Standard eBooks Is a Gutenberg Project You’ll Actually Use

[ekbell]

I do have a version of Chaucer's tales that takes a middle route between Middle English spelling and rewriting the tales (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/we...phy/murphy.htm with spelling mostly modernized but the language otherwise unchanged and a reasonable level of glossing and footnoting. I find this a good medium between the orginal spelling which requires more work then I am currently willing to put into reading and modern rewritings. And while I enjoyed Shakespears Last Folio edited by Ron Kolfer and available on this forum, I must admit that I find the versions with modernized spelling and typography easier to read although the difference in ease of reading is much less marked then with Chaucer.

So I do appreciate the option of books with modernized spelling and typography although I'm not sure about the need for punctuation changes (it's not exactly hard to understand to-day vs today).

[barryem]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Barry, as another volunteer proofer & content provider at Distributed Proofreaders, I'd like to point out that while most of the books at Project Gutenberg are scanned and proofed and formatted by several individuals, PG also accepts books from other volunteers. While DP tries to be faithful to specific original printings of books, this is not true of all PG works, and sometimes the PG book is even an almagam of different editions. The early works were also text only and lost all of the typographic features, like bold or italics for emphasis. It is my impression that the PG mobi and epub editions may be autogenerated from the text or html editions.

I wasn't aware that they took ebooks from other sources but still, I've read quite a lot of Gutenberg titles over the years and I've found their quality to be good. It might be that I've missed the ones the PG proofers didn't do. I don't know.

As for text only, that's how ebooks began. I'd been reading ebooks for a lot of years before I ever saw my first formatted ebook. I can't give you dates but I'll bet they were all text only for the first 10 years and I won't be surprised if it turns out to be 20 years.

I can't even estimate how many text only ebooks I've read. I'm not sure I've read as many formatted ones, in fact.

While I'm very happy that they're formatted these days I don't have any problem with plain text. I've only seen that hurt a book once and even then it didn't matter much. What I'm thinking of is Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination", in which Bester used very odd formatting to give a sense of being lost. It was effective and it wasn't there in the all text version I read but that didn't stop it from being a great read.

There may have been other times something was lost by not having the kind of formatting we're used to in books but either I wasn't aware of them or I've forgotten them.

Barry

[barryem]

I think the real answer to this is to be sure that both the untouched and the modernised versions are available and clearly labeled. That way we can all get what we want to read.

Someone mentioned audiobook narrators and pronunciation and I used to be in the AAP forum with a lot of narrators and they spend a lot of time discussing proper ways to pronounce words. Often it's hard to know which is the proper way. An example is the word "rodeo" which is pronounced everywhere with the accent on the first o. But it's a Spanish word with the accent on the e. Which way should they mispronounce it?

Barry

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by drjenkins

I have similar concerns when British books are "Americanized". When I first read Rudyard Kipling as a preteen I had no idea what a "many-coloured snake" was.

That sounds intriguing - what was the original text?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ekbell

I do have a version of Chaucer's tales that takes a middle route between Middle English spelling and rewriting the tales (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/we...phy/murphy.htm with spelling mostly modernized but the language otherwise unchanged and a reasonable level of glossing and footnoting. I find this a good medium between the orginal spelling which requires more work then I am currently willing to put into reading and modern rewritings.

Chaucer is rather different. He's writing in Middle English, which is, to all intents and purposes, a different language to modern English, and one which is largely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't studied it. He was also, like all educated Englishmen of his day, trilingual in English, French and Latin (French was still the language of the English court in Chaucer's day), and the "Canterbury Tales" uses all three.

The overwhelming majority of readers would need a modern translation (and it is a translation, not merely spelling changes) to understand Chaucer.

English changed radically, for reasons that are still poorly understood, in the 200 years between Chaucer and Shakespeare. Shakespeare is (Early) Modern English, and hence understandable, although obviously with a lot of archaic vocabulary.

[gmw]

I'm in the "I want both" camp, and we can have both.

I thoroughly enjoy the occasional foray into language from a century ago, maybe two, but I don't have the time or patience to learn French, Greek, Latin, Middle English etc., so I'm forced to accept translations of anything very much older. The older you go the more it seems common for authors mix other languages into English - some older texts make me feel very badly educated indeed. (I read some John Ruskin recently where I know I missed important details due to a lack of Greek and Latin.)

From what I've read on this forum I know I'm somewhere in the middle between those that will take that extra effort and those that want it predigested. And the thing with predigested (translated) text is that when it has been done well it makes the text much more accessible than a person is likely to get unless they become truly familiar with the language and context of the time. (You can look up the meaning of phrases, but that doesn't always give you the true intention of the source text; only someone well versed in the language and time can give you such context.)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by gmw

I'm in the "I want both" camp, and we can have both.

I thoroughly enjoy the occasional foray into language from a century ago, maybe two, but I don't have the time or patience to learn French, Greek, Latin, Middle English etc., so I'm forced to accept translations of anything very much older. The older you go the more it seems common for authors mix other languages into English - some older texts make me feel very badly educated indeed. (I read some John Ruskin recently where I know I missed important details due to a lack of Greek and Latin.)

It's certainly true that an author (in Britain, at least) 50 years ago could assume a reasonable grasp of Latin on the part of his or her readership, because it was a subject taught in every British school. I'd guess it was probably around the early 1970s that it stopped being universally taught.

[drjenkins]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

That sounds intriguing - what was the original text?

When I was about 10 I bought an old copy of Rudyard Kipling's Selected Poems and Stories. Now, fifty years later, the "misspelling" I most remember was colour for color. Eventually I figured out what a multi-coloured snake was.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by drjenkins

When I was about 10 I bought an old copy of Rudyard Kipling's Selected Poems and Stories. Now, fifty years later, the "misspelling" I most remember was colour for color. Eventually I figured out what a multi-coloured snake was.

Are you saying that you did not realise that "colour" was the same word as "color"?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are you saying that you did not realise that "colour" was the same word as "color"?

The u threw me a few times too until I realized it was just a prettier spelling.
Just looked at my Bookbub, one of the $1.99 books is British English A to Zed.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by barryem

Often it's hard to know which is the proper way. An example is the word "rodeo" which is pronounced everywhere with the accent on the first o. But it's a Spanish word with the accent on the e. Which way should they mispronounce it?

Depends. Are you in Houston or Beverly Hills

[barryem]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Depends. Are you in Houston or Beverly Hills

I'm from Houston. Now I'm living out my lazy years in a retirement home in rural Arkansas, where pronouncing anything correctly generates giggles.

Barry

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

The u threw me a few times too until I realized it was just a prettier spelling.
Just looked at my Bookbub, one of the $1.99 books is British English A to Zed.

If you get a copy of 1066 and All That you will also get to know all there is to know about English history as well

https://www.amazon.com/1066-That-Met...6+and+all+that ($1.63 in my country).

[maddz]

I looked at the list of books and I had to say the selection rather raised my eyebrows. Poetry? Really? 20th C authors? Really?

I know there's supposed to be a change-log for each title, but I'd like to be able to access it before downloading because I would accept modern spelling and punctuation, but not modern content.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's certainly true that an author (in Britain, at least) 50 years ago could assume a reasonable grasp of Latin on the part of his or her readership, because it was a subject taught in every British school. I'd guess it was probably around the early 1970s that it stopped being universally taught.

I took Latin in high school, though I can't really say that I remember more than a few words. I don't know that one can say that most readers in the US had a reasonable grasp of Latin 50 years ago or even 100 years ago. though most who had an elite education did.

The US has never really had as much of a focus on languages as England or the various European countries. The old joke about Americans and languages is for the most part true and has been for a while. (Someone who speaks two languages is bi-lingual, someone who speaks three languages is tri-lingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? An American).