to USA standard. The joy of armchair traveling disappears.
JoanneF said on 06.01.10 at 03:18 PM • [link]
Even in the US, the vast majority of people call them “police cars,” at least where I live. Actually, I think only cops call them “police cruisers.”
I’ve also read books that are supposedly set in the USA where English terminology is used, such as children playing in the “garden.” Most American children would get punished for playing in the garden, here they play in the “yard” or on the “lawn.” Even from region to region in the States there’s sometimes disparity. I once read a romance supposedly set in NJ which was populated with weird pseudo-cajun hicks who live in the Pine Barrens and had their own practically unintelligible dialect due to their isolation. Yes it’s a big forest (locals would say “woods”), but there is no place left in NJ that is that remote. Very annoying.
Tina said on 06.01.10 at 03:18 PM • [link]
I have to agree that its off putting if the word used has a different connotation in another region. A jumper in the US is a little dress for young girls, not something I would ever picture my hero wearing.
I’ll admit that it can totally throw me for a loop when a book I assumed was set in the US, suddenly starts spelling wods like “kerb” and “realise”. But as long as the author and characters don’t speak exclusively in local slang, usually I am able to enjoy the story.
2paw said on 06.01.10 at 03:20 PM • [link]
Oh I’m with Helen!! Well done!! One of my favourite author’s books was Americanised (Barbara Hannay) and the hero became a ‘rancher’. Surely we can credit others with the intelligence to be able to understand we have stations, not ranches and a footpath not a pavement.
I can understand the cultural references in British and American books, I may not have the depth of understanding of someone who lives there, but I can pretty much get the gist of what’s going on!!
I prefer to read books which show the culture pertaining to the setting, not something ‘Americaned’ up.
KimberlyD said on 06.01.10 at 03:25 PM • [link]
I tend to not read (or not finish) books that are set in a country that is not the US but read like they are in the US. However, it is a little bit jarring for me to read a book that uses the vernacular of other countries/cultures and I come across a word that is completely unfamiliar to me or that I cannot figure out the true meaning of using context clues. (For instance, using Bronwyn’s example, I would imagine the hero in a jumper/dress, not a jumper/sweater, which would really confuse me!) However, I would prefer that authors write using the true lingo and not the Americanized version. And I would way prefer it if publishers would give us all some credit for brains and allow those books to be published!
On another note, I wish that we in America had more access to television/music programs from other countries besides England. I would love to experience entertainment from countries around the world. Maybe then I would know what an Austrailian jumper was!
Brianna said on 06.01.10 at 03:29 PM • [link]
Complete agreement with my fellow Aussies. I don’t read a lot of romances set in Australia, as they are mainly Contemporaries, and I very rarely read them.
I have read a few historicals set in Colonial Australia by Candice Proctor (AKA C.S. Harris of the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery fame) - an American who actually lived in Australia for awhile, and they feel very natural, with no Americanisms that screamed out at me. I would love to see more books set during this period.
I read a lot of historicals - particularly Regency/England, and it still amazes me basic errors, such as calling autumn ‘fall’ - I HATES IT SO MUCH IT BURNS!!!!! There have been quite a few books that I DNF because of this - if you can’t get that simple thing right, what else will be buggered up?
Helen said on 06.01.10 at 03:30 PM • [link]
and of course, we do enjoy American culture in the right context… like, an American novel :) - I enjoy it when I get to see different aspects of America to the usual stuff we see on television. Does regional flavour get ironed out too?
Accents are just about impossible to render in print, I think - I’ve seen some completely barmy attempts at a Scottish accent.
Kristal said on 06.01.10 at 03:32 PM • [link]
I’m on board with the save the local flavor movement!
I’d like to know where in the US corrugated sheet metal is called ripple iron - I’ve never heard that term before, it must be regional. Anyone?
Silver James said on 06.01.10 at 03:51 PM • [link]
Holy Sheep Station, Batgirl! Have people never seen “The Man from Snowy River?” Or…dare I say it, “The Thorn Birds?” If this backwards Okie oil patch trash can understand the different terms, surely educated readers can, too! Once again, I fear the romance publishing industry is short-changing and disparaging the average intelligence of their readers.
Does this happen in other genres? Or just romance?
spam word: old34 I’m way older than 34 and I remember reading Mary Stewart’s mysteries in the sixties. THEY were not Americanized!
Foz Meadows said on 06.01.10 at 04:00 PM • [link]
@Sycorax - Pedantic point: I live in Melbourne, and believe it or not, there actually is a suburb called Plenty, between Mill Park and Diamond Creek. It’s hardly sheep station territory, but still.
Also: it’s not just romance novels that suffer Americanisation. It’s all part of the same, wider problem that sees shows like Kath and Kim (AUS) or Life on Mars (UK) remade for American audiences rather than simply aired as they are, seemingly because American networks fear that humour, like fresh milk, cannot survive an ocean voyage without curdling. Sadly, it’s the kind of thing that’s very difficult to protest about/change from this end, as we’re not the audience for whom the changes are made, and because they are made, many American readers don’t notice them at all, because everything seems as it normally would. Now, if *American* readers started kicking up a fuss about it…
Francesca said on 06.01.10 at 04:01 PM • [link]
the romance publishing industry is short-changing and disparaging the average intelligence of their readers
yes, moronic bitches, instead of smart bitches
kathy said on 06.01.10 at 04:03 PM • [link]
I’m with you Aussies! and just for fun, we don’t have the same kind of Sheriffs in Canada either, ours are for transporting prisoners, and other such duties. I love when a book is full of local jargon etc as it puts me right there.
Lexxie Couper said on 06.01.10 at 04:03 PM • [link]
As an Aussie author writing for a predominately American readership, I am often asked to translate or change words/phrases used. Sometimes I understand the reason for it (a car hood Down Under is called a bonnet, the trunk a boot, two terms thay would possibly bring great confusion but an interesting image to the reader’s mind), sometimes I don’t get it at all. I’ve had to change things like service station to gas station, petrol to gas, a lift to an elevator, buscuit to cookie and thongs to flip-flops :(
Recently I was told by a US agent to remove anything Australian from a submission except the location and to even then, rethink setting the story in Australia to begin with. To quote, “Americanise your work or I’m not interested. The readers want to feel safe.” To say I was dismayed is an understatement. I was bloody annoyed (‘scuse the language). And safe? From what? Vegemite sandwiches, Tim Tams and thongs (the flip-flop variety, not the g-string)?
As a proud Aussie, the Americanisation of Australian romance worries me. Fair dinkum, it does. Our heroes are brilliant the way they are, even if they’re called Bruce.
farm99 - LOL How appropriate
Helen said on 06.01.10 at 04:11 PM • [link]
@krystal - well I’m gobsmacked. Regarding the ripple iron (which I erroneously assumed was an Americanization of corrugated iron) - it turns out that ripple iron is in fact a smaller-guage corrugation, and was imported from the UK, and used in older houses mainly in Queensland and New South Wales.
Must remember to get my facts right before I have a dummy-spit! Still, the point is fair even if the example was dodgy.
Jennifer said on 06.01.10 at 04:21 PM • [link]
As an American, I loooove to read local/regional vernacular in my books; heck, I would love to travel and hear those terms for myself, but, sadly, I have children who demand to be fed, clothed, and housed which doesn’t leave me much money for travel.
I do kind of understand where the publisher was coming from with the first Harry Potter book, though. As the first book in the series, they needed to make it look worth reading to kids and tweens by the title and cover alone - it didn’t have a big enough “rep” to sell it at that point. If American kids had seen “Philosopher’s Stone” on a book title they might not have been very eager to give it a shot - not because they don’t know the word but because it means something very different (and often thought of as dry/boring) here. It’s been awhile since I read the books, but it seems like the later ones had quite a few British terms, so maybe they eased off on the Americanizing once the hook was set?
I also completely agree with KimberlyD - we need more tv shows from other countries in America! That would be so wonderful.
Jen said on 06.01.10 at 04:24 PM • [link]
@Silver James, I totally hear you about The Thorn Birds. The god-awful accents entirely put me off that I preferred to turn to Spanish audio and enabled the English subtitles. Ironically the only leading Australian in that series was Bryan Brown, a sheep shearer and cane cutter. Understandably Colleen McCullough hates everything about it.
The Man From Snowy River is more reasonably historically accurate; at least we’re finally in the right location (!!!) and the actors are Australian and/or of British origin. Minus Kirk Douglas, but he’s “special”.
Overall, I find it offensive to have to read a re-adaptation of a story; it’s like labelling a different culture a scary, alien entity, and I think American readers should be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to interpreting a local vernacular. Having a glossary at the end of a book would be more reasonable and appropriate. As a born and raised Melburnian it’s utterly disconcerting to read about “moms” and “faucets” in stories that quite vividly describe well-loved Melbourne suburbs like Essendon and Footscray; it’s surreal. To change book covers to cater to different demographics is one thing, but to alter the book’s original content takes things to a new and more problematic level.
kerry said on 06.01.10 at 04:26 PM • [link]
I prefer it when books aren’t “Americanized.” I totally remember all the terms like boot/bonnet, jumpers, petrol, biscuits, etc. from the old (70s/80s) Harlequin Presents - but I guess now they make authors Americanize them? Boo. :(
One of the things I loved as a child about reading books from other countries was that I learned quite a lot of new vocabulary. I think assuming that readers don’t want to see “unfamiliar” words does us a disservice by preventing us from learning new things.
Gail Chianese said on 06.01.10 at 04:33 PM • [link]
@ Lexxie Couper: Please tell that US Agent to “take a flying leap”! - feel free to tell him that term came from one of your US readers. I love when you, or Keri or any other Non-US writer uses local terms. How else am I going to imagine I’m in another location if I’m picturing NY because of the terms/descriptions. We readers are intelligent enough that if we do not know the definition of a term to look in up in this strange book called a dictionary.
Better yet, tell that agent your US reader told him to “take a bloody flying leap”!
MelB said on 06.01.10 at 04:33 PM • [link]
I’m a frustrated American reader who hates seeing Americanisms spilling out all over in books set in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, etc. Honestly, Dear Publisher, I am intelligent and can figure out terms based on context.
Debra said on 06.01.10 at 04:35 PM • [link]
IMHO, there are several ways to handle the different slang or names that may be different to others. People could actually look up what the word(s) mean - I have learned many new exciting words (phrase.org is one handy reference or just google it). OR put a reference in the back or front of the book. When I read novels that use old Celtic dialogue, it’s often explained on a reference page. I say leave the Aussie, British, NZ, etc., book alone. I’ve learned so much from other cultures. Open minds means learning more about our neighbors.
SPAM word - much28 - We have so much to learn about one another, and it doesn’t stop at 28 :-)
Kalen Hughes said on 06.01.10 at 04:40 PM • [link]
It’s the authentic lingo that makes the book real for me (I ordered all my Harry Potters from England so as to avoid the Americanizations). They let historical authors use historical terms (at least they’ve always let me), why wouldn’t they let contemporary authors use the correct language for their setting and characters?
Lynn M said on 06.01.10 at 04:43 PM • [link]
It’s Americans who should feel insulted by this policy of publishers who change words in order to “americanize” the book and make it easier for us to read - how stupid do they think we are? Yet another commentary on a public school system that fails to teach kids how to look up words they don’t know in one of those archaic items called a dictionary or, in the case of “foreign” words, turn to good old Google. I absolutely hate it when all of the local flavor is sucked out of a book for my own good. Give me the bogies and the sheep stations and the jumpers and I’m quite capable of figuring things out in context, thank you very much. Proud success story of Memorial Public High School class of 85.
As a fledgling writer, I try very hard to inject local words and sayings into the story to give the characters and locations an authenticity and uniqueness. I have friends check to make sure I’m doing it properly and call me out if I’ve gone overboard or am using something wrong or something that only old folks still use (groovy anyone?). If I go to all of that trouble only to have the publisher “fix” it, I’d be livid.
Debra said on 06.01.10 at 04:44 PM • [link]
Oh, I found another great reference online http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/j.htm
I’m sure there’s more, but jeez people (publishers). Don’t dumb us down. It makes the hunt so much the sweeter when we find an unfamiliar word and track down the meaning.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.01.10 at 04:53 PM • [link]
“Fall” is perfectly period for those of us writing Georgian/Regency set books as per the OED (it’s out for contemps though):
Bliss said on 06.01.10 at 05:03 PM • [link]
Food for thought this morning. While I understand your comments (I’m Canadian) the question I kept asking myself was: yes, but who are these books written for?
I’m not talking about re-editing a book originally published in the UK, or Aussie or where have you. In that case, yes, I agree it’s wrong to ‘edit’ the book to fit American English.
However, I’ve published 2 books with an AMERICAN publisher. One is set in Canada the other in the UK. I was well aware that most of my readers would be AMERICAN. Words like colour and honour and neighbour, all lost their U’s. Realise became realize and so on… I didn’t use kilometers, but miles. Farenheit instead of Centigrade. Pounds instead of kilos.
That being said, it doesn’t mean a ‘foreign’ character can’t retain his foreign dialogue and inner monologue, if done right.
If say, my heroine is American and she’s in England and the hero (who’s English) says ‘Open the boot’, if I’m in HER POV, I can easily ‘explain’ what boot is. THEN once I’ve ‘explained’ the foreign term, I can use it again in the hero’s POV.
Miranda Neville said on 06.01.10 at 05:08 PM • [link]
Kalen cites a wonderful example of English usage that fell into disuse in Britain but remained in the US. Separate development in action. It happened with spelling too. I cannot tell you how many English 18th century letters I’ve read that use spellings such as “color.” It makes me fell much better when I’m writing my English set historicals and have to use American spelling.
Bliss said on 06.01.10 at 05:10 PM • [link]
Oh, and don’t even get me started with foreign languages in English books. If you make your hero French for example, then please, please, please make sure the French words are spelled correctly (and, no, Babelfish won’t cut it). I’m fluent in French and nothing pisses me off more than a book riddled with incorrect spelling. To me, that’s just pure laziness on the writer’s part. Never assume your readers are as ignorant you are :)
Elise Logan said on 06.01.10 at 05:17 PM • [link]
Oh, this is definitely a pet peeve of mine. I cut my teeth on the categories of the 70s and 80s, when the local flavor was allowed to shine through. It opened a whole vocabulary for me and made me very interested in the culture of far away places.
I have to admit I’ve run into this in my editing - not just with Aussie and NZ and UK words, but even more interesting American words. My vocabulary is…well-developed thanks to those early years of romance reading, and I tend to choose my words very carefully. I have, on several occasions, had editors ask me to replace a word with a more common word that means close to, but not quite, the same thing. Well, by golly, I actually MEANT the word I used, and I think that romance readers are really short changed by editors thinking that romances need to be dumbed down and/or homogenized for the reading public. What happened between the era of Roberta Gellis and now that stripped editors of their confidence in the brain power of the romance reader? Are we somehow getting dumber?
If I want to use esoteric words, I’ll by golly use them. It’s not a bad thing to learn a new word from time to time. Give the reader a bit of credit!
Ha. Spamword is faith56. That’s right. Have some bleeding faith!
Roslyn Holcomb said on 06.01.10 at 05:21 PM • [link]
When did they start doing this? I read plenty of Australia-based stories in the 1970s and 1980s and remember plenty of the lingo, including “good on you.” (I have no idea what category romance that was in, but I actually picked up the expression.) Elizabeth Lowell’s The Diamond Tiger was set in Australia and I distinctly remember references to cattle stations and whatnot. It’s one of my all-time faves. I haven’t read it in twenty years, but I still remember the way they dug a hole to get water from a tree (something the hero apparently learned from native Australians), and the way they traveled on this road that was so narrow that only one car could go on it at a time. So they’d be going along at like 90 miles an hour playing chicken with the oncoming vehicle.
Of course I think they’ve been “dumbing down” romances for quite some time now, and I’m not sure why. Books I read twenty years ago seemed denser and more complex. I guess it’s a response to competition from so much other media, so maybe this is part and parcel of that trend. I used to love books set in foreign places because I could take a trip in my easy chair. I felt that I “knew” London because so many Harlequins were set there, and I always wanted a Mini because that seemed to be the vehicle du jour of London based heroines back then.
Helen said on 06.01.10 at 05:47 PM • [link]
This reminds me of the time about 10 years ago when I met an author I enjoy reading in a bookstore when visiting my family in the UK. I told him how much I enjoyed his books, and that I actually had a friend send them out to me in Canada, because they were published so much later over here. He told me one reason it took a while was the “translation” the books had to go through to be published in North America. He gave me a few examples and when I got home I checked a couple of the books out of the library to compare to my UK copies. It was interesting to see what the North American publisher did not think North Americans could understand!
Mary Lamb said on 06.01.10 at 05:50 PM • [link]
Okay, just to be a bit of a devil’s advocate and for the record, I agree with the all the opinions expressed here, but maybe the half of all romance readers (probably more than half) who are off-line feel differently? I dunno -trying to wrap my mind around the “why do it” because it just makes no sense at all to me.
Publishers must think romance readers are stupid or something. But then Cassie Edwards sold an awful lot of books, didn’t she? Can’t help but feel sometimes that the opinions expressed here and at other blogs are unfortunatly, a very small minority. Sigh. I
:
Inga said on 06.01.10 at 05:53 PM • [link]
Is it true that Bronwyn Parry doesn’t have an American publisher? That would be a real shame. I live in Scotland, and I got both of her books from amazon uk, and loved them.
Someone noted that saying Parry’s books are too Australian would be like saying Stieg Larsson’s books are too Swedish. Well, my book club just discussed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night, and several members complained that they found the Swedish names to be confusing and thought there was too much detail about Swedish food, media, and finances.
It does drive me crazy when American writers use British terms incorrectly. I love Carla Kelly’s books, but she always refers to men’s trousers as pants. Now pants are underpants in the UK, and saying that something is pants is kind of equivalent to saying that something is crap. I keep wanting to shout out to her: Carla—use the word trousers! Your American readers will understand that word ...
Perry said on 06.01.10 at 05:56 PM • [link]
I loved this post - gave me a good laugh to start the day. I do hate it when people don’t do their research. I think it’s more about research than about cultural imperialism (please pass me a bowl of u to add back to the words).
In my own writing I stumble a lot, because I don’t realize I have it wrong and my problem is I work through a background of British and Canadian assumptions. My critique group is always asking me if that’s the right phrasing.
So, Helen, how about contacting Harlequin and selling them on hiring you as the Australian translator. :)
Wallie said on 06.01.10 at 06:02 PM • [link]
Two points:
1. Recently, I purchased a Harlequin Romance about a “rancher.” I thought it’d be set in Texas, or Montana. Imagine my befuddlement when I realized it was set in Australia. Gaaah. I felt bait and switched, and the book sits ignored, somewhere.
2. Being bilingual in Spanish, I am disgusted when authors don’t do their research and plop any Spanish-sounding or badly misspelled Spanish word that reveals the author’s laziness.
Laine said on 06.01.10 at 06:07 PM • [link]
I read on an ebook so I love the mobileread website. From reading posts there I discovered that there are an amazing amount of people who read in English for recreation even though it’s not their native tongue. If they can enjoy reading in another language surely English speakers can cope with the odd different word. I think it insults American readers’ intelligence to change words and treats them like children.
I like to enjoy the flavour of a setting when I read a book. I like Greek words in stories set in Greece etc. (Phonetically spelled, of course. ;-) ) I want to be spirited away from my mundane life when I read. I want to be able to picture myself in an exotic setting. What’s next? Remove all the millionaire lifestyle because that’s not how most of us live? Cut out all the vampires because we’ve never met one?
Funny how the publishers see nothing wrong with authors creating alien cultures with made up words in Science Fiction. Hey, but that’s read by intelligent men not weak, feeble, empty headed women like us. Grrrrr!
I’d better stop before before my blood pressure rises too high.
Donna said on 06.01.10 at 06:08 PM • [link]
Me too!! And funny enough, was totally able to figure out what they meant. Well, the jumper thing took a while, but I got it eventually.
But really, this idea that Americans are ignorant & illiterate is fairly resent & pretty pervasive. The worst part is that Americans are the ones that perpetuate the preception everytime we cater to the lowest common denominator in the country. Hence celebrating the millenium January 2000 instead of 2001 which is when it actually started.
The name of the second Timothy Dalton James Bond film was changed to “License to Kill” for American audiences because the original, and more appropriate title, “License Revoked” contained a word it was felt most Americans wouldn’t understand. Yes, revoked.
So now the entire world feels we’re not very bright. Which leads to my former neighbor who introduced himself as “Jason”. Since he barely spoke English, and was from Japan, I found this unlikely and said so. Apparently the perception is that Americans find pronouncing foriegn names difficult and annoying, so they make it easy on us. How appalling.
Carrie Lofty said on 06.01.10 at 06:10 PM • [link]
The next historical I’m contracted to write for Pocket (rock on!) is set in 1882 Australia. I’m furiously taking notes. Hope to do the Bitchery proud…
Donna said on 06.01.10 at 06:14 PM • [link]
GARG!! That would be RECENT. OMG! I am illiterate!!!
Suzanne Evans said on 06.01.10 at 06:23 PM • [link]
Imagine my horror at reading a Regency romance this week, which was set in England… and the heroine to mention seeing a family of skunks…
and no she wasn’t in London Zoo!
Spoiled…
Bliss said on 06.01.10 at 06:36 PM • [link]
a skunk in England? LMAO
Hey, why not Caribou next? Or how about a moose?
Seriously. Lazy writers - negligent editors.
Kate Pearce said on 06.01.10 at 06:39 PM • [link]
I had the ultimate irony of writing a cowboy book set in California, spending a lot of time getting the language and terms right (I’m a Brit living in CA) only to send it to my UK publisher who then used British spelling and terminology… You have no idea how many irate emails I’ve had from U.S. readers telling me I can’t spell. LOL
SB Sarah said on 06.01.10 at 06:49 PM • [link]
I have one word for you, and that word is Tittybong. Thanks to Bill Bryson, I giggle every time I read it.
WHY is there no romance set in Tittybong?
SB Sarah said on 06.01.10 at 06:55 PM • [link]
Also, I am personally terrified of Vegemite sandwiches.
Karen H said on 06.01.10 at 07:01 PM • [link]
I do not understand that agent telling you that your work has to be changed that way. I read lots of books set in Scotland or including Vikings or whatever and the author either explains the unfamiliar terms in an appendix or makes it clear within the context, while still using the correct term.
I tend to agree that we are being “dumbed down” but I cannot figure out why. Are we as readers complaining we can’t figure out what’s going on if the terms are slightly unfamiliar or is it the management of the publishers who are too lazy to take the opportunity to learn something new? I don’t want to live in a totally homogenized world based on someone’s perception of the USA (that’s probably wrong anyway). Keep the local terminology!
Andrea said on 06.01.10 at 07:01 PM • [link]
Huh, I never even knew they do that. They TRANSLATED Harry Potter for Americans?!??!?! I guess it is different for me since I am not a native speaker of English anyways so I have to look up words on occasion even if it is American English. I like that though because I learn new things. I also often picture-google (is that a word?) things (like cars) since I don’t know what they look like even when I know the word - for example, I know that an SUV is a car but have no idea what kind.
It never bothers me if a dialect/foreign language is used in a book - as long as it is used correctly. Nothing bugs me as much as incorrectly used words/phrases or major mistakes (I once read a book where Prague was said to be in Russia…) I am not as sensitive to British/Australian etc English mistakes but that is simply because I might not notice them ;-) For me, if it is done well, the use of dialect/words from another language enhances the book because it is part of the setting. And if a book set in Australia has a distinctly American “flavor” that even I recognize it doesn’t work for me. If it is set there, then I prefer having to look up more words if necessary. I mean, what is the point of writing a book set in XY if it is basically American with a few unusual place names?
Estara said on 06.01.10 at 07:11 PM • [link]
*wry grin* I agree with the prevailing opinion here, but I can one-up that (or can’t I?) - Imagine being a German reader who loves reading in English and if a German shows up anywhere in a novel it’s mostly a Nazi - and THEN the German he/she uses is grammatically incorrect as well.
On the other hand we have Sandra Schwab who lives the life I always dreamed off but never got off my butt to attempt living - Doctor of English and teaching as an assistant professor at university in Germany by day and by night she writes romance. Oh and she does handicrafts, too.
Andrea said on 06.01.10 at 07:19 PM • [link]
Oh yes!!!! Completely forgot about that! That does top the other pet peeves.
Carrie Lofty said on 06.01.10 at 07:22 PM • [link]
Estara, how about an Austrian-set romance? I know it’s not Germany, but it’s sure as hell not England…
sheriguy said on 06.01.10 at 07:25 PM • [link]
I think that the powers that be that control entertainment should stop assuming that the readership in the U.S. is
a) Lazy
b)stupid
and
c) not willing to change a or b
It has been a pet peeve of mine that films and books tend to talk down to the consumer rather than challenge them. As a child in the Caribbean, I garnered meaning from context when I bumped into “Americanisms”. I am sure adults in the U.S. can do the same. While on this subject why does every local in books set in the Caribbean always say Irie and Mon….We do not all talk the same way!
Jill said on 06.01.10 at 07:28 PM • [link]
This is interesting for me b/c I am an unpubbed writer trying to sell to Harlequin/Mills & Boon and specifically targeting my projects to the Mills &Boon; London office.
I set my books in the U.S. b/c I am an American and it is the place I know best, but I do admit I"m often questioning myself if certain things are “too American” or too regional.
I don’t worry about the editors not understanding it :-), but I do worry of it not appealing to them and consequently not selling.
But as a reader, I always prefer my books not translated or watered down for American tastes. I cut my reading teeth on British editions of Paddington Bear and have had a soft spot for British English ever since. And one of my favorite books of all time is Nevil Shute’s “A Town Like Alice.” No ranchers there!
Ros said on 06.01.10 at 07:36 PM • [link]
I cannot tell you how cross this whole subject makes me. After reading Lexxie’s response from her agent I am almost too angry to type.
Here’s the thing. If you only want to read romances set in your own country, then fine, do that. I’m British and I will happily admit to a preference for stories set in the UK. But what I will not stand for are stories that claim to be set in the UK but are in fact set in a version of America that is called England. I cannot see why anyone would want to read that. Unless Americans really do want the whole world to be like them? I have to say that my experience of Americans does not support this. In my experience, Americans are fascinated by British culture, and no doubt by Australian culture too. But if people continue to read books that perpetuate the myth that everywhere is just America by another name, then I am afraid that fascination will diminish and the creeping Ameri-centricity will takeover. To everyone’s detriment.
Also, you know what, we do call a sweater a jumper. Get over it. Like I have to get over it every time I read about someone wearing pants in public.
Cat Marsters said on 06.01.10 at 07:36 PM • [link]
I dunno, but I set scenes in one of my books in the very real village of Ugley.
As an English author writing for American publishers, I can’t tell you how often I’ve had to change words or phrases in my books because ‘readers won’t understand them’. I honestly appreciate it when my US editors pick me up on points of dialogue with my American characters, but it makes me rant at the monitor when I’m asked to have a grown man walking around in public in his pants.
henofthewoods said on 06.01.10 at 07:41 PM • [link]
During middle school, I had a very hard time on spelling tests because I kept adding the British “u” to words that I read frequently. I am from New Jersey, we don’t have favourite colours.
When you are removing all flavor/flavour from your books, how do you know what is American and what is Australian? Thongs as a name for Flip-Flops is very common here in the US. It is used little less since thong underwear became more of a discussed thing, but it is still totally an American usage of the word. But I have never seen ripple iron for corrugated roofing material.
Seriously, I have worked in labs at Universities enough with native speakers of English from other countries and non-native speakers that I know it is often the little differences in meaning that creep up on you.
The British use of “mooch” (lie around and be lazy or something similar) and the American use (beg, especially beg in a very determined manner) are both related enough through an outdated use - junkie - heroin addicts show both behaviors. You wouldn’t necessarily notice that you had written something that wasn’t American if you used mooch the British way, but it would not really mean the same thing.
That is part of why reading is fun- because language is actually alive and interesting. The same story can be told millions of different ways by varying the words.
We have already lost so much regional flavor and character, American accents and stores and foods are merging into one giant outlet store.
sableheart said on 06.01.10 at 07:59 PM • [link]
It’s actually a DNF for me if there’s an Australian hero who doesn’t sound Australian or trying to hard to sound Australian. Fine line and all that, but bascially if it sounds natural I might be able to finish the book.
On the other hand, if there’s mentions of actual places in Sydney, I squee because I know those places!
THIS.
Kate McMurray said on 06.01.10 at 08:17 PM • [link]
The translating happens across the board. A few years ago, I got my hands on an ARC of a Jasper Fforde novel that was basically the final UK version before it was edited for American audiences. Maybe I’m a smartypants, but I didn’t have any problems reading it. But, I do know from having worked at a big publisher, that all books published in the US get Americanized, not just romances. (I once had a job where I had to British-ize a booklet, actually, which is to say, I’m an American, I was working for an American company, but they needed this booklet published for their London office, and somehow the editing on this job fell to me. I learned a lot about British grammar while working on that project, let me tell you.)
This is something my writers group argues about sometimes. We have a Scottish member who submits things with British spellings, which is one thing, but also, how much regional or, say, career-centric jargon can you use and still be authentic without boring or losing the reader? (Like, if you’ve got a book set in San Francisco, how much slang/place names/ephemera can you include before your reader gets confused? Or how much police procedure can you put in a novel without explaining it? Which is maybe another discussion from this one!)
Liz said on 06.01.10 at 08:25 PM • [link]
This drives me crazy too. Last fall, I met a girl from China, who was in the US on a student Visa. Professors would ask her what her name was and she would say Isabel because they couldn’t pronounce her real name. I wouldn’t dream of changing my last name because teachers used to say it wrong (For some reason they would try to make it sound German-er than it actually is. They would place an umlaut over the “u” when there never has been one there. It got to the point where I would just tell them to pronounce it like the character on Friends=) ). I would just correct them and we would all move on to something different (like learning a flat was an apartment in the UK).
I’m not sure whether the assumption about American readers is that we are stupid or if we are culturally biased. A lot of people think that America is the greatest country in the world (which it isn’t), therefore all things foreign need to be made American—they can’t possibly be good in their original vernacular. This definitely makes many Americans ignorant, but not necessarily stupid.
That being said, there is an historical tradition in America of changing things that don’t make sense to Americans because they are foreign. For example, when my great grandparents came through Ellis Island in 1903 their last name was made less Italian (or the Americanized version of Italian). Suddenly, there were extra “f’s” or the vowel at the end of the name was changed (I have relatives with an “e” or an “i” at the end instead of the “o” that was at the end of my mother’s maiden name.) It makes researching your family tree extremely difficult—we can’t even find my grandmother’s family passed a certain point, possibly because the officials thought her name was too Polish when her parents emigrated in 1905.
Darlene Marshall said on 06.01.10 at 08:30 PM • [link]
This is so timely ‘cause I’m planning my trip to Oz for this year’s World SF Convention (2 Sep.-6 Sep [see? I’m even writing the dates non-US style)]. I absolutely want to read books that are not “Americanized”. I can’t imagine reading A Town Like Alice with someone helpfully translating it along the way for me.
Oddly enough, I once encountered the opposite problem. I was reading a Black Lace novel set in the US and the cops went to the boot of their car to retrieve something.
And now, I’m going back to gazing on my Men of Cricket calendar to get in the right mood for my upcoming excursion.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.01.10 at 08:41 PM • [link]
Which is why I tend to buy all my Brit authors from English online book providers . . . not sure how I’ll manange in the new world of eBooks with this one.
Ros said on 06.01.10 at 08:46 PM • [link]
I do not even want to imagine the horror of Jasper Fforde ‘translated’ into American. Practically every single joke in that book depends on its Britishness.
ehoyden said on 06.01.10 at 08:47 PM • [link]
I’m with the everyone else in that I really don’t like or want books that are lingo sanitized. American readers aren’t dumb. We can look up a word or two if needed. I probably would have had to look up jumper to figure out what the hero was wearing just to reassure myself it wasn’t a calico dress, but I’m fine with that.
I want the local lingo when I’m reading a book so I know what country I’m in and the time period. I’ll look up a word if I don’t know it.
As for the author having to remove lift, service station, and thongs for us silly Americans, that’s ridiculous, tell your pub to wise up. Some of us still call gas stations service stations, and use to call thongs, thongs until they got called flip flops. Lifts are a no brainer. The only thing that might throw me off would be a specific temperature in Celsius, but I should be able to figure out if it’s hot or cold from the context.
“where in the US corrugated sheet metal is called ripple iron?” As far as I know, it’s not. Corrugated roofing hasn’t been made out of iron since the mid to later part of the 19th century when they switched to carbon steel, but iron (CGI) stuck. Ripple is a term. And that term refers a shorter than standard pitch on corrugated roofing. Shorter pitch was typically used for walls, not roofs, and I don’t know when shorter pitch was developed. In the US it’s called galvanized steel roofing, metal roofing, CGI, some old timers still call it tin roofing. (use to sell the stuff while in college) Not sure how it started being called ripple iron in Australia, but that’s for the Australia historians. There is a company in Australia called Ripple Iron that sells corrugated metal products including custom roofing.
Just my two cents….
Lara said on 06.01.10 at 09:06 PM • [link]
When I was young, I read all the James Herriot vet-memoir books, which are chock-full of British words, slang, oaths (I walked blithely around saying “Bloody!” for weeks before someone thought to correct me) and various other turns of phrase unknown to my American mind. I figured out what they meant on my own—if not through context, then via the dictionary or an obliging adult. I never got frustrated or stopped reading. They were British, so of course they would talk differently! I considered it a fun challenge, as well as practice for going to England someday.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.01.10 at 09:17 PM • [link]
I’m pretty sure Bridget Jones’s Diary kept “jumper” and the rest of the British-isms. I know it was kept for the film. I’m still in mourning over the remake of Death at a Funeral. Such a funny movie, and hello, already in English!
Suze said on 06.01.10 at 09:51 PM • [link]
Hallelujah, sister! And I know people who do this, it makes me absolutely insane. I will NEVER again travel with people who are scared of food that’s “weird”.
Isn’t that crazy? Some of the most successful American sitcoms were ripoffs of British ones. Three’s Company, Who’s the Boss. It boggles the mind.
My French is horrible, but even I can tell when the gender, plurality, and EVERYTHING about a phrase is wrong. “What’s wrong, mon petits?” when speaking to a group of girls. No. Just, no. I’m pretty sure I learned that in Grade 7, the first year we got French in school.
I remember reading a blurb by a Canadian author who said that her editors told her that Canadian locales don’t sell. So everytime you see a romance set in a fictional or generic midwest or “Alaskan” place that seems a little incongruous, it’s probably been changed from being a specific Canadian location.
I’m wondering if it’s all part of the war on terror, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a political way. When people are feeling safe and secure, we’re more interested in foreignness. When we’re feeling threatened and insecure, foreignness is threatening and scary.
What I’m trying to say is, I wonder if the americanization of non-american books is a reflection of the trend over the last decade to see threats under every rock, and consumers shifting away from buying anything that smacks of otherness.
Crap, I have to go back to work and I’m not even halfway through the comments yet. See you later!
India said on 06.01.10 at 10:07 PM • [link]
I love learning new regional or antiquated words through novels. The only thing I ever want Americanized is the punctuation—I find UK-style quotations (single and double quotation marks swapped, periods sometimes appearing after a closing quotation mark) extremely distracting.
cories said on 06.01.10 at 10:27 PM • [link]
That happened to a friend of mine in college. A professor mangled her name so profoundly that no one, not even her own friends, knew who he was calling on. I always had thought that people with hard-to-pronounce names would be called on less in class. Oh well.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.01.10 at 10:31 PM • [link]
I got sent to the principal’s office in high school for refusing to answer to a teacher who couldn’t/wouldn’t pronounce my name. I claimed, quite correctly, that he had never called on me. The principal insisted I must have known he meant me. They stopped bothering me when I asked if it was too much to ask a supposedly college-educated man to pronounce a phonetic five letter word. Sheesh.
Megan said on 06.01.10 at 10:46 PM • [link]
Just sticking up for the editors out there…Bookstores are looking for reasons not to shelve your book. According to some booksellers, the majority of the American public do not want books that sound “too British” or “too Australian.” (Remember a previous SBTS post saying 90% of romance readers aren’t on the internet). When editors see that bookstores will not take these books, they start editing those things out. We personally may love those small things, but we need to sell the book. We do what we have to do, because without bookstore distribution, most books are DOA, and we don’t want to see that happen to great authors.
Lyssa said on 06.01.10 at 10:51 PM • [link]
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”.
Cara McKenna / Meg Maguire said on 06.01.10 at 11:10 PM • [link]
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.
sheriguy said on 06.01.10 at 11:14 PM • [link]
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.
robinjn said on 06.01.10 at 11:24 PM • [link]
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.
Kate Pearce said on 06.01.10 at 11:40 PM • [link]
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’
Miranda C said on 06.01.10 at 11:45 PM • [link]
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?).
AgTigress said on 06.01.10 at 11:49 PM • [link]
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.
wrytersblock said on 06.02.10 at 12:15 AM • [link]
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.
Cat Marsters said on 06.02.10 at 12:22 AM • [link]
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.
LizA said on 06.02.10 at 12:31 AM • [link]
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.
17catherines said on 06.02.10 at 01:42 AM • [link]
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
Deb Kinnard said on 06.02.10 at 03:18 AM • [link]
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)
Kalen Hughes said on 06.02.10 at 03:39 AM • [link]
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 . . .
Lurker said on 06.02.10 at 04:20 AM • [link]
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.
Brianna said on 06.02.10 at 04:42 AM • [link]
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’:
Suze said on 06.02.10 at 04:42 AM • [link]
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.
Kinsey Holley said on 06.02.10 at 04:56 AM • [link]
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.
L said on 06.02.10 at 06:24 AM • [link]
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? :P
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.)
ehoyden said on 06.02.10 at 06:50 AM • [link]
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.
orangehands said on 06.02.10 at 07:15 AM • [link]
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.
rudi_bee said on 06.02.10 at 07:30 AM • [link]
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.
Gary said on 06.02.10 at 08:48 AM • [link]
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
Ros said on 06.02.10 at 09:34 AM • [link]
@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.
Ros said on 06.02.10 at 09:58 AM • [link]
@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!
Ana said on 06.02.10 at 10:52 AM • [link]
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.
Cat Marsters said on 06.02.10 at 11:12 AM • [link]
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.
nekobawt said on 06.02.10 at 11:40 AM • [link]
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]”)
Catriona said on 06.02.10 at 12:46 PM • [link]
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.
Keziah Hill said on 06.02.10 at 01:09 PM • [link]
Also, I am personally terrified of Vegemite sandwiches. Ah, one of winter’s pleasures. Vegemite toast. Hmmm…
Keziah Hill said on 06.02.10 at 01:22 PM • [link]
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.
KristieJ said on 06.02.10 at 01:51 PM • [link]
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.
Annee said on 06.02.10 at 02:25 PM • [link]
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!
Anonymous Import said on 06.02.10 at 02:30 PM • [link]
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?
;)
MB said on 06.02.10 at 02:43 PM • [link]
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.
EbonyMcKenna said on 06.02.10 at 02:45 PM • [link]
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.
EbonyMcKenna said on 06.02.10 at 03:11 PM • [link]
And sorry . . . ripple iron? Stone the crows, never heard of it, cobber!
Carrie Lofty said on 06.02.10 at 03:13 PM • [link]
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!)
Kathleen said on 06.02.10 at 04:10 PM • [link]
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.
JanOda said on 06.02.10 at 04:16 PM • [link]
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).
Kalen Hughes said on 06.02.10 at 04:31 PM • [link]
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.
JM said on 06.02.10 at 04:46 PM • [link]
They do it to movies too… “The Castle” - budget Aussie film made in 1997 was “Americanized” - all the car brands were changed to US brands etc.
It is rather annoying…
And if you watch any extras on DVDs with Aussie cast members the stuff ups are hilarious because of the language differences
Boot not trunk
Batteries are flat
Bathers and togs not swimsuits
Torches not flashlights…
Thongs go on your feet not up your…
The list goes on…
JoAnn Chartier said on 06.02.10 at 05:08 PM • [link]
I was early, and publicly, chastised for unamerican usage by my 7th grade teacher, who objected to the use of “sticks” instead of “mallets” in a report I wrote about polo. I was humiliated because she read it aloud, and angry because I was trying to share my enthusiasm for an exciting sport which featured beautiful horses (every preteen dreamed of having a horse) and masterful men riding furiously across the grass. I guess I thought the reason for book reports was to generate interest in reading, but actually writing an interesting book report was wrong? Because the kids wouldn’t “get” it?
money29—really, isn’t that what it is all about?
SMR said on 06.02.10 at 05:59 PM • [link]
Not completely related, but romance novels aren’t completely brainwashing: facts and terms that I learned through historical romance novels often are answers to crossword puzzles. I justify reading trashy books to skeptics by pointing out that I really AM learning helpful things.
Darlene Marshall said on 06.02.10 at 06:51 PM • [link]
I remember back when Australia was bidding for the 1999 World SF Convention the Americans would come to the Aussie table and say, “We’re rooting for you!”
The Australians would look slightly dazed and say, “Really, that’s not necessary.”
Apparently, in Australia one does not “Root, root, root for the home team…” unless you’re sexually servicing them.
Ros said on 06.02.10 at 07:33 PM • [link]
@Kalen, I think it’s important to remember that the OED only cites printed sources. If a word is a slang term, it’s likely to have been around for much longer in spoken use than the OED date. So I’m pretty happy to read hellion and lummox in Regency romances - so long as they aren’t in newspaper extracts!
Gianisa said on 06.02.10 at 07:40 PM • [link]
Just FYI, they do the reverse in Japan sometimes as well. When I lived there as a kid, nobody in my family was ever referred to by our actual names. We all had Japanese descriptions that worked as names for us, to the point that I didn’t respond to my name when we moved back to the US because I kept forgetting that that was me. My father was “red beard”, my mother was “mother of the twins”, my oldest sister was “sister of the twins”, my twin sister was “oldest twin”, and I was “youngest twin”. Even the town map had our house printed with the family name “foreigners” because nobody knew us by anything else. To be fair, this was in the 80’s.
The original name was aluminum. The Brits decided to change it to aluminium so that it would match the rest of the periodic table, and most Brit-speakers don’t know that. My British/Irish friends were so smug about that (“americans and their need to change names!”). The history of English between the UK and America is quite a bit more complicated than most people realize.
I personally would love it if books were not “Americanized”. It’s just not that difficult to look a word up if it’s confusing, and with the internet you can easily ask questions of people in other countries.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.02.10 at 09:09 PM • [link]
@Ros
I agree in principal, but the historian in me prefers to stick with what can be documented (though I’ll cling to my anachronistic use of “mount” with my cold dead hands, and I’ll take my lumps for doing so). Many words were, after all, invented by the writer who first used them (e.g. 1754 H. WALPOLE Let. to Mann 28 Jan., This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity).
Polly said on 06.02.10 at 10:00 PM • [link]
@Kalen,
Also, the OED is only as good as its sources. I have no doubt that there are printed sources with many of these words that simply haven’t been compiled into the OED. For example, I’m a historian, and I work with late 16th, early 17th century materials. If I took the time to methodically check my sources against the OED, who knows, I might find earlier examples for some things than the OED has. But it’s long and thankless work, so I’ve never bothered. So take heart, “mount” might very well be documentable for earlier, but just hasn’t been thus far. The OED definitely gives you a good idea of when a word was current and what it meant then, but it’s not infallible, even for documented usages.
MagnusA said on 06.02.10 at 10:44 PM • [link]
Oh, for goodness sake! I quit reading Australian settings a long time ago because of the urge to throw up that they generated. Didn’t realize how bad the situation had become. Someone give me a bucket !!!
Kalen Hughes said on 06.02.10 at 10:46 PM • [link]
While this may well be true, all that is verifiable is what is in the OED. It’s a living document with thousands of contributors at this point, but like all research, it does have its limitations.
We all have to come to our own decision about where we draw the line with research and accuracy. We all also have to face that fact that as human beings, we are imperfect and limited. We’ll never be 100% accurate in our books. I do my best, but I’m positive there are errors in my books (and I know I spot them in other people’s books all the time).
Meg said on 06.03.10 at 12:06 AM • [link]
I am with you on the whole Mom/Mum thing - I totally understand it in US books but it kills me when I am reading UK/Oz/NZ-set books. But the absolute worst for me is reading scifi when distances are all given in miles. The future belongs to metric measurement and I love Lois McMaster Bujold forever for using kilometers in the Vorkosigan world.
Lindsey said on 06.03.10 at 03:24 AM • [link]
Here’s a question I’ve had for a while (somewhat related to this topic): I remember reading a Stephanie Laurens book a while back (I think it was “All About Love”), and she kept referring to the heroine’s half-siblings as step-siblings. At the time I just assumed it was because she was Australian or whatnot. I’m curious if that is an actual distinction between American and Australian terminology. Reading this post made me think of it, because my first reaction at encountering a strange turn of phrase was to assume it was due to cultural differences.
Kinsey said on 06.03.10 at 03:31 AM • [link]
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).
Lalalalalala…..I can’t hear you! Hellion is one of my favorite words and it’s central to the Regency I’m currently plotting.
Starting with Julia Quinn. Who apparently thinks that Britain was using decimal currency in the Regency era.
Oh, don’t tell me that…I’m getting ready to read my first Julia Quinn and I was so looking forward to it.
That’s one of my nits with historicals. I don’t mind when an author takes a little liberty with the plot. Trying to fit a plot into the extremely (by our standards) constrained conventions of the Regency period wouldn’t make for very interesting stories.
For instance, one of my favorite recent Regencies is Gaelyn Foley’s The Duke. It’s highly, highly unlikely that a duke would’ve taken a “ruined” woman as his first wife. And an aristocrat of Robert’s probity never would’ve told a young man to grab his love and head for Gretna Green – that was a very dangerous way for a woman to contract a marriage, esp. a woman who was much richer than her potential husband.
But The Duke was still a great book, and Foley gets the details right. The speech, the food, the clothes, the dancing, the politics and gossip of the age – that’s what puts you in the book. When the dialogue is stuffed full of anachronistic speech, and the characters think and behave like 20th/21st century people, I can’t finish the book.
Suze said on 06.03.10 at 04:20 AM • [link]
Now that’s just rude! Good on you for taking him to task. I had a friend who, in the 1950’s, had the spelling of her name (Ilene) changed by a teacher (to Eileen), because obviously the girl’s family couldn’t spell it correctly. Her report cards from grade 2 on spelled her name Eileen.
BWA! That’s AWESOME!!!
An Aussie once told me the following (lame) joke, and then had to explain the punchline to me:
What’s black & white & red all over?
A crow with a fat.
A “fat” would be yet another euphamism for wood, raging hardon, codfish o’ love. Ya know, an erection.
See, you learn stuff about other cultures all the time! No need to be sanitizing it. Think of how useful this information is going to be some day.
rudi_bee said on 06.03.10 at 04:20 AM • [link]
@Lindsey
Half siblings share a biological parent, step-siblings have no common biological parent and are only related through marriage.
Lindsey said on 06.03.10 at 04:30 AM • [link]
Yes, that’s how I have always understood it, and that’s why I thought it was strange when in the book the heroine’s half-siblings (they all had the same father) were repeatedly referred to as her step-siblings. I guess I didn’t phrase my question well, but I basically I was wondering if half-siblings are sometimes referred to as step-siblings in Australia (where the author lives), and if so that would explain it.
(The book was “A Secret Love,” not “All About Love,” as I previously posted.)
rudi_bee said on 06.03.10 at 05:28 AM • [link]
@Lindsey
You didn’t phrase the question wrong. I forgot to mention that I am a native speaker of Australian, and that basically she must have just fucked it up somehow.
Roslyn Holcomb said on 06.03.10 at 06:27 AM • [link]
@Keziah: Jonesing and fiening mean the same thing, to crave something badly.
Tony means that something is posh or upscale or if referring to an individual very well-dressed.
Jenyfer Matthews said on 06.03.10 at 07:03 AM • [link]
If the idea that for every one person who speaks up on a point fifty others agree with them is true, then I think it’s pretty clear that the majority of people who read in ANY genre don’t appreciate having their books dumbed down for them (unless it is a “Dummies”* book, but that’s another topic).
(Dummies as in “thick”, not a baby’s “soother”, ha ha)
It’s also pretty clear to me, at least, that it isn’t always the writer’s fault / laziness when local flavor is left out. I have also had feedback from agents / editors who have told me no one would want to read a book set outside the US / about traveling. TPTB are all about safe and familiar and giving people more of the same. I can understand making damn sure that you are confident in an unknown author’s ability to tell a great story before you take them on, but not the rational that the story itself has to be one more variation on the same old thing. Time and time again, the books that shine the most are the ones that have finally managed to break through and go in a new direction.
Don’t assume your readership is dumb / lazy / complacent. I too buy UK versions of books and very few local terms have stumped me for long (and quite a few have crept into my own vocabulary)
Ros said on 06.03.10 at 10:10 AM • [link]
@Kinsey, Lots of people obviously do enjoy Julia Quinn’s books, so it’s worth a shot. Personally I put her very near the bottom of the list of modern Regency authors, but I think I’m unusual in this.
I do, however, take issue with this: Trying to fit a plot into the extremely (by our standards) constrained conventions of the Regency period wouldn’t make for very interesting stories.
Have you heard of Georgette Heyer?
kbrum said on 06.03.10 at 02:55 PM • [link]
Julia Quinn’s books are so trite. All her books have been DNF for me. Now DNS (do not start). They are great examples of “America” but just rebadged “England”. One of her books used the term “washrooms”.
I can (usually) pick that an author is from the US because most include the word “bloody” as many times as they can in dialogue, for no apparent reason, even when it would be insane/culturally inappropriate to do so (eg. by ostensibly well-bred females in historicals. On the basis of a sample size of one, this was the case until pretty recently: I wasn’t allowed to use this word (in front of my parents) when I grew up - I’m 40. I still wouldn’t just drop it in during a job interview or during an important meeting etc) . A much stronger word might have actually been better suited to really convey frustration (e.g. F**KING etc). The casual, repetitive use of “bloody” seems a lazy way for the author to try and impress that the reader isn’t back in Kansas anymore. Same could be said regarding the use of “G-day maaate” by those trying out their strine as a cringeworthy attempt to try to make the recipient feel “comfortable”.
Skunks in UK , not in zoo: Hey - I think I’ve read this book too. I think it was a book by Karen Ranney? I think it might have been in the same (possibly KR) book which included the repatriation of a DEAD war-torn husband from Canada overland to the Northern England for burial on the family property, in summer, during mid 1700’s (or early 1800’s - i.e. no obvious refridgeration). Unless others are aware that there are ways to keep a corpse fresh for half the year or so? Without the heroine being aware a couple of maggots, cadaverous smells etc?
Back to the skunks - I’ve also read about squirrels in Australia. maaaate: just where do you start? I guess that the editors of books heading for the US market just want the US readers to feel just as comfortable regarding the translation of local fauna into a comparable US variety as much as they do regarding the use of US terms and phrases.
Movies: I saw “Babe the sheep pig” also dubbed into american. I cried. The series “Mad Max” was also dubbed - even the version released for rental in Australian video shops. DNF.
Enough ! goodnight kids!
kbrum said on 06.03.10 at 03:07 PM • [link]
arrghgh
I meant to say SHIPPED from Canada, THEN over land to northern England.
kinsey said on 06.03.10 at 03:37 PM • [link]
Ros - No, I"ve not read Heyer, and as I was hitting post on my comment I thought : hmm…I bet Heyer fit her plots into 19th century conventions…I have a big hole in my Regency resume until I read her.
And of course, there were big blazing scandalous affairs in Regency times, complete with divorce and remarriage and everything. They were far rarer than they are today, but they did happen.
Manna Francis said on 06.03.10 at 04:42 PM • [link]
I’ve had…well, not exactly arguments, but discussions with my publisher about changing British English terms in my stories for publication in America. I’m okay with Americanising the spelling (it’s the house style, fine, no problem) and I don’t mind substituting ‘around’ for ‘round’, but there’s a line beyond which, especially in dialogue, using American English terms hurts me enough that I’ll put my foot down. The characters just don’t sound like that! I understand that sometimes it’s a question of the British English term actually having a significantly different meaning, or just looking like an editing error, and in those cases I’d rather rewrite the whole sentence to avoid the issue.
But…is it really so much to ask that readers look up the term ‘CV’ because they won’t know that it’s the same thing as a resume? I guess it must be—I don’t sell books for a living, I just write, and so I’m willing to take professional advice on the fine detail of what makes a book sell.
Ros said on 06.03.10 at 04:57 PM • [link]
@Kinsey, yes, read Heyer!!! You’ll love her. She has some wonderfully scandalous heroines (Barbara Childe with her gilded toenails, or Deb Grantham who runs a gaming hell) but they (and us) know perfectly well that they are causing a scandal, which makes it all the more fun when their very respectable gentlemen fall for them. Of course, she has some staid and proper heroines too, who are embroiled in the scandal against their will (Elinor in The Reluctant Widow, for instance). And some books where scandal is not at stake at all.
But there are modern Regency authors who get it, too. For me, I think Loretta Chase is one of the best.
Rebecca said on 06.03.10 at 05:11 PM • [link]
For novels where the characters are English speakers, I’d say go with original words, and make readers smarter/more culturally informed. No brainer.
Where it gets sticky is with either translations or books set in foreign countries, where the dialogue wouldn’t be in English. Since there was a pretty lively conversation here about *The Spymaster’s Lady* take that as an example; would a character in a contemporary novel who is “speaking” French open the “trunk” or the “boot” of his car? I know I was (to borrow a non-American phrase I love) gob-smacked when a review of one of my novels set in Spain (where the dialogue would all technically be in Spanish) mentioned the “annoying Americanisms” in the dialogue, although in fact I’d deliberately tried for a very neutral tone. I was also annoyed when said neutral tone was trampled on in a Dutch translation where the translator blithely had the characters saying “ok” where I had *avoided* “ok” in English because it would have been an anachronism in the both the Spanish AND Dutch of the time, although its usage was current in the U.S.
In actual translations from one language to another, most translators will try for maximum transparency in the translation, but what is neutral in one country might be very marked in another. I know Harry Potter had an Argentine and a Castilian Spanish translation (and possibly a sort of “International Latin American Standard”), because publishers thought that Argentine kids wouldn’t want to read Harry using “tu” instead of “vos.” I’ve read British and American translations of Camus that diverged pretty widely. (The French scrupulously say whether something is translated “de l’anglais” or “de l’americain” but then they usually flatten out regionalisms.) What makes something a “good” translation then?
henofthewoods said on 06.03.10 at 05:50 PM • [link]
Boot is actually used in the US for trunk - but it is regional. In Georgia, people who are “country” will still use boot (and it makes booty make so much more sense). Georgians, whether they are urban or rural, also use buggy for the wheeled conveyance in the grocery store, while North-easterners use cart for the same thing.
This is the kind of thing that is being squeezed out though. TV characters don’t use regional vernacular unless they are playing gangsta’.
I had someone run up from the car behind me at a stop light and say “your boot is open” when I first moved to Georgia. I felt like I was on Mars, no context occurred to me to make her sentence make sense for far too long. Luckily, she pointed at the rear of the car and it all became clear.
Liz said on 06.03.10 at 07:12 PM • [link]
A CV is actually a little different from a resume, at least that is what i was told by the head of my grad department. A CV will list (and explain) more of your accomplishments, including lectures/speeches that you have given. A resume only lists work, education, and sometimes accomplishments—my 3.6 GPA is staying on mine for awhile =). Apparently, once you get your PhD you have to have both a resume and a CV because a resume is not enough. I don’t know if this is the same in the UK or if the difference is only an American thing, so it might actually connote a different thing in American English than it does in British English.
Ros said on 06.03.10 at 07:17 PM • [link]
Liz, if that distinction is correct, then I think in the UK we only have CV’s. I’d always list education, work experience, publications, other relevant experience and qualifications and so on. Obviously you tailor it to suit the job you’re applying for, but I don’t think I’d ever send just a brief list of education and work experience.
Donna said on 06.03.10 at 07:28 PM • [link]
Just back from vacation & way busy @ work so, sorry, I’ve saved a few thoughts & just need to get them out!
I’ve been reading edited Jasper Fforde!!?? I’m gob-smacked appalled. Does that mean The Road to High Saffron doesn’t acutally reference my favorite line from Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Having watched both, I’d have to say Gene translated pretty accurately. And was a really good show. I miss it. As far as taking British T.V. shows & making them American: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You want to translate Friends, CSI, Seinfeld, Lost? I got no problem with that. Let’s be honest. While I love watching BBC America & imported programing on PBS, most of my viewing is American in nature because like pretty much everyone, everywhere, hearing my language spoken with my accent, using familiar slang, referencing common history, current events or places & reflecting common mores is more entertaining.
That being said, as previously stated, I don’t need the language in a book adjusted. I grasp foriegn words just fine in context. And the most insulting part of the debate is that we’re talking about people who READ. That alone indicates we have functioning upper brain stems with a rather sophisticated level of advancement.
Unless you mean the theatre award or the home perm.
And Kinsey I saw the actual physical The Master & The Muses in Borders yesterday & it is beyond awesome. If I hadn’t been is such a tearing rush, I’d have fondled it & maybe read the blurb.
Niamh said on 06.03.10 at 09:48 PM • [link]
I think sums up what everyone has been saying in all of the comments and how I feel about the topic. One of the things I love most about reading a book set in another country, especially a romance book, is that I’m transported into another culture. I want to learn everything about that culture and when an author gets it right you can really imagine the place (or time if it’s an historical) they are describing. This is completely ruined when the language is Americanised. I love romances set in Australia, I lived there for the requisite year abroad and loved the little everday differences. When reading about a new country/culture the little differences are what make it authentic and real and brings me back to the places I’ve been. So when I read an Australian romance that has been Americanised it really frustrates me. The same goes for books set here in Ireland or the UK that have been Americanised. One of the main reasons I read romance is that it is complete escapism for me: I can pretend I’m back on Bondi wearing my thongs and eating timtams instead of thinking about the fact that a child in my class puked on me today!! But if the author has written swimsuit instead of bathers it kinda ruins the illusion!
I understand that for some peple it can be a little jarring to come accross a word that has a different meaning; I’m sure picturing your alpha-hero in a dress when you read jumper might ruin his appeal for some.
But it can also be really hilarious. I was completely horrified the first time I read about a character falling on her ‘fanny’. In Ireland (and the UK, I think?) fanny does NOT mean what Americans use the term for: here it’s a slang word for our lady parts. When I realised it meant a polite term for bottom I was relieved for the character!
Let me tell ya, fanny-pack takes on a whole new meaning here in Ireland. When I told an American friend of mine studying here in Dublin, what fanny means here she fell off her chair laughing! Thankfully she fell on her bum not her fanny!
Rebecca said on 06.03.10 at 10:09 PM • [link]
Ouch! My grandmother’s mother (who died well before I was born) was named “Fanny.” (Her family was Viennese. Perhaps one of the Austrians up the thread knows what “Fanny” is short for in German? Not Frances? The feminine of Franz??) My grandmother - who prides herself on having learned perfectly idiomatic (American) English as an immigrant - always snickered about what a terrible name her poor mother was stuck with when the family ended up in the US. Now I’ll have to tell her how lucky her mother was that the family didn’t end up in Ireland!! ;)
Seriously, though, what on earth do people (romance heroines, people in real life, etc.) do who are named “Fanny” in Ireland? Do they just have very difficult lives on the schoolyard/playground/insert word here?
Niamh said on 06.03.10 at 10:46 PM • [link]
I have never met anyone called Fanny in Ireland!! Usually Frances is usually shortened to Fran here. I’m in my late 20’s so maybe it was more common before my time, I’m not sure how long it has been used as a slang word: I distinctly remember when I was a kid and the fanny-pack was popular back in the late 80’s early 90’s but in Ireland they were called bum-bags (no more apealling than fanny-pack right!), so it’s been a slang word since at least the early 80’s which is why I’ve never come accross anyone called Fanny in real life. I’m pretty sure though that Fanny/Fannie was a popular name in the UK years ago: I can definitely remember being 8 or 9 and snickering to myself when reading The Magic FarawayTree by Enid Blyton (written in the 1940’s I think) because Fannie’s cousin Dick came to visit and they went up the Faraway Tree!
Estara said on 06.03.10 at 11:30 PM • [link]
@Carrie Lofty: Austrian Romance sold! I have been intrigued by what I heard about this book before, but was wary. Your handselling convinces me ^^. I do hope the German used is correct o.O
Oh it’s not out yet, aww, but it’s in ebook from Carina Press, yay ^^.
Oh and I added your blog feed to Goodreads.com.
And re: Sandra Schwab her very first Romance in English was set in the Black Forest, so we do have at least one romance written in English, set in Germany.
Carrie Lofty said on 06.03.10 at 11:52 PM • [link]
Estara, Sandra was one of my German helpers for the MS! Naturally, any mistakes are my own, but I hope her help means I got it right! Your wait will be over in…four days! Bring on the Carina Press launch!
Cat Marsters said on 06.04.10 at 12:24 PM • [link]
Oh but Carrie…have you seen him in The Devil’s Whore? Scarred, bitter, dirty, mean mercenary. My crushometer went sky-high (I even fancied him more than Michael Fassbender in TDW, and that’s saying something). Then there was his final appearance in Doctor Who, where he made a psychopathic cannibal seem really, really attractive. The man has IT.
And as for the unfortunately named Fanny…there aren’t many schools brave enough to teach Mansfield Park to teenagers these days. Imagine what a bunch of teenage boys would do with a book whose heroine was called Fanny Price!
Deb said on 06.04.10 at 03:15 PM • [link]
“Fanny” meaning…well, not meaning “bottom,” is of long usage in England—cf. FANNY HILL (there’s a reason Fanny is the heroine’s name—after all, she is a “woman of pleasure”). I grew up in England in the 1960s and was shocked when we moved to America and I heard people saying quite casually things like, “Move your fanny.”
My cockney mother still uses the phrase “and my aunt Fanny” to refer to something that’s complete b.s.
bookwench said on 06.04.10 at 03:21 PM • [link]
I once wrote Outback Steakhouse with suggestions as to how to make their menu more authentically Australian - include pumpkin soup, grilled sweet chili prawns, damper, maybe the occasional slice of roast lamb… They wrote back and said they were an Australian-themes cajun restaurant, not an Australian restaurant.
I think I sat there for 5 minutes trying to work out which part of their menu had cajun anything in it before I gave up.
Carrie Lofty said on 06.04.10 at 03:44 PM • [link]
Cat, you’re the second person to rec me his performance in The Devil’s Whore. I think I know what I’m watching this weekend. And of course I loved him in DW, but more in a “watch him at all times, the man is a psychopath” sort of way. Whereas Sam Tyler is just OMG lovely.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.04.10 at 05:06 PM • [link]
Hence the horror the English have for the “fanny pack” (I share the horror, frankly). Back in the 80s my best friend showed up London with a fanny pack worn in the front over her “fanny” much to the amusement of her English cousins who let her go about like that all day before telling her why everyone was snickering.
Kalen Hughes said on 06.04.10 at 05:20 PM • [link]
My sister’s kindergarten teacher (whose first language was not English) insisted on reteaching my sister Siobhan to spell her name “Chevron”. She told her my parents didn’t know how to spell it correctly . . . Needless to say heads rolled when the first pack of homework came home.
Liz said on 06.04.10 at 05:53 PM • [link]
most people share that horror, whether they are American or English. lmao
LizA said on 06.04.10 at 10:19 PM • [link]
@Rebecca, Fanny is pretty oldfashioned these days and I haven’t heard it used in a long time, but it once was a rather popular name in Austria (then, the german speaking parts & population of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire I should say). It is a short form of Franziska and I always rather liked it. Of course it was spoilt by learning about the two meaning of the words, neither of which is flattering!
There are worse names of course. Just imagine being a guy called Innozenz (innocence) , once a popular name around here!
Bonnie said on 06.05.10 at 05:09 PM • [link]
@ Silver James:
My nonguilty pleasure of choice is usually the whodunnit, rather than the romance, and it does sometimes happen there. I remember being completely unable to finish a Robert Barnard that had the protagonist lunching on a “french fry sandwich.” I’ve read enough Reginald Hill to recognize a chip butty when it’s at home.
Some American writers do English in a believable way for me (Deborah Crombie, Elizabeth George), but they have gone to a lot of trouble, I think, to get it right. It’s probably not as easy as it looks to write pages of conversation that ring true, and translating to American is definitely one of many possible spoilers. FWIW I think Anne Perry totally fails in creating supposedly Victorian dialogue, but I read her anyway—it’s a constant, low grade annoyance to me, though.
Kinsey Holley said on 06.12.10 at 07:41 PM • [link]
This is likely a dead thread, but if on the off chance that Kbrum sees this, I have a question - I needed someone to bounce this off of and boom! there you are (or were.)
“Bloody” is profanity, of course, and a gently-born woman of the Regency era wouldn’t be expected to use it.
But…let’s say said gently-born young woman spent much of her life in very ungentle circumstances, surrounded by soldiers and war and blood and guts? Let’s say she wasn’t raised, so much as just grew - the nuns did their best whenever they had her, but they didn’t have her often - and when she was almost grown she had to spend a year in an intensive Society boot camp, so to speak, before she was fit to return to the social world she belonged to by birth.
She’s usually very good at behaving but sometimes, under stressful or dangerous circumstances (like an Odious Cousin attempting to drag her off to Gretna Green), a “bloody hell!” might slip out.
Believable, yes? Or no?
Care to comment?
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