Should we 'Americanize'?

[Jo Zebedee]

Coming out of a conversation with another Chronner tonight. With more and more sf being sourced online (and fantasy but there still tends to be a reasonably diverse range of fantasy in shops whereas sf is so tiny to get practically any choice online is the only option, in my experience) and bought across regions is there an argument that making it (for us UK based peeps) more American in tone reaches across a bigger buying public?

I know when I wrote Abendau I sought out a few American betas. Mainly because fluent Norn Iron doesn't always translate - and because I didn't want to write culchies* in space). I didn't Americanise it but I did try to eradicate the most confusing venacular (whereas I just have a blast with my local stuff) and make it cross territories reasonably easily. But the spellings are UK english etc.

What do we think? Are wider ranging voices a good thing (because voice is one of the reasons I'd be loathe to change - the one foray I've had into blending my NI voice with American lost the best of both, I though.) Or is it a barrier to wider understanding and a more standard approach better? Am I throwing sales out the window? Any thoughts?

*for those outside @Ray McCarthy @Kerrybuchanan @alchemist a culchie is an Irish country bumpkin. Sort of.

 

[Mouse]

NO. And I'm speaking as someone with two American publishers. I only had to Americanise my spelling and grammar for house rules, they wanted me to keep the Englishness. Americans aren't stupid.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

There is too much cultural imperialism without encouraging it.
It's just about acceptable (and pretty easy) to have a 2nd version for US market of a book simply by spelling check with a US Dictionary. The grammar differences are probably less than what an editor has to do to fix my grammar for anyone to read it as anyone trying to parse my sometimes Yodaesk posts here will realise.
Unless you are a genius you need to write for your own market first.

 

[goldhawk]

There is too much cultural imperialism without encouraging it.
It's just about acceptable (and pretty easy) to have a 2nd version for US market of a book simply by spelling check with a US Dictionary. The grammar differences are probably less than what an editor has to do to fix my grammar for anyone to read it as anyone trying to parse my sometimes Yodaesk posts here will realise.
Unless you are a genius you need to write for your own market first.

True. The biggest differences would be the common sayings and phrases. I never heard children saying, "Brilliant," until I watched Harry Potter.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Bobbsey Twins, Tom Sawyer, Hardy boys etc would be spoilt in British English.
Enid Blyton, Joan Aiken, E. Nesbit would be ruined in American.

I never heard children saying, "Brilliant," until I watched Harry Potter.

I've never much heard kids say that either. Maybe something J.K. Rowling read? I lived in Britain about 28 years. Maybe it came in after I left?

 

[hopewrites]

I think the idea that the world is bigger than America is reaching Americans. With it being simpler than tying shoes to look up foreign slang, the most I'd recommend doing is making sure whatever you think Americans wont know right off -is on Urban Dictionary.

 

[Wiglaf]

I would keep an eye out for words that are the same but with different meanings: fanny, biscuit...
Just don't change the spelling with the rest left the same; reading American spelt British is confusing.
The other thing to realize is that phonetic spellings do not work. In one of the poorly Americanized editions of the Harry Potter books, there are purleese, lurve, er, and erm. Unless Britons sound like stock cars while thinking, I think Rowlings meant puh-leese, luv, uh, and um. So purrrlees keep that in mind when writing more phonetically spelt regional dialogue than a Redwall book.

 

[Wiglaf]

I think the idea that the world is bigger than America is reaching Americans. With it being simpler than tying shoes to look up foreign slang, the most I'd recommend doing is making sure whatever you think Americans wont know right off -is on Urban Dictionary.

We've known that for a long time. The problem is that they change the spelling but not the words so that you think you are reading American and get confused or everything is written in slang and phonetic dialogue. I personally prefer to have to look up no more than three words per page. A British book should be easier to read than its Spanish translation (at least with my Spanish grades).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

A British book should be easier to read than its Spanish translation

Umm?
Depends if you are from Croydon or Córdoba.

 

[tinkerdan]

I typically have little problem with the language and at least that helps me appreciate where the author is coming from.

Though more than twenty whilst in a novel tends to turn my brain to gelatinous goo.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

No. I hate the implication in Americanizing books, that we're all too stupid to understand if things have different spellings or different sentence structure. I used to read British books even as a kid, and consequently I grew up knowing Cockney slang and British words for things. How is anyone supposed to do that if all the books they read have been sanitized for their protection?

Nearly everything UK in Abendau was left intact; there were a few things that I edited toward something that might be considered "Americanized" sentence structure, but I judged them to be more about keeping the vernacular out of the narration, which had no particular reason to contain such. Even so, there were also bits of that which I left in, figuring that even most Americans could manage to sort it out.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I tend to write a lot of cross dressers - if I Americanise them I'm going to get confused who is wearing the vest, pants and suspenders.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

If you're turning them into Americans, then only the geeky ones are wearing vests or suspenders, and if they're wearing pants they aren't cross-dressers (because we don't call women in pants that). If they're British, I'd hope they're all wearing pants, but I won't go peeking to see if they're wearing them, nor vests and suspenders either.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

more American in tone reaches across a bigger buying public?

What do you mean by this? I'm assuming more than just spelling and other basic changes.

What do we think? Are wider ranging voices a good thing (because voice is one of the reasons I'd be loathe to change - the one foray I've had into blending my NI voice with American lost the best of both, I thought.) Or is it a barrier to wider understanding and a more standard approach better? Am I throwing sales out the window? Any thoughts?

Still not 100% sure I know what you mean by your NI voice here.

I go out of my way to find the BE versions of British books (when they're available). JK Rowling, Tom Holt, Ian Rankin, Robert Rankin, Neil Gaiman, Sir Terry, and the rest that I can find. So I for one much appreciate the different styles and voices. A story written by a Brit, set in Britain, with moatly British characters in American English is just ****ing silly.

 

[Hex]

I think there were only a couple of things I changed -- one was "switched sides" for changing the channel on a TV, and one was finding another words for "torch" (that wasn't "flashlight").

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's something to think about, though, because there are people who are just that stupid (and given the population of the United States, whatever that percentage that is, is bound to amount to a lot of people) and though one might not think so, a lot of them actually do a fair amount of reading.

People will buy anything if enough other people are talking about it, so writers with large followings needn't be concerned. And those who write for niche markets probably needn't worry either, since readers will be so happy to find well-written books of the kind they like, they won't be fussy otherwise.

But new writers who want to reach a large market ... as I said, it's something to think about.

Hex, what word did you find that could stand in for torch but wasn't flashlight?

 

[Hex]

er, it was a tricky one. I think I used "light". I couldn't bring myself to use "flashlight" because it's such an American word and not one my character would have used.

 

[Brian G Turner]

is there an argument that making it ... more American in tone reaches across a bigger buying public?

Of course there is - the US is a far bigger market than the UK, so it's a valid commercial concern.

However, I don't think many people write with a good idea of market and audience in mind - and if they attempted to, would be in danger of misunderstanding both completely.

I think there's also an argument to ensure that your prose is a clear as possible, to be easily understood by different English markets. That means avoiding British-isms unless relevant, and applying stylistic choices that should work well with US and UK readers especially.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

This is where I get so confused. My parents lived in America for a number of years (just before I was born) and they absorbed a lot of Americanisms. I grew up using zee instead of zed for the last letter of the alphabet (Dusty Zeebra as opposed to Zebra, the British way).

Some got knocked out of me at school and certainly my spellings would be mostly UK English, but words like flashlight wouldn't make me think twice. Luckily cellphones/mobile phones hadn't been invented then.

Which brings me to another question. Do many UK authors writing for British YA markets consciously Americanise/Americanize their language to take into account the enormous influence US TV shows have on our youngsters? I've been beta reading recently for someone who did that, but it came across as heavy-handed to me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@Fishbowl Helmet - by changing the voice I mean not saying things like, 'Jaysus, you're an eejit' but instead ,'Gee, you're a jerk.' (Not you specifically, of course ) not that I'd use eejit outside something set in Ireland, but I'd probably use idiot rather than jerk.

@Teresa Edgerton - so I wonder if part of the decision should be based around where we expect our dominant market to be? If we're selling locally or in Amazon.co.uk vs amazon.com and with US distribution?

@TheDustyZebra - I think that's what I needed - pick up where the venacular became a trip-up, because I didn't neccessarily want to sound either/or but rather somewhere middle-ish with its own voice (since I'm convinced a stellar cluster lightyears away, some time in the future, are as unlikely to have an Amercian-dominated accent as an Irish one.)

@Brian Turner - yes the gist of it is exactly that. But, also, can I actually take on an American voice and have it sound in any way natural? I don't think so.

Which might expand the question out a little more - do certain types of books lend themselves to changes of voice better than others. Eg could Trainspotting ever be taken out of the venacular? Indeed, are novels more reliant on a 'voice' more than others the type that shouldn't be changed?