Localisation for ebooks

[dwig]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

No, I do not agree... at least not completely. It should be written from where the CHARACTERS come from. ...

IMHO, it's not only about where the characters are from but also who's voice is being used.

When the book is written using an anonymous 3rd person narrator I feel it is fine to localize the narrator's text, though I prefer it to be localized to the primary "home" local in which the book is set.

Quoted text spoken by the various characters should always remain proper for the character and never be localized, though it wouldn't be incorrect for a character to attempt to speak in "foreign" terms if it is appropriate for his nature. This quoted text should never be localized by editors or publishers for various versions of the book, except possibly spelling.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

No, I do not agree... at least not completely. It should be written from where the CHARACTERS come from. So if it is an American who travels to Europe.. he/she will think in feet/inches... and do conversions. It does not matter where the story ends up, it matters what the characters would say/do. [...]

My point about global stories was that the characters come from different places - and while we agree that characters should speak (and "think" where character thoughts are described) according to where they came from - the story-teller's voice (where there is, as DWIG points out, an anonymous 3rd person story-teller, the one that writes any descriptions etc not actually said or thought by the characters) should - I think - remain consistent regardless of where we are or what mix of character-origins are currently interacting.

[VydorScope]

Yea, my bad. Currently writing in first person... so forgot about the narrator.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Out side of the scientific community no one uses metric in ever day life.

Aside from the entire world outside the US...

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Aside from the entire world outside the US...

Context of the comment was discussing the American audience, I know reading is hard, but try to keep up with the thread

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Context of the comment was discussing the American audience, I know reading is hard, but try to keep up with the thread

I know, I know... but the thread did expand into covering Australia and Europe at some point, didn't it?

And to address the comment about the scientific community, I think you'd probably find that they use the metric system only when talking to each other. When talking to people outside their little group, they still use imperial, since they want to be understood by the people they're talking to.

As an example, with my co-workers and computer-geek friends, I use the Celsius scale for talking about temperatures, particularly the temperatures of computer components while running under heavy load. When I talk to my mother-in-law about cooking or baking, we use Fahrenheit-speak, since if I told her to bake the salmon at 180C she'd have no idea what I was talking about.

[dworth]

The situation in Britain is quite bizarre with regard to this. We used Imperial measurements for centuries and then metric was introduced relatively recently. Since this was an initiative from the EU it was resisted by some as being 'foreign' and to be honest, most people thought in Imperial anyway and it's too ingrained in the language and culture to change overnight.

Except that the school system only teaches metric. The result is that people my age think in both for different things. I weigh sugar in kilos but people in stones. I measure tiny things in millimetres, small things in centimetres, then inches, feet, metres and miles.

You see this inconsistency applied in the real world. Swimming pools have their lengths measured in metres, but depths measured in feet. Signs on the motorway tell you that the turn off you want is so many miles away. Get closer and it may give the distance in metres. Cars have their speeds in miles per hour, but the petrol tank gauges show litres. if you buy food it will be sold in metric, but in amounts that correspond to exact imperial amounts (things are often sold in multiples of 454g which equals one imperial pound). Beer is served in pints in pubs, but in metric if you buy it in a can.

[Bilbo1967]

I always find that people of a certain age in the UK use centigrade for cold temperatures - brrr, it's only 1 degree - and fahrenheit for warm temperatures - phew, it must have been in the 80s today. Quite bizarre.

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I always find that people of a certain age in the UK use centigrade for cold temperatures - brrr, it's only 1 degree - and fahrenheit for warm temperatures - phew, it must have been in the 80s today. Quite bizarre.

That's because once you hit -40 degrees, it doesn't matter which scale you use!

Same in Canada. Anything offical is in metric, but most people of a "certain age" or lower will mix, often in the same conversation. Most people above a "certain age" will stick to imperial or yell "Get that metric system off my lawn!"

[mr ploppy]

One I'm reading now, set in Norfolk in England, someone dials 911 for the fire department.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

One I'm reading now, set in Norfolk in England, someone dials 911 for the fire department.

Dialing "911" in the UK actually does work (from a mobile phone at least). Try it and see. The reason I know this is that someone told me, and I didn't believe them, so I did try it .

(For our American friends, the emergency phone number in the UK is "999")

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Dialing "911" in the UK actually does work (from a mobile phone at least). Try it and see. The reason I know this is that someone told me, and I didn't believe them, so I did try it .

(For our American friends, the emergency phone number in the UK is "999")

Mobile phones treat emergency calls as special, and have a built-in list of emergency numbers.

So dialling for instance '000' (Australia) or '112' (most of mainland Europe) would probably have worked as well.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

100 feet = roughly 33.33 meters so you could say "many tens of meters"?

I thought of that as well. Sounds a little clunky, though.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Dialing "911" in the UK actually does work (from a mobile phone at least). Try it and see. The reason I know this is that someone told me, and I didn't believe them, so I did try it .

(For our American friends, the emergency phone number in the UK is "999")

It wasn't from a mobile phone though, and the main character is an English policeman.

[H.P. Lovesauce]

Localize only if you feel you must, and consider H.L. Mencken's wisdom: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."