De-Frenchification

[Enitharmon]

A funny thing I've just discovered.

Chapter 20 of Northern Lights, the one where Iorek and Iofur fight for the kingship of the bears, is called (in my copy anyway) À Outrance - a French phrase that doesn't really translate precisely but means something like 'to the extreme' or in this case I guess 'to the death'.

Chapter 20 of The Golden Compass, according to the Encyclopedia on this site, is called Mortal Combat.

At least it wasn't called Freedom Fighters!

I get a bit concerned about adapting the text to American English - I think American readers get short-changed that was. PP is an English writer writing about English characters and the language should reflect that. Will wouldn't call a portable telephone a 'cellphone', he'd call it a 'mobile', and if he calls it a cellphone it not only grates, it gives a false reflection of who he is.

The converse is also true. I recently re-read a book that had a big impact on me a long time ago - John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I had to buy a new copy because my old one was lost long ago, and I realised straight away that something was different. The old copy had been converted to British English, and this new one had reverted to the original American spellings. It was like looking at a restored painting, it shone and sparkled in a way it hadn't before. Oklahoma felt like Oklahoma (exotic, to me!), not like the remoter parts of Essex!

OK, I've said my piece - what do you guys think? Can you handle 'foreign' usage? Or do you prefer it adapted even if it means something is lost?

[Starshade]

If they changed it to become American it would lose all of it's original premise and meaning.
If they did that I would kill them... for the simple reason that the Americans can't do anyhing right in my view...

[AySz88]

I think that as long as people can understand it, it should be kept in its original wording.

Besides, it seems that Pullman doesn't pay much attention to arcade games, and according to your description I would think "mortal combat" is a fairly good translation...

[Starshade]

Itsis an accurate translation but takes the mystery out of the title and causes more confusion.

[Tristan]

I really need to buy a british copy of the books... wonder what other subtle changes there are that nobody has picked up yet? I'll make a note in the encyclopaedia then about chapter 20 being À Outrance in Northern Lights... I think that's a better title for it than 'Mortal Combat'... fits the feel of His Dark Materials a lot better.

[Loriel]

Yum, I should get the British originals too
Is there a certain edition that's recommendable?

Whenever I read something nowadays, in German, I wonder how it was originally written in English. Even when reading books by German authors. x.x

[Will]

Flick through the copy of NL to see if it's got the human-dæmon mistake in.

[jessia]

i would have rathered to keep the french, or subtle changes like that. i'll have to get the british copies too one day... ooh, my friend's going to london in august...

and oh, americans can play american football properly... i think.

[Enitharmon]

Yum, I should get the British originals too
Is there a certain edition that's recommendable?

Well, you have a choice of at least two in paperback. One will cost you GBP 3.00 more than the other. The "adult" version, which I assume was rushed out after TAS won the Whitbread, has stiffer covers, is printed on heavier paper and has different cover art and different blurbs on the back from the "childrens" version. I think there may be differences in the critical quotes inside the front covers. Otherwise, so far as I can make out, there is no difference.

But of course, even those differences may change the way the text is read. I'm starting to get quite interested in this aspect - perhaps it's the next phase of my obsession! It seems clear to me now that Northern Lights and The Golden Compass are not just alternative titles, but subtly different books.

Another thing - Pullman goes to some lengths to establish his safely familiar, yet increasingly odd, Oxford, and the Oxford of TSK isn't even odd, it's instantly recognisable as the place I go to do my shopping sometimes! I live half an hour away from those scenes, so they give me a rock-solid base from which to explore the exotic locations elsewhere without them losing credibility. But somebody from another continent reading those scenes wouldn't get the same effect, would they? The Oxford(s) of HDM would be as unfamiliar and alien to them as Oxford, Mississippi, would be to me...

[Enitharmon]

Flick through the copy of NL to see if it's got the human-dæmon mistake in.

One of the coins in the crypt is described as bearing the image of a 'fair woman' if that's what you mean. It did strike me as odd, as did the basilisk in the same sentence. But then, I thought, it is second-hand representations on coins being described, not the daemons themselves, and they were after all 200+ years old and from a time (as we are reminded elsewhere) when visual symbolism was very important. I believe there is a kind of lizard called a basilisk, but I very much doubt that that, rather than the mythical beast, is being referred to. I suspect there were codes at work.

I cheerfully admit that all that was pretty fanciful and I'm not at all sure if it gets me anwhere!

[AySz88]

Why do you doubt that it was referring to the lizard?

[Enitharmon]

Why do you doubt that it was referring to the lizard?

I don't know where basilisk lizards live, but it's certainly not in the UK. I very much doubt if a 12-year-old girl in Lyra's world, with its limited travel opportunities, would have heard of one, let alone seen it. But living amongst scholars she might well be familiar with the mythical beast.

[jessia]

well basilisks are reptilic no doubt.

i'm sure lyra would know what a basilisk is... and if not, its image was engraved onto the coin, and therefore, she would learn what it looked like. however, she didn't need to know its name, because it was not she who narrated the books.

[Enitharmon]

Talking of mistakes...

1. On returning to "our" Oxford at the end of TAS, Lyra takes Will to the Botanic Garden to see The Bench, which she is delighted to find exists as in her own world. She says that she liked to go and sit on it when she wanted to sit quietly by herself. But there's nothing in Lyra's character before she left Oxford that suggests she had any interest in sitting quietly anywhere, let alone walking for twenty minutes without distraction to the Botanic Garden to do so.

2. In TSK, when Mary first goes to Sunderland Avenue, she takes her car and needs to consult a map because she isn't familiar with that part of Oxford. But at the end of TAS, the party walk a short distance within Cittagazze after sealing the Sunderland Avenue window and re-enter Oxford at a place Mary recognises as North Oxford, close to her flat. Ten minutes walk max, believe me!

3. I've mentioned elsewhere the Mystery of the Martyrs Memorial. Lyra could hardly fail to be struck by it, right by where she gets off the bus, but she doesn't mention it. It's a memorial to two followers of John Calvin burnt at the stake for Protestant heresy, so it could hardly be there in Lyra's Oxford if Calvin was Pope at the time.

Hmmm.....

[Enitharmon]

however, she didn't need to know its name, because it was not she who narrated the books.

Well, Pullman uses a number of narrative voices including an omniscient one that knows the future, such as how Lyra will eventually come to know more about Dust than anybody in her world, and how Will will remember certain things when he's an old man (he's pinched this from Muriel Spark, I think, if you get the chance to read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and I hope you will, you'll know what I mean because Spark lays it on thick).

But I think I would argue that the narrative voice at the point we are talking about is coming from Lyra's point of view, and describes what she sees and thinks, rather than what simply is.

[Sparrow]

But there's nothing in Lyra's character before she left Oxford that suggests she had any interest in sitting quietly anywhere, let alone walking for twenty minutes without distraction to the Botanic Garden to do so.

Well, she's officially grown up now. She's more mature now, so she can sit still. Plus, she'd do anything for Will.

[Loriel]

Talking of mistakes...
2.

Thanks to Asriel breaking the worlds in the North, where he and Lyra first leave their home world, the whole Geography between worlds got messed, I think, which was "fixed" when the Dust stopped flowing away. Wasn't it?

3.

Somehow I doubt that Lyra was really interested in churchish history from hundreds of years ago.

[Enitharmon]

Well, she's officially grown up now. She's more mature now, so she can sit still. Plus, she'd do anything for Will.

Not the point! The point being that she says she liked going there to be quiet with Pan before she left Oxford!

I agree about the maturity though. One of the most moving things about the ending is how astonishingly mature she has become - and it happened in the moment when Xaphania let it be known that one window could be left open, and she chose to leave it for the Dead rather than the selfish choice of one for her and Will.

To my oddball way of thinking, that was the Great Choice she was destined to make without being aware of her destiny, and that was the moment of her great betrayal which would cause her so much pain - her betrayal of Will for the greater good of the universe(s).

[Enitharmon]

Somehow I doubt that Lyra was really interested in churchish history from hundreds of years ago.

I entirely agree. But you can bet she was interested in a stonking great Gothic spire that isn't there in her own Oxford!

[Enitharmon]

Thanks to Asriel breaking the worlds in the North, where he and Lyra first leave their home world, the whole Geography between worlds got messed, I think, which was "fixed" when the Dust stopped flowing away. Wasn't it?

Yep. But the Cuttesloe Roundabout was ten minutes walk from North Oxford both when Mary left through it and when she came back - they are both in the same world after all, and you could even go to Oxford and time it!