belle de jour - 01.04.2005

Spent the lion's share of the day working through the final US edits, which instead of being amusing and silly like the Portuguese ones left me feeling distinctly homicidal.

vendredi 22 avril
Spent the lion's share of the day working through the final US edits, which instead of being amusing and silly like the Portuguese ones left me feeling distinctly homicidal.

HT Image

I'm willing to accept that references to Gillian Taylforth and particular restaurants may well be too specific for the US market. But querying references to This Is Spinal Tap and to - shock - The Simpsons? Are they joking?

Alas not. As well, words such as 'punters', 'wellies' and 'A-levels' have been determined to be of such a high level of inscrutability that they must be removed, lest the frustrated American reader, flummoxed by mild uses of slang terms, throw the book aside in frustration rather than do what any normal book reader would do, that is to say, use context to figure it out or ignore it.

'Trolley dolly' raised a query, so by way of replacement I suggested 'High-Altitude Employed Individual'. 'Whisky', apparently, is incomprehensible - the preferred fix from the editor was 'bourbon'. By contrast, the Italian translator managed to transform my book from one language to another without so much as a peep of protest. I've read it, and it's a lovely job. The Dutch, as well, which also boasts the nicest cover for the book yet. (Predictably, the US version will have shiny purple areas and show a woman wearing fishnet stockings, eww.)

But that is not the worst. The crowning glory, the last straw, the final insult...

A sentence containing the word 'Rome' must now also include the word 'abroad'. Presumably so the reader will know I didn't spend my holiday in Rome, Georgia.

I have generously offered to provide an all-pictorial version for the US market instead.

// posted by belle @ 1:24 PM