Posted by Dave Thewlis on January 07, 2006 at 16:57:59 from 70.191.49.25 user dthewlis.
In Reply to: Re: Editing AR (was Bowlderising AR was Political Correctness was AR v HL) posted by Jock on January 02, 2006 at 14:22:04:
Sorry for a late comment -- from what I have read it would appear that while the claimed reason for changing "Philosopher" to "Sorcerer" was that American children wouldn't know difficult words like Philosopher (or at any rate would not be familiar with that word and thus not be attracted by the title), an even stronger reason was to cash in on the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games, in which Sorcerers are very commonplace and Philosophers, alas, rather absent.
Having said that, at least in the first book they also changed things such as "jumper" --> "sweater" and other cases of different usage in the U.S. Don't know if they tried to struggle with the British use of "brilliant" or not.