Quote:
Originally Posted by moldy
I would like to convert US books to UK versions by searching and replacing US words and phrases to UK. e.g 'color' to 'colour' and 'cell phone' to' mobile phone'.
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The problem is fairly intractable -- see for example
http://home.comcast.net/~helenajole/Harry.html which gives a textual comparison between "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (UK edition) and "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" (US edition -- they seemed to assume that no-one in the US would be familiar with the concept "Philosopher's Stone" and what the hell is a philosopher anyway? or something.) Changes include "bangs" (US) instead of "fringe" (UK). What are you going to do if someone lets off fireworks and there are "lots of bangs" -- will you have "lots of fringe"?
Similarly, Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad trilogy features a bulldozer called Jukub (JCB) in the UK edition, which is called Cat in the US edition, and all the jokes were changed to suit.
And don't even get me started on common cultural oopsies like "Will you knock me up in the morning?" or "Can I bum a fag?"...