[Muckraker]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Oh please. Translating from one language to another is not the same thing at all.

British English is another language. Why should we ignore the fact that an untranslated word will unnecessarily confuse the target audience--kids all around the world? Writers won't use complex technical jargon in their children's books when there is another word that means essentially the same thing.

I don't like T.S. Eliot for this exact reason. He used multiple different languages in the same poem and provided no footnotes, translation, or explanation. What he was essentially saying to me--the reader--is that I'm not smart enough to read his poems. His intention was to filter out readers not in his target audience. If he had included footnotes with translations his target audience would have grown.

I don't think writers of children's books are interested in filtering people out though.

Words of more than three syllables confuse people too. Lots of people. Does everything need to be tailored for the lowest common denominator? You have no right to change the author's words.

Not knowing the meaning of a word is one thing. 95% of readers knowing the correct meaning of a modern word when the word was used for its archaic or foreign definition though...

If it's extremely distracting, like the words "gay" or "faggot," and the work in question is genre fiction for kids I don't see any benefits of leaving the word there. What are the benefits?

You cannot just willy-nilly decide that you know better than the author.

What I know is that I'm publishing obscure books today, for the enjoyment of readers today. And I know that the author, if he/she was writing the exact same book today, would not use that word in that way. I feel, in the cases I have noted, it is safe to assume they would have chosen the word that conveys the correct idea. To do otherwise would be to assume the writer lacked the skill to choose an appropriate word.

If I had written "I hate fags" in a sci-fi novel decades ago, and then died, I would prefer it be corrected. I would prefer people give me the benefit of the doubt and assume I did not intend a definition that did not exist when I wrote the word.

What's your point here? We need to cater to idiots don't know how to look up "niggardly" in a dictionary?

We don't. Neither did the guy that got fired. But he still got fired.