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Old 04-17-2012, 12:24 PM   #106
Catlady
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Muckraker View Post
I do too. So do many readers. But can you safely claim that the spell of the text--the suspension of disbelief--will remain unbroken when a young US reader encounters a "faggot tossed in the fire." Is it right to let new readers flounder when it is absolutely unnecessary?
You're all over the map in your self-justifications. "Fagot" is American English, it's not some British usage like "jumper" or "boot." Any unfamiliar term may cause a reader to flounder--I'll ask again, do you want to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator? I think that one who is reading an unfamiliar term can usually suss out the meaning from the context; if not, there's the dictionary.

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I know the intended meaning but a line like that is still a hiccup in even my enjoyment of the text.
That's your problem, not a problem of the text.

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If I was republishing Eliot would you approve of me adding footnotes with the translations of non-English lines? Because his intention was clearly to not provide such information. Is it wrong for me to make his work more accessible to readers of today even though accessibility was not his intention?
Not a problem if you annotate or footnote. I've said before, I have no problem with any such clarifications for modern readers. But you are conflating changes to the text with annotations, and changes are DEFINITELY a problem.

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And if that is the case, how can we justify the translation of any public domain material? We don't know that the author would have wanted an Arabic edition of his book. I think it's safer to assume a writer would want a word changed if its meaning drastically changes than assume a writer wants their work translated into a different language. Translation, after all, is not an exact science. It can significantly alter meaning.
Now you're once again conflating translation with modernization and sanitization of the text. You are not translating! You are revising. If you want to take a public domain work and rewrite it, slap your name on it and call it a retelling. Don't pretend it's anything else.

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My main point is that words are not as important as the ideas they represent and not all readers read to expand their understanding of the past. Some people read solely for pleasure and when the common definition of a single word has changed so drastically I see no problem changing that word to represent the idea the original writer intended so as to not throw a hiccup of unnecessary confusion in that pleasure reading.
Ideas are not subject to copyright. It is the author's words--the way he or she expressed the ideas--that are copyrighted. That tells me that THE WORDS MATTER. You have no right to sanctimoniously change them to match your misguided view of what ought to be.

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We can assume a writer using the word "gay" two hundred years ago had no intention what-so-ever of it meaning anything other than what it meant two hundred years ago.
News flash. "Gay" still means happy.

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Yes. Because I know the original writer and editor were good at what they did. And no competent writer or editor today, creating books for world readers, would purposely and knowingly use a word that didn't represent the idea they were trying to convey. I believe the dead writers were competent and would release updated editions themselves if they were alive today. The burden of proof is on those assuming they would let the confusion stand.
Balderdash. Oh, wait, is that too old-fashioned a word? If you ever quote me, are you going to change it? After all, my word choice might confuse some reader.

If you pounce on the word "gay" in an old book, just what are you going to change it to? Happy? Merry? Lively? You know, those words and many others were available to the author at the time, and he or she rejected them in favor of "gay." So you are going to take a word that the author felt did not convey quite the proper meaning, and substitute it for the word the author chose. How dare you?
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