Posted by Robert Hill on January 09, 2006 at 18:40:16 from 195.92.168.164 user eclrh.
In Reply to: Re: Editing Potter posted by Laurence Monkhouse on January 08, 2006 at 09:14:21:
These lists confirm that the changes go far beyond what would be necessary to make ambiguous English words comprehensible to American readers. [snip] By no stretch of the imagination can the English 'One Hundred' be translated into 'One Thousand' in American.
If I remember correctly, the reason for the change of 100 -> 1000 is that it occurs in the name of a fictional school textbook, which is inconsistently referred to in the UK edition, being in one place 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi and in another place merely 100; this is made consistent in the US edition.
I'm far from being an expert on publishing, but my understanding is that the US editing process of the Potter books does not start from the published UK text, as many people seem to imagine. Rather, for reasons both practical (the wish to publish in both countries simultaneously, for the later books at least) and legal, Rowling's UK editor and her US editor work simultaneously and in part independently, each starting from her manuscript. Among other differences, her US editors seem more keen to correct grammatical irregularities than her UK ones. But it may be wrong to assume that the UK edition always reflects the author's wishes and the US edition doesn't.
On the change from Philosopher's to Sorcerer's Stone, I think Rowling now regrets that she didn't resist it, but at the time she was just glad to see the book published at all in the US.