Different US/UK Title for 'To Visit The Queen' -- Why?

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Folks, I'm really sorry; I could have _sworn_ I hit the "delete post" button, not the "delete thread" one, but evidence is against me. :-(

I saved the content from Google's cache, at least....

Buran
January 2nd, 2003, 10:36:41 PM
I understand that there are reasons why the title for a book or film might be different in different regions of the world. For example, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone outside the US because it was believed that US consumers would not understand that a 'philosopher' is, in fact, an alchemist and not a thinker. (I disgress, though, I and at least one friend were confused by the change.)

Now, as for To Visit The Queen, I'm not certain what the reason was. I do know that On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond (did you know that Bond's name came from a real person, an ornithologist?).

My theory, though, is trademark confusion and/or potential dilution. Was there, perhaps, a threat of a lawsuit from Fleming's estate, publisher, or the studio responsible for the Bond films (MGM, I think)? Or simply, as in Potter, did the publisher not believe that a title including 'Her/His Majesty' would not be well accepted by Americans and therefore the name On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service was changed?

Post tenebras spero lucem - after dark I wish for light
(CC) This post has been closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired.

Rowen Avalon
January 3rd, 2003, 03:30:11 PM
Perhaps it would be better if I didn't respond to this, since I tend to get rather worked up about the changes that take place in things imported to America.

I frankly have no idea why they continue to change titles and things. (Although the trademark lawsuit you mentioned would be a good motivation.) I just know that it is frequently done.

One example I can think of is Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series. The titles were significantly changed. The UK titles were things like, "The Magic in the Loom." Whereas the US titles are "Sandry's Book," "Tris' Book,"
etc. It seems that publishers feel that titles must be dumbed down for Americans.

There are also many textual changes that go on, as with Harry Potter. Changing Brittish slang into its American version is fine with me, but some scenes were rewritten for no apparent reason. Not good.

Anime is a whole different topic, but let's not go there.

Yours till the bed spreads,
Rowen Avalon
mysites/ravensiggys (http://ravensiggys.tripod.com)/constitutionality (http://constitiution.tripod.com)

Diane Duane
January 3rd, 2003, 06:33:40 PM

Originally posted by Buran:
Now, as for _To Visit The Queen_, I'm not certain what the reason was. I do know that _On Her Majesty's Secret Service_ is a James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming... Was there, perhaps, a threat of a lawsuit from Fleming's estate, publisher, or the studio responsible for the Bond films (MGM, I think)?

Not in this case, as the publisher in question was the publisher of the Bond books in the UK. In fact, this was cited to me as a possible reason why it might sell better in the UK.

Let's take this in two parts:

(a) In the case of the first book, neither of the two publishers (here I use "publisher" as shorthand for "the editor/s and the sales staff") liked the original title at all. The original title for the book was "The Cats of Grand Central". I went through a list of about fifteen alternate titles with both editors. Neither liked any of them. In more-or-less-desperation I then added "The Book of Night with Moon." Both editors loved it. I explained to both of them that I had no idea how I was going to make this make sense in terms of the book in question. The response was big shrugs from both sides of the Atlantic.

(b) In this case, I had several possible titles: my favorite was "A Pawprint on the Moon". Both editors hated this. Of the alternate titles, the US editor liked "To Visit The Queen" best. The UK editor liked none of the ones on my list, and finally I suggested "On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service"; after getting in touch with the sales staff, the UK editor told me that they could all get behind that one.

And that's how it went. BTW, our household has (tenuous but extant) connections with Eon Productions, so there's no problem with the Bond people.

-- DD

Buran
January 4th, 2003, 01:41:30 AM
First, thank you for the exhaustive reply. Your explanation only solidifies my believe that marketers are completely out of touch with any sort of reality, at least what the rest of us see as reality.

Originally posted by Diane Duane:
In more-or-less-desperation I then added "The Book of Night with Moon." Both editors <em>loved</em> it. I explained to both of them that I had no idea how I was going to make this make sense in terms of the book in question.

And second, I never could figure out what the relation was. If I read a book I enjoy, I remember odd little details about it, even if it's been a while. And I was left figuratively scratching my head and saying "Huh?". The fact that it was a last-ditch idea neatly resolves my confusion!

I have no idea if my buying the UK edition sent any sort of message to the marketing people ("hey! Americans don't like their title -- maybe changing it was a bad idea?") or not, but I'm glad I did it.

Post tenebras spero lucem - after dark I wish for light
(CC) This post has been closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired.

Polly6
January 28th, 2003, 09:21:13 PM
My friend told me the UK harry potters were much better. It makes me sad that people think all Americans are stupid



*Wooosh I be polydactial yo!*

Civi
February 6th, 2003, 07:28:33 PM
lol,
What a dilema, hope it doesn't always happen like that.

-IV-

Bonita Kale
February 7th, 2003, 05:45:41 PM

Originally posted by Civi:
lol,
What a dilema, hope it doesn't always happen like that.

Works both ways, I think. British editions books with American children calling their mothers "mum" and American editions in which pounds are changed willy-nilly to dollars.

As if people on both sides of the Atlantic couldn't somehow manage. They watch each other's TV shows, after all. It's not going to kill a person whose busily absorbing the rules of wizardry to also manage to remember that a jumper is a sweater and trainers are sneakers.

We don't, after all, put out regional variation of books. Kids can enjoy a book even if they don't know why the protagonist calls soda "pop" or what a tree lawn is.

Bonita Kale

B

Bonita

Birdhead
February 8th, 2003, 03:13:37 AM
What is a tree lawn?! I pride myself on having reasonable amounts of American weirdness absorbed (biscuits versus scones and so on), but I never heard that one...
Ka Kite
Tui

Tuibird in Aotearoa
Conservationist, Scientist, and proud of both!
Chocolate lover extraordinaire...
*sob* back to school....*sob*
My mission: Bringing Maori to the world!

Khendon
February 8th, 2003, 05:31:15 PM

Originally posted by Birdhead:
What _ is _ a tree lawn?! I pride myself on having reasonable amounts of American weirdness absorbed (biscuits versus scones and so on), but I never heard that one...
Ka Kite
Tui

A "treelawn" is the area of grass (usually) that is between the sidewalk in front of a house, and the road.

The homeowner is responsible for maintaining the grass of it - but the trees that usually line a street are usually found growing in it. (Hence the name).

The city/municipality one resides in is responsible for the trees in it - they usually cut the branches back if they overhang the street too much.

Rysade
February 16th, 2003, 07:22:44 PM
i hope i haven't "Harry Pottered out" too bad when i ask if you think if that has anything to do with professor trelawney?

--Dai Stihó

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clark

Today's song lyrics:
Third Eye Blind; Motorcycle Driveby

Summer dies and swells rise
The sun goes down in my eyes
See this rolling wave
Darkly coming to take me
Home
And I've never been so alone
And I've never been so alive

Birdhead
February 19th, 2003, 01:59:04 AM
Mmm... nah, I don't think so. Mind you, in terms of "absolutely useless bits of terminology-" perhaps!! ;-)
Tui

Tuibird in Aotearoa
Conservationist, Scientist, and proud of both!
Chocolate lover extraordinaire...
*sob* back to school....*sob*
My mission: Bringing Maori to the world!

samdm90
June 20th, 2003, 09:49:00 PM

Originally posted by Rowen Avalon:
One example I can think of is Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series. The titles were significantly changed. The UK titles were things like, "The Magic in the Loom." Whereas the US titles are "Sandry's Book," "Tris' Book,"
etc. It seems that publishers feel that titles must be dumbed down for Americans.

Geez. I didn't know that those books had different titles across the Pond.

samdm90
June 20th, 2003, 09:50:49 PM

Originally posted by Polly6:
My friend told me the UK harry potters were much better. It makes me sad that people think all Americans are stupid

Come to Canada if you don't like the US version. You can get the 'original' versions here.

GO CANADA!

September 29th, 2003, 05:43:48 PM
I realize that this topic is kinda dead, but being a fan of Tamora Pierce, I feel that I must say: Tamora Pierce is American. The books were published here before they were published anywhere else. And I get the feeling that any American could understand "The magic in the loom" well enough, so I doubt that was the problem with the title.

-Emilie
(note: That's EmilIE, it's NOT Emily,NOT Emilia, NOT Amelia, or Emile! It's EMILIE, a cool name, and it has this IE after it which you WILL WILL WILL USE)

Birdhead
September 30th, 2003, 12:41:27 AM
It was when they started being more massmarketed that they got the name changes. Actually, I think that would have been about the time of that boom in her readership. I would guess, without any solid information, that they got re-printed with the new (terrible) titles because the publishers thought it'd be easier to puiblish, or something wierd like that- more marketable.
*shrugs* Dunno why.... the originals are so much better.
T

Tuibird in Aotearoa
Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha!
Spelling Freak and Typo Queen

Kathy Li
September 30th, 2003, 04:53:28 PM
Be glad, though, that there's only been a single renaming. Try being a Dorothy Dunnett fan sometime, and tracking down all the "Dolly/Johnson Johnson" series, when half the books have THREE titles apiece.

Paul
February 5th, 2004, 06:55:35 PM
This reminds me of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, though in that case the title the American publishers made him use was better. I agree completely that barring some sort of legal situation it makes no sense to publish differently titled (or differently edited) versions of a book in the same language.

[Trialia]

What's been nagging me about this one for a long time is that while the titles may be different, the spelling between books is all AmEng, even in my British edition. Makes for mild frustration in some of us... Knowing I have a British edition of the book and also knowing that "defence" is spelled "defense" through most of it sort of makes me want to knock my head into a wall. :P

[Lazy Leopard]

I guess I've got to the stage where I'm agnostic about spelling. I'll usually use the spelling I was taught at school when I'm writing, but so long as it's readable, alternatives won't bother me when I'm reading. What can get confusing is differences in idiomatic use, and there are one or two books which simply have to be read in the original; Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth has been somewhat mangled by its translation from American to British English, for example. On balance, I'd much rather read what the author wrote than what some translator thought ought to have been written...

...and one of these days I hope to read the rest of The Big Meow.

[Trialia]

...and one of these days I hope to read the rest of The Big Meow.

So say we all! Honestly, I'd rather have that finished than the next YW book - I find it a shame the feline wizardry books don't sell well enough to make it worthwhile.

[Kathy Li]

>KOFF!< Door Into Starlight >Koff!<

[Trialia]

>KOFF!< Door Into Starlight >Koff!<

I was being very careful not to mention that one, darn it! :P I'm beginning to think it may never happen...

[SpacePen]

on 'translating'

changing what the author wrote to fit a dialect that is, for the most part, mutually intelligible with the original's dialect is really not a good idea.

Although I will admit that I used to think some books had mistakes in them when they described the first storey of a building or house as if it were (what americans call) the second story. Then I visited England...

In any case I think there are two kinds of things that can be changed - the kind that can completely interrupt a reader's enjoyment of the story, by taking the reader out of the story and forcing them to analyze something in the "primary" (or "real") world instead of experience it in the secondary (or "fictional") world - like the numbering instance above, that made me (in the primary world) pass judgement that the author of the secondary world made a mistake or error or slip of the pen or typo.

The other kind of thing that can be changed - minor spelling or grammar differences or word selections - are things that can actually enhance the reader's enjoyment of the secondary world.

The editor's and translator's (or paraphraser's?) (or importer's?) trick is to know when something will interrupt the spell of the narrative for the readers in another land, and when something will add to the spell by it's very foreign-ness to the reader.

And it's the "real" translator's job too - when is it appropriate to move the reader toward the author and when do you move the author toward the reader?

On the one hand, we "translate" things from old english into modern english all the time, but there's a limit - one doesn't "translate" Shakespeare's or Jane Austen's english - rather, we educate our children in special sessions of English and literature classes about strange words and cultural customs of old so that they can enjoy the originals.

But we do translate Beowulf, or the Canterbury Tales.

I suppose whether one translates the author or educates the reader depends on how much time and effort it will take to educate the reader AND on what exactly the author is trying to transmit. Is the "art" and "air" of the original important enough to go to the trouble of moving the readers? Or is the mere plot and accuracy of information the main thing and any transmission of it to the reader's mind the most important thing?

[Lazy Leopard]

Some changes (like color and colour) are of no great consequence. Others (like elevator to lift) could break a subtlety the author had intended. It's the editor/translator's responsibility to Get It Right(tm).

Oh, we got Chaucer at school in something very close to the original - all strange words and odd spellings...

[lennan]

I can understand changing things that would confuse the reader, although changing the Philospher's Stone to Sorceror's stone in Harry Potter was odd to me since the former makes more sense. I think that some dialect variations would make sense to change between the two, I'm sure that as a child I wouldn't know that "lift" was "elevator" or that "lorry" was "truck" and while it wouldn't necessarily kill my enjoyment, it still wouldn't make much sense to me. I would have probably skipped over it, though. So I can see why they would do it, but is it necessarily the best thing to do? I don't have an answer.

For things like Chaucer: well, I don't think I've come across many "translated" or "modernized" versions of his works, most of the variants I've read are in some version of the "original", whatever that's worth. Even Shakespeare and Spenser among others have retained a lot of the "archaisms". I think that attempting to modernize those works would kill their literary flavor, so to speak. I don't think that the editorial changes in some of the books brought from whichever side of the pond have killed the flavor of said books that much, despite the marked difference between UK and US editions of say, Harry Potter. I still got the sense that both versions were Harry Potter and I think that's the most important thing: fidelity to the text.

But on Beowulf, I'm fairly certain that if you don't translate it no one but Anglo-Saxon scholars would be able to read it, since it is in a different language. For that work, like any others in foreign languages you would have no choice but to translate it. But that is a whole different kettle of fish.

[SpacePen]

For things like Chaucer: well, I don't think I've come across many "translated" or "modernized" versions of his works, most of the variants I've read are in some version of the "original", whatever that's worth.

I recall reading portions of The Canterbury Tales where there was Middle English on the left-hand page and modern English on the right-hand page. I'd call that a translation - and it was needed; I think I was in high school at the time, and I recall thinking the left-hand page was only about 60% intelligible by me; and a good portion of what I guessed or thought I understood turned out to be not correct, when I compared it to the more modern version.

Just looked up the Tales on Wikipedia, and have my 'translation needed' hypothesis confirmed - at least until I get a better education. How's one raised in today's American English to know that "on even and a-morwe" means "in the evening and in the morning" without a translation, at least at first?

[Lazy Leopard]

Aye, Chaucer's English is quite a long way from modern English from either side of the Atlantic. I figure 60% is probably being generous. It's probably quite a bit further even from Shakespeare's English than Shakespeare's is from Modern English. Definitely in need of something like a translation. I wonder how much of that difference in the rate of change is down to the invention of moveable type and the printing press...