Posted by John Nichols on January 01, 2006 at 20:28:51 from 24.250.147.241 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Bowlderising AR (was Political Correctness was AR v HL) posted by Mike Dennis on January 01, 2006 at 10:40:25:
Mike:
I am not confused, merely to cryptic for my own good.
JK Rowling, as all authors should, had an editor at her publishers. I read an article once where the editor had made a number of suggestions to JK on the book and she followed the suggestions. In the academic setting nothing is published without review. The editor can fix dialect and context. Changing from UK English to US English is dialect and personal, changing context is much more complex and as we have found controversal.
Getting back to AR, we are not trying to change the story of the black pearls, as this is a fact. The term "black pearl" is exact and is without issue in being understood by anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of English. As is the fact that the gentleman sailor in PD was of African descent. Being of African descent is a fact, again.
There are a lot of issues raised in the world and a lot of unnecessary bloodshed over minor differences in genetic makeup and the time period from when one's main line of descents walked out of Africa. We now know a lot more about this since the start of DNA testing and the scientists who has been doing the blood tests around the world. We know that everyone with cystic fibrosis is descended from one man, and presumably woman. We can extend this to the British concept of upstairs- downstairs which I think AR handled very well in the books.
The term Negro is tainted by the revolting treatment of slaves and their descendants in the Americas. I can see the remains of this in Texas. Texas is not the shining light of liberalism, rather Texas is as rightwing as you can get, to the point that it is depressing at times. I have been feeling the Texan issues of race, politics, sex and religion lately in taking a competition team through the training phase. I am sure that AR would not want to be tainted by such things in his books. There was a lot of racism in the 30's not just the treatment of some Americans.
AR went to a lot of trouble to avoid such issues and so create a lasting legacy. Should a modern editor have the right to change minor things in context text? So that current readers could understand the intent or where readers would misintepret the original intent of the author? We all know AR meant no offence, my mother said a lot worse than that.
The tag on the pearl bag was meant to be written many years before the date of AR's book. He is explaining the term, I think we are grappling with how to express the concept in a modern English dialect distinct from the 1930's English dialect, without offending a modern young reader.
I will bring in now the point of the Lord's prayer. This pray is in the King's English of 900 AD. The pray is part of the West Anglo-Saxon literature largely attributable to people like Alfred the Great, he of the burnt cakes. I started to learn Old English a few years ago so that I could read Beowulf in the original. There are great arguments in the Old English discourse community on the translation of the opening line in Beowulf.
Hwæt we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum -- So. The Spear Danes in days gone by.
I would not translate Hwæt as "So" from my limited reading. Yet reading the notes on Seamus Heaney's translation shows he is trying to capture the spirit of the author, and so I accept his translation and think it is great. We have no idea if his idea is correct and no way to check. But the point is English changes slowly. All the words in old English can I presume be found in the modern OED database, and could be used in modern discourse under some settings. See the modern Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, or the Icelandic news stories, auld lang syme is a lot closer to Old English than Modern English.
So my main point is that at some point we all require translation. Is 70 years a long enough period to require some minor translation of words and editorial fixes? We would not change the black pearls, merely the way we tell the story. How is this different to translating the words into Chinese? One has to pick a dialect of Chinese.
The language we communicate in has six levels, the Indo European root language, the Germanic offshoot language group, the entire corpus of English from the 5th century AD, currently Modern English, our current dialect of time and place, and our own choice of words. There are probably 10,000 people in the world who can read across all levels of English back to the 5th century, and probably billions who can speak some current dialect of English. With a dictionary I can read a page of OE in about an hour. So what are we aiming for with AR?
If it is censorship then there is a significant problem for some readers, if it is dialect issues and modern usage of words then this will happen sometime and certainly one would expect English to change over a 70 year period and for words to come in and out of favour. Do we change AR, I am glad I do not have to make the decision.
But I love this type of discourse. It is so swa swa.
Swa swa = just so, so, or as.
JMN