From: Perry Shapiro <jodyshapiro>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 07:59:12 +1000

Hello from Australia I am weighing in on the translation discussions as a first time participant.
(My name is Jody Fickes Shapiro...currently a California bookseller and writer living temporarily in Australia, trained as a school librarian at Wayne State and MLS at Peabody in Nashville a zillion years ago) We are so bloody insular in the US and underestimate our own youngsters by insisting on Americanizing even the English that comes out of Australia and UK. The writers here complain of this and comment that , conversely, their readers are not getting "translations" into Australian.. Words like "footpath" (sidewalk) "ring up" "Mum" etc. have to be Americanized out of the Aussie texts before they are printed for American audiences. It is like adding water to the soup, diluting the flavor of the text. If I have learned one thing here it is to re-think this and give our young readers more credit for understanding that in other English speaking countries there are still word variants. I think they can "get it" and will love figuring it out.
Received on Wed 27 Mar 2002 03:59:12 PM CST