> If someone else changes the text on a book from a dead author... how do you know the author would have liked that? There's an obvious counterargument: how do

> If someone else changes the text on a book from a dead author... how do you know the author would have liked that? There's an obvious counterargument: how do we know [better than the author's estate] that a dead author would have been so committed to the retention of a particular stereotype or word that has acquired different connotations that they'd have angrily refused editors' suggestions they change it a bit for the next edition? In the cases discussed here, it seems particularly unlikely - would the bloke who accepted the suggestion that the workforce of African pygmies he imagined should stop being characterised as African pygmies really feel the purity of his writing was being destroyed if an even later revision made the comparatively minor switch to describing them as "people" rather than "men"? There's an odd dichotomy between arguments that authorial intent is being destroyed by substituting or omitting a couple of words and various arguments that retaining them serves to create "teachable moments" about "how bad things use to be". With a few notable exceptions, "teachable moments" isn't at all what the author intended by a character using a word considered offensive in 2023 or casually assuming that women or foreigners were constitutionally unsuited to certain things, and generally they weren't trying to imply the character was a bigot (as modern audience might well misinterpret), or say anything at all about the contemporary attitudes incidentally referenced. Authorised translators use very non-literal translations, add or remove gender references or omit minor details that local audiences would completely misunderstand whilst living authors remain unconcerned and usually blissfully unaware; why are we so certain that the dead ones would deeply resent their publishers and estates making equally minor tweaks for the culture of 2020s English speakers?