Jack Squat's Justlessly Juxtaposed Random Banter #101

[Dr. Bath]

Why? I've been doing it for years.
Not like I have problems...

...why don't we have an 'Ironic' smilie?

Use an irony mark: ؟

Changes in books have never really bothered me. Especially after reading classical texts in both the original language and translated. (not that all the translations were any good)

[bosssmiley]

@UncleFesty: I thought tomatoes were a fruit, rather than a veggetiebabble?

...why don't we have an 'Ironic' smiley?

*Ahem* --->

[Jibar]

Ah, fair point.

Alright then, rewind:

Bladhrjeoadleiadonkeysarealiensdoiaeignalem

Why? I've been doing it for years.
Not like I have problems...

[happyturtle]

I want an olympic hammer!

[d'Bwobsling]

Would you settle for some hammered olympics?

[Rawhide]

What about hamster olympics?

[Charity]

What about a limpet hammer

[Player_Zero]

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was random banter, not bad pun central.

I'll show myself out.

[bosssmiley]

What about a limpet hammer

What about Lillehammer?

"...and, re-e-e-e-each for the vague Olympics pun!"

[Phase]

What about Michael Phelp's gold medal in olympic whale-riding?

[Serpentine]

Uh... "disused" means "not used enough/as often as it should be/recently", and unused means "has never been used at all" That UK-US Harry Potter list is really not helping the "Americans are dumb and/or overbearing" stereotype

V Good point. Edited for clarification.

[happyturtle]

Who are you talking to?

[Zeb The Troll]

Quick question: are Americans so stupid they can't tell that a letter's being written/read? Do they really need a new font?

I'm more than a little tired of this "Americans are stupid" line. It's a style thing. Nothing more. Harry Potter is hardly the first book to do it. Many others will follow. It looks nice.

And 'booger' is a far more disgusting word than 'bogey'. Also if you read very fast you'll mistake it for 'bugger'.

Bogey doesn't mean anything at all here. Except when used to talk about the Bogeyman, who is not a booger covered villain. And so what if it sounds like bugger? You're reading it, not saying it, and to a 12 year old American boy or girl, it has absolutely no significance anyway.

And I just love difference 91. They way they emphasise that there's ''a Black boy even taller than Ron'' when it really does not matter in the slightest.

Would you rather they said "an African American boy"? Because that's normally how you describe a black person here. It matters that he's black only in the same descriptive sense that it matters if Ron is a redhead. Descriptive.

Do Americans really not know what a video player is?

*repeats "target audience" mantra*
It's not specific enough. A younger reader would not necessarily immediately associate a video player with a VCR, which they only know as that thing mum and dad threw away when they bought their DVD player. Taken literally (since we'd have no other way to interpret it) it just means "thing that plays videos". Perhaps "video player" means the PSP they watch their movies on? Or the little handheld DVD players that don't even need a seperate television? There are many things that play videos and VCR is only one specific one. For purposes of differentiation, yes, they needed to say VCR. Does it matter to the story one whit? Probably not, but then why not just throw out all descriptive text that doesn't directly push the plot forward then?

Bobble hats are not and never will be 'bonnets'.

What are they? If you can't use a description that will evoke an image, maybe we should change it to one that does, even if it's different from the original image. (Note: Alarra was in London for five months in college and doesn't know what a bobble hat is either. I'm not just dumb.)

And surely 'came top of the year' and 'had the best grades of the first years' mean exactly the same thing. 'top of the year' even reads smoother and sounds far better than 'best grades of the first years'.

No. Top of the year has absolutely no association to schoolkids here. Top of the Class, maybe. And maybe that would have sounded better. If you ask a sixth grader what year he's in, he's like as not to tell you how old he is instead of what grade he's in because we don't use that term like that.

Crumpets are not English muffins.

I'm nearly 40 and I don't know what the difference is. Why should a kid?

Rounders is not baseball.

What is it?

Notes and bills are two entirely different things.

Are they not both paper money? If not, what's a note?

And glove puppets and hand puppets are two different things.

They aren't both just puppets that go over your hand? What's the difference if they aren't?

Also sherbert lemons are boiled lemon flavoured sweets with sherbert in the centre.
A lemon drop is simply a sourish lemon flavoured boiled sweet.
Entirely different.

Again, an American youth would have no idea what sherbert lemons are. Especially since we think of sherbert as kind of like an ice cream (fruity frozen dessert dish made with juice instead of milk which is somehow different from a sorbet but I'm not sure how). I doubt you're using it the same way. Could just as easily have said "candy" if you aren't going to give us something descriptive to grab on to.

[Serpentine]

Alright then: Why is it that the whole world can deal with minor differences in terminology (translations from a whole other language are different), but the US needs to have things all nice and familiar and just right for them? People from the UK can read US books just fine, why can't people from the US read UK books without having it all spelled out?

[Cristo Meyers]

Why exactly is this even important enough to merit discussion at all?

[happyturtle]

UK publishers *do* make amendments in style and word choice when they publish books written by American authors.

[Zeb The Troll]

Alright then: Why is it that the whole world can deal with minor differences in terminology (translations from a whole other language are different), but the US needs to have things all nice and familiar and just right for them? People from the UK can read US books just fine, why can't people from the US read UK books without having it all spelled out?

I don't think that's the case at all. Alarra has here two of the Song of Ice and Fire books that she bought in London. She's going to skim for differences. In the meantime, this article invites one to speculate that we stupid yanks aren't the only ones who do it.

EDIT:

Why exactly is this even important enough to merit discussion at all?

Because, as I said before, I'm tired of being called stupid just because I'm American.

[TwoBitWriter]

This should be the philosophy that we take regarding the "two countries divided by a common language" discussion that has popped up here...


Its too easy to have your own cultural and linguistic upbringing lead you to criticize how someone else interprets the same language.

Let's call the whole thing off, shall we?

[Leigh]

Wow.
I for one have always hated the whole "American's are stupid" stereotype. It's like saying everyone with glasses is a nerd.
Plus, why should it even matter that there are differences between the books? It's slightly easier to understand for the younger kids, is that such a crime?
And anyway, I'm not prejudiced; I actually live in the UK.

[happyturtle]

I'm American and live in the UK. I'd have dual citizenship if I could afford the £600 application fee for UK citizenship. In general, people have been very accepting, but every now and then I get someone who thinks worse of me because of my nationality. Thankfully it doesn't happen often.

[randman22222]

(@ Leigh: For a few days now. )

Anyway, yeah. The only stereotype I let myself believe is that stereotypes are stupid.

...I can't help but notice a lot of imperial thinking in those statements, Curly.

[Player_Zero]

Does that maean we can resurrect the British Empire?

God save the queen!

[Leigh]

@ Randy - you! shush!
@ happyturtle - same here.

[bosssmiley]

<Zeb's vocab discussion spoilered for brevity>

Spoiler

Show

I'm more than a little tired of this "Americans are stupid" line. It's a style thing. Nothing more. Harry Potter is hardly the first book to do it. Many others will follow. It looks nice.

Bogey doesn't mean anything at all here. Except when used to talk about the Bogeyman, who is not a booger covered villain. And so what if it sounds like bugger? You're reading it, not saying it, and to a 12 year old American boy or girl, it has absolutely no significance anyway.

Would you rather they said "an African American boy"? Because that's normally how you describe a black person here. It matters that he's black only in the same descriptive sense that it matters if Ron is a redhead. Descriptive.

*repeats "target audience" mantra*
It's not specific enough. A younger reader would not necessarily immediately associate a video player with a VCR, which they only know as that thing mum and dad threw away when they bought their DVD player. Taken literally (since we'd have no other way to interpret it) it just means "thing that plays videos". Perhaps "video player" means the PSP they watch their movies on? Or the little handheld DVD players that don't even need a seperate television? There are many things that play videos and VCR is only one specific one. For purposes of differentiation, yes, they needed to say VCR. Does it matter to the story one whit? Probably not, but then why not just throw out all descriptive text that doesn't directly push the plot forward then?

What are they? If you can't use a description that will evoke an image, maybe we should change it to one that does, even if it's different from the original image. (Note: Alarra was in London for five months in college and doesn't know what a bobble hat is either. I'm not just dumb.)

No. Top of the year has absolutely no association to schoolkids here. Top of the Class, maybe. And maybe that would have sounded better. If you ask a sixth grader what year he's in, he's like as not to tell you how old he is instead of what grade he's in because we don't use that term like that.

I'm nearly 40 and I don't know what the difference is. Why should a kid?

What is it?

Are they not both paper money? If not, what's a note?

They aren't both just puppets that go over your hand? What's the difference if they aren't?

Again, an American youth would have no idea what sherbert lemons are. Especially since we think of sherbert as kind of like an ice cream (fruity frozen dessert dish made with juice instead of milk which is somehow different from a sorbet but I'm not sure how). I doubt you're using it the same way. Could just as easily have said "candy" if you aren't going to give us something descriptive to grab on to.

Heaven forfend that the young should be forced to reach outside their own personal experience in an attempt to understand a work of fiction. I mean, how would we ever have understood what was going on if "Lord of the Rings" or "Watership Down" or "Once and Future King" or "The Fionavar Trilogy" or Lovecraft had asked so much of us in terms of unfamiliar vocabulary. Oh, wait...

Yeah, the "Americans are dumb" line is old (and 'twas a cheap, lazy shot even when first coined - sometime in the 18th century), but the idea that books should be localised in the manner of some tacky MacAkred 4Kids import cartoon makes me feel slightly nauseous. It's not like the "Harry Potter" books are being translated from Russian, French or Latin for goodness sake.

Surely the ideal is that if a book presents new vocabulary and ideas to the reader, then said reader should take the time to learn what these strange new words mean? I personally didn't know the words 'pre-requisite' or 'encumbrance' until I encountered D&D (at the age of 12); but I certainly didn't demand a 'dumbed down' version of the game.

Does that mean we can resurrect the British Empire?

God save the queen!

<evidence of perfidious Anglo-scheming spoiler>

Spoiler

Show

To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be

• for the extension of British rule throughout the world,
• the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise,
• and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan,
• the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire,
• the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire
• and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.
  
  -- Last Will & Testament, 1902

Who says we Brits haven't been planning our inevitable and beneficent domination of the pretendy shadowdevil abroad lands ahead.

I'm American and live in the UK. I'd have dual citizenship if I could afford the £600 application fee for UK citizenship. In general, people have been very accepting, but every now and then I get someone who thinks worse of me because of my nationality. Thankfully it doesn't happen often.

It's not that we think the worse of you for being American Happyturtle. We just feel a little bit sorry for anyone who isn't lucky enough to be British. What you feel is our barely contained smugness at our own ineffable superiority.

Heck, there are reports of English people patronising the ambassador of France back in the 16th century, simply because he had the misfortune to be French.

[Dr. Bath]

Soo... who likes bugles? I sure do.

[Cristo Meyers]

Soo... who likes bugles? I sure do.

The crunchy treat: Love 'em, never get 'em often enough though.

The brass instrument: Eh, I prefer the trumpet or the sax.

[TwoBitWriter]

I prefer cheetos... the baked kind... mmm...

And I am partial to the Saxophone myself.

[Cristo Meyers]

I prefer cheetos... the baked kind... mmm...

Bleh...never could eat cheetos. Give me a Dorito any day.

[Castaras]

The saxophone...isn't a brass instrument though.

It's a jazz-bent-clarinet. Aka, a woodwind instrument.

*relurks*

[TwoBitWriter]

Doritos are a very close second, the Nacho Cheese kind. I only said Cheetos because that was the first thing that popped in my head in the snack selection.

You know what makes the world a better place? Snuggling...
Come on people! Who here likes to snuggle?