The pages aren't typeset yet and it's stumpy American 10x8 paper: the wordcount's a bit over 141,000, which comes out to 417 in Headline's edition. But I don't have a final version of that to compare with, even, as there were tweaks after the bound proofs were printed.

Both the narrators have very English voices, so I'd have resisted changing much other than house-style punctuation and labour/labor and the like, but they haven't asked me to. On the other hand, if American readers really won't have a clue what a peppercorn rent is, is there any point in having it in there?

I am a copy-editor's nightmare, though, quite capable of asking for different spellings in different narratives: Buonaparte and Bonaparte, for instance, or period spellings of towns that are now spelt differently, and letters full of superscripts and ampersands. And yes, I've made separate decisions about spelt and leant and dreamt in each narrative, not necessarily spelled and leaned and dreamed, and you revert to your own defaults at your peril (but can I really face the fight?)

Emma

"a peppercorn rent" - nope. Lost me there. Mind you, part (a very minor part) of the attraction of reading is finding new terms and words - I have to be armed with a dictionary before I tackle anything by Will Self. And even then, words like "synesthesia" aren't even in!

(I guess I've got an out of date dictionary)

Colin

try sinaesthesia?

peppercorn rent these days translates as peanuts. US copyeditor suggests nominal, but I like peppercorn.

Emma

Synesthesia is the condition in which senses become overlapped. In essence people with synesthesia (though it varies massivley from person to person) hear or taste colours, or see or feel sounds etc.

If you're really interested in it I can pull an article from the New Scientist site for you.

Geoff

That's the thing, when an unfamiliar phrase is given in context you can usually work out the meaning.

synesthesia, (or synaesthesia) is when people taste colours and mad stuff like that. It's spelt right, I just imagine it's a fairly new term.



<Added>

We cross posted, Geoff!

Colin I suspect that Self uses several dictionaries each time he puts pen to paper.

Geoff

Emma, there must be a very fine dividing line here. Peppercorn, for instance, doesn’t mean precisely the same thing as nominal. There’s a subtle difference in the attitude of the user that would chose one over the other.

Reading colloquial terms in a book lets you know where it’s set. It adds flavour and authenticity. I would, for instance, be wary of a novel set in America that used English colloquialism. I often come across Americanisms I don’t fully understand, but get the gist from the rest of the narrative.

Is it that UK readers are more tolerant in this respect – or are US publishers less adventurous?

Dee

I think 'cigarette ash'.

Is it that UK readers are more tolerant in this respect – or are US publishers less adventurous?

I think we probably get more American vocabulary here than they do English so perhaps they can reckon we're used to it, but I bet there's quite a lot of copyediting to a US book before it's published over here - even just swapping the spellings, for instance.

Dee, you're right - and deciding what's just a different spelling (which I don't mind about at all), what's a necessary colloquialism, and what will baffle them so much I'd better change it is tricky.

The main outstanding problem is that every single instance of further has been changed to farther, and all the s's taken off towards/backwards etc. They sounds really odd to me, but it's kind of halfway between a spelling and a meaning, not like changing peppercorn to nominal - which as Dee says, is a real difference.

Emma


<Added>

realise I put i instead of y in synaesthesia. Doh!

I've only just found this thread and I'm finding it fascinating - I've specialised in UK/US language differences for years, and I do localisation work. (i.e. I spend my working life translating from US to UK English.)

But I write in a genre (teenage girls' literature) where, oddly, UK terms are embraced in the US. UK books are often published with glossaries at the back (Louise Rennison, Tyne O'Connell).

Perhaps that's what you need - then you can keep your fag ash!

Luisa

Luisa, that is so fascinating. You're certainly right about how much American there is in teenager's talk. Australian, too. My 15yr old MC is in 1976, and I'm interested to realise just how much of standard current adolescent talk I can't use. (The issue is confused for me because I lived in New York as a child for 3 years - brought up on Sesame Street - but we didn't have a TV there, nor when we came home so I missed out on even my generation's amount of exposure to US culture: didn't live with a TV till I was in my 20s, in fact.)

I was expecting some changes, but hadn't thought about the towards/toward one, which is the only big vocabulary change they've made, really.

What kinds of thing do you work on?

Emma

This is an interesting thread. I have to admit I never considered that so many changes would be made. Do they do it in reverse? Do US writers have their books changed in this way for a UK market? It doesn't seem like it to me.

Surely if you're an English author and you've written in your language and style using the words you want to use it should remain that way? The change from further to farther and the dropping of s's seems just ridiculous. Maybe I'm being naive.

J

You'd think so, and I'd agree in principle, but if American readers will be completely baffled and jerked out of the world of the story when I write, 'he took my suitcases out of the boot', then maybe it ought to be changed... Well, no, not that one. But there are always borderline cases.

I shall invoke Beatrix Potter, who refused to allow her US publiser to remove 'soporific' from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose.

Emma

I work on software programs, manuals and computer documentation, so it's a bit different from translating novels, but I still constantly change toward/backward etc. I keep a list of US/UK word-for-word differences, and it's extremely long. My list of slang and mild swearing is interesting, too (at least, to me!) UK English has a lot more 'mild' swear words.

I've gone off on a tangent now, but it is one of my favourite subjects so I can't help myself!

I think US English novels do get edited for a UK market - at least, I had a flick through some novels by US authors, and the spellings have definitely been changed. We are a lot more accustomed to US terminology in this country than the US is to ours.

Luisa

Luisa, that's interesting. I'm sure you're right that we're more used to US than they are to us. And there are differences of word-order too, sometimes, I think.

With fiction, there's the kind where the narrator's voice is quite neutral, not a character at all, and I can imagine that it would make less difference to Americanise it: when all you want to get over is the sense, why not sidewalk instead of pavement, or whatever? I don't think I'd be offended by an obviously American novel, writing about London, saying 'sidewalk', any more than disconcerted by an English one going to New York and saying 'pavement'. It does get tricky when the same word means two different things, though, and as you say, Luisa, there are tons of those. But in the case of TMOL, it's all in the English voice of one character or another. Even my punctuation is in character: I know it's 'incorrect' one or other or both sides of the Atlantic.

Settled for 'ciggie ash' in the end. Not really authentic, but has the right slangy feel while being clear.

Emma