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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
+1
These are books for kids. I've had a lot of experience with British English, but I wouldn't expect an 8 year old to have had the same experience.
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Changes due to translation to another language I didn't give a second thought to, it makes sense that some words will not translate well and need changing. I just hadn't realised the same happened with US/UK translations.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, although with geographic restrictions on eBooks it does mean you're limited to the translation or nothing unlike paper books where you could import the original. I'm just a little surprised.
When I read books set in the US or with characters that grew up there, I expect to find americanisms in use. To have an american character using UK slang unless they've spent time in the UK or with people from the UK or it's also common slang in the US would feel out of place.
Is it mainly because of the books target audience been children, in which case I agree it makes more sense, or does this also happen with books aimed at adult readers?
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I can't change the font size of a paper book if I have good or bad eyesight. I can't make a paper book suddenly appear in white on black so it is more comfortable to read at night. I can't click in a word in a paper book and get a definition or look it up in wikipedia.
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Replicating a paper book experience does not preclude you from changing fonts, margins and so on. It just means the defaults would be as close to the original as possible (or more importantly, as close to the original intentions of the typesetter).
IMO there's nothing wrong with giving readers the original vision of the book so long as they leave in the option for users to customise it to how they wish it displayed, font type/size/dictionary lookups...
The time I would object is if in providing that vision they limit user choice, such as doing something daft like using a book made of images so that each page exactly matches the book when displayed on reader X but in turn removing the ability to view that content on another device due to lack of reflow and making font/size changes impossible. But if they aim for the original look of the book whilst keeping flexibility in mind, I see no problem with that.