5 ms·

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, bu

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the time of publication, but becomes factually inaccurate over time, giving the wrong dates for the beginning of daylight saving time or an incorrect planetary status for Pluto. > Should we fix these factual errors? Do we need the author’s input? What if the author is dead, the agent is retired, and the editor has left the company? Should we fix them silently or with some kind of editorial note? > Then there’s the case where the content of a book is not incorrect, per se, but may have become outmoded or offensive.... What do you do here? Do you update the language that’s incidental to the content of the book? Does it matter who you think is buying this — whether it’s people who want the diet advice or people who are researching the historic participation of Asian Americans in diet programs? No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen.

shagie 2y ago
Back in college, I recall a professor saying that German students of philosophy would learn English to be able to read Nietzsche in translation rather than as it was written. (Upon reflection, it might have been Kant - https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/28743 https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/28743 ) My latin was too rusty to be able to read Meditations on First Philosophy as it was written. ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306 ). A translation from Latin to English ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosop... ) necessarily changes those intents/concepts/ideas into those that the reader is more familiar with. A translation from English of 1000 AD to 2000 AD has the same necessary changes http://www.hieronymus.us.com/latinweb/Mediaevum/Beowulf.htm http://www.hieronymus.us.com/latinweb/Mediaevum/Beowulf.htm Is it ok to read Liu Cixin's work 三体 as Ken Liu's translation known to the English speaking word as The Three-Body Problem? Or should I learn Chinese and immerse myself in the culture of China in order to read it with those intents / concepts / ideas as things frozen on paper? There are two problems - the book captured at its time may not be accessible anymore. Secondly, even if you can read the words it may be that the words those concepts map to in today's language are not the concepts that the author intended. So... how short of a time frame is not not acceptable to read the work in translation? I hold that a translation across time is not really any different than a translation of a modern work across languages and cultures.
- djoldman 2y ago
  This isn't a problem. The translation is a new work. The original work in the original language stays frozen. Incidentally, the translation is treated the same and is frozen in the same manner.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Exactly. And each offers its own perspective and has its own value. Sure, if you could only have one you'd want the original work in the original language, but that isn't as accessible as translations and other enhancements/improvements. For example, Euclid's Elements in the original language has no diagrams; almost every translation and even reprints with the original have diagrams added. And those diagrams haven't been without controversy, either.
  - evilduck 2y ago
    Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. Some translations are modern takes on an existing language translation like translating the King James Bible into modern English as literally as possible, while some take their own liberties with interpreting the original text as it was written and come up with somewhat dramatically different results. Translations between languages with dramatically different language syntax and grammars exists, as well as abridged snippets and (probably) millions of derivative texts used for lessons and teaching. And it's been going on for over a millennium, so we get perspectives on the cultures and languages themselves dramatically changing over time too.
    - shagie 2y ago
      > Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. The start of the gospel of John is one that is particularly thought provoking for me because we can more easily grasp the meaning of the original words. https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001 https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. en archē ēn ho logos kai ho logos ēn pros theos kai ho logos ēn theos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And you'll note in that λόγος has been translated to "Word". But logos means such more than just "word" (the word for word is λέξις léxis). Logos, as understood in Greek philosophy was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos > Ancient Greek philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean "discourse". Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse" or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric, and considered it one of the three modes of persuasion alongside ethos and pathos. Pyrrhonist philosophers used the term to refer to dogmatic accounts of non-evident matters. The Stoics spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe) which foreshadows related concepts in Neoplatonism. This was relating the philosophy of the Greeks (even then a couple of hundred of years old) to that of the early forms of Christianity. I would contend that "In the beginning was the [ability to reason, link the rational nature of the universe to rational discourse]" ... but that doesn't fit well in translation or even liner notes. And so, we're left with the word "Word". --- One of the late night Bay Area public TV programs (not sure if it was KQED or KTEH) had a once a week program back in the late 90s / early 00s that was a verse by verse bible study looking at the oldest forms of the text and looking at specific word meanings like rāṣaḥ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7523/kjv/wlc/0-1/ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7523/kjv/wlc/0-1/ and hāraḡ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2026/kjv/wlc/0-1/ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2026/kjv/wlc/0-1/ - where they are used (you'll note the contexts are different while one is killing in general, the other is a specific type of killing). Anyways... it was an interesting program that had a lot of linguistic study of ancient languages with the Bible as the text being translated.
allturtles 2y ago
> Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the time of publication, but becomes factually inaccurate over time, giving the wrong dates for the beginning of daylight saving time or an incorrect planetary status for Pluto. > Should we fix these factual errors? Do we need the author’s input? What if the author is dead, the agent is retired, and the editor has left the company? Should we fix them silently or with some kind of editorial note? I think it's bizarre to call the "factual errors" at all. Would you alter a book from 1958 that "incorrectly" refers to Eisenhower as the current U.S. President? Such "fixes" would be a defacement of the historical record, flattening all of time into a perpetual now.
- NeoTar 2y ago
  It depends on the book. If it is a novel, then clearly not. A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's ultimately a decision for the author/publisher for each book. Is this a living text that should be kept up-to-date, or a historical record - after all, a book which lists all of the heads-of-state in 1958 is also valuable for different contexts. Perhaps more importantly - if a book says something dangerous - like a cook-book saying "add a few flakes of cyanide for flavour" is that grounds for an update, or editors note in an otherwise historical record text?
  - GJim 2y ago
    > A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's a book, not a web page! I have old astronomy books that indicate the visual appearance of Mars changes due to seasonal vegetation! This was obviously updated in later editions; the old edition remains as an important historical record of what we once thought. > if a book says something dangerous Old editions of the 'Home Doctor' recommended using petrol to treat headlice. Granted this is probably more dangerous than the advice given by some modern heath guru's diet books.
    - ewoodrich 2y ago
      > I have old astronomy books that indicate the visual appearance of Mars changes due to seasonal vegetation! Well that's fascinating, do you happen to have an example of such a textbook that could be found online?
dhosek 2y ago
I’m reminded of the (canceled) edition of Salinger’s Hapworth 16, 1924 where Salinger insisted that the text be reproduced exactly as it was in The New Yorker including any typos that appeared there.
everforward 2y ago
> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen. Given that we're talking about ebooks, whose readers generally have some kind of navigation system, I think it would be reasonable to include a footnote. If a book says Pluto is a planet, I wouldn't mind a [1] linking to a note that says "Pluto has not been considered a planet since $year. $LinkToWikipedia". I agree that actually changing the content is a bad idea, but I do think it would be valuable to link to up-to-date information in a non-intrusive manner.
- cxr 2y ago
  That, too, would constitute a new edition if the updates went into the work itself. Otherwise, the previous work is still a thing—you're just pretending that it's not and the new thing was the thing all along. That's harmful and dangerous and unnecessary. What you want doesn't necessitate changes to anything except maybe the reader software. Annotation and commentary has been around for millennia. What you want is for the reader to inline the commentary. That's fine.
HalfRadish 2y ago
This captures a new problem that's sort of sneaked in with the advent of digital publishing. In a print book, you can make corrections or revisions in a new edition, but the old edition is still potentially out there, in libraries and private collections, preserving its own history. In a digital publication, if you make a revision, the old edition disappears by default; older versions are only preserved if someone does so deliberately. At the very least, the reader should be informed of the initial publication date as well as the dates of any revisions, which I believe is already standard practice in the print world. This is essential context for the reader. When a text revised in 2024 purports to be [entirely] from 1948: bad. When a revised text mostly written in 1948 purports to be [entirely] from 2024: also bad. To me, this is way more important than the question of whether or not to make revisions per se.
- NeoTar 2y ago
  But an advantage of digital texts could be that you buy a text in 2024, and it shows you all revisions of the text from 1948 to 2024…
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    Well somehow that's the opposite of what happened when Roald Dahl books were updated for political correctness. "Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed. Puffin Books, the company which publishes Dahl novels, updated the electronic novels, in which Augustus Gloop is no longer described as fat or Mrs Twit as fearfully ugly, on devices such as the Amazon Kindle." https://archive.ph/20230302163549/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/roald-dahl-collection-books-changes-text-puffin-uk-2023-rm2622vl0 https://archive.ph/20230302163549/https://www.thetimes.co.uk...
bityard 2y ago
I'm okay with someone taking an older work and editing it to suit their own (necessarily personal) ideas of political correctness, but only so long as it is made obvious somewhere on the cover and title page that it is not the original work. Anything else is fundamentally underhanded.
creer 2y ago
How did we ever manage with paper print? The mind boggles. (We managed with later printings and later revisions. Which is one reason people sometimes seek an earlier edition or printing.)
Clamchop 2y ago
> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen. This doesn't suit the concept of all books, particularly non-fiction references. The article name-drops _The Joy of Cooking_, which is a suitable example of a book that strives to be useful and that benefits from new editions gently reworked to be correct and current.
- djoldman 2y ago
  That's fine. Each edition is a new work and should be frozen when completed.

shagie 2y ago

Back in college, I recall a professor saying that German students of philosophy would learn English to be able to read Nietzsche in translation rather than as it was written. (Upon reflection, it might have been Kant - https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/28743 https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/28743 ) My latin was too rusty to be able to read Meditations on First Philosophy as it was written. ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306 ). A translation from Latin to English ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosop... ) necessarily changes those intents/concepts/ideas into those that the reader is more familiar with. A translation from English of 1000 AD to 2000 AD has the same necessary changes http://www.hieronymus.us.com/latinweb/Mediaevum/Beowulf.htm http://www.hieronymus.us.com/latinweb/Mediaevum/Beowulf.htm Is it ok to read Liu Cixin's work 三体 as Ken Liu's translation known to the English speaking word as The Three-Body Problem? Or should I learn Chinese and immerse myself in the culture of China in order to read it with those intents / concepts / ideas as things frozen on paper? There are two problems - the book captured at its time may not be accessible anymore. Secondly, even if you can read the words it may be that the words those concepts map to in today's language are not the concepts that the author intended. So... how short of a time frame is not not acceptable to read the work in translation? I hold that a translation across time is not really any different than a translation of a modern work across languages and cultures.

djoldman 2y ago
This isn't a problem. The translation is a new work. The original work in the original language stays frozen. Incidentally, the translation is treated the same and is frozen in the same manner.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Exactly. And each offers its own perspective and has its own value. Sure, if you could only have one you'd want the original work in the original language, but that isn't as accessible as translations and other enhancements/improvements. For example, Euclid's Elements in the original language has no diagrams; almost every translation and even reprints with the original have diagrams added. And those diagrams haven't been without controversy, either.
- evilduck 2y ago
  Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. Some translations are modern takes on an existing language translation like translating the King James Bible into modern English as literally as possible, while some take their own liberties with interpreting the original text as it was written and come up with somewhat dramatically different results. Translations between languages with dramatically different language syntax and grammars exists, as well as abridged snippets and (probably) millions of derivative texts used for lessons and teaching. And it's been going on for over a millennium, so we get perspectives on the cultures and languages themselves dramatically changing over time too.
  - shagie 2y ago
    > Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. The start of the gospel of John is one that is particularly thought provoking for me because we can more easily grasp the meaning of the original words. https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001 https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001 Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. en archē ēn ho logos kai ho logos ēn pros theos kai ho logos ēn theos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And you'll note in that λόγος has been translated to "Word". But logos means such more than just "word" (the word for word is λέξις léxis). Logos, as understood in Greek philosophy was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos > Ancient Greek philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean "discourse". Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse" or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric, and considered it one of the three modes of persuasion alongside ethos and pathos. Pyrrhonist philosophers used the term to refer to dogmatic accounts of non-evident matters. The Stoics spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe) which foreshadows related concepts in Neoplatonism. This was relating the philosophy of the Greeks (even then a couple of hundred of years old) to that of the early forms of Christianity. I would contend that "In the beginning was the [ability to reason, link the rational nature of the universe to rational discourse]" ... but that doesn't fit well in translation or even liner notes. And so, we're left with the word "Word". --- One of the late night Bay Area public TV programs (not sure if it was KQED or KTEH) had a once a week program back in the late 90s / early 00s that was a verse by verse bible study looking at the oldest forms of the text and looking at specific word meanings like rāṣaḥ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7523/kjv/wlc/0-1/ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7523/kjv/wlc/0-1/ and hāraḡ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2026/kjv/wlc/0-1/ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2026/kjv/wlc/0-1/ - where they are used (you'll note the contexts are different while one is killing in general, the other is a specific type of killing). Anyways... it was an interesting program that had a lot of linguistic study of ancient languages with the Bible as the text being translated.

allturtles 2y ago

> Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the time of publication, but becomes factually inaccurate over time, giving the wrong dates for the beginning of daylight saving time or an incorrect planetary status for Pluto. > Should we fix these factual errors? Do we need the author’s input? What if the author is dead, the agent is retired, and the editor has left the company? Should we fix them silently or with some kind of editorial note? I think it's bizarre to call the "factual errors" at all. Would you alter a book from 1958 that "incorrectly" refers to Eisenhower as the current U.S. President? Such "fixes" would be a defacement of the historical record, flattening all of time into a perpetual now.

NeoTar 2y ago
It depends on the book. If it is a novel, then clearly not. A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's ultimately a decision for the author/publisher for each book. Is this a living text that should be kept up-to-date, or a historical record - after all, a book which lists all of the heads-of-state in 1958 is also valuable for different contexts. Perhaps more importantly - if a book says something dangerous - like a cook-book saying "add a few flakes of cyanide for flavour" is that grounds for an update, or editors note in an otherwise historical record text?
- GJim 2y ago
  > A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's a book, not a web page! I have old astronomy books that indicate the visual appearance of Mars changes due to seasonal vegetation! This was obviously updated in later editions; the old edition remains as an important historical record of what we once thought. > if a book says something dangerous Old editions of the 'Home Doctor' recommended using petrol to treat headlice. Granted this is probably more dangerous than the advice given by some modern heath guru's diet books.
  - ewoodrich 2y ago
    > I have old astronomy books that indicate the visual appearance of Mars changes due to seasonal vegetation! Well that's fascinating, do you happen to have an example of such a textbook that could be found online?

dhosek 2y ago

I’m reminded of the (canceled) edition of Salinger’s Hapworth 16, 1924 where Salinger insisted that the text be reproduced exactly as it was in The New Yorker including any typos that appeared there.

everforward 2y ago

> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen. Given that we're talking about ebooks, whose readers generally have some kind of navigation system, I think it would be reasonable to include a footnote. If a book says Pluto is a planet, I wouldn't mind a [1] linking to a note that says "Pluto has not been considered a planet since $year. $LinkToWikipedia". I agree that actually changing the content is a bad idea, but I do think it would be valuable to link to up-to-date information in a non-intrusive manner.

cxr 2y ago
That, too, would constitute a new edition if the updates went into the work itself. Otherwise, the previous work is still a thing—you're just pretending that it's not and the new thing was the thing all along. That's harmful and dangerous and unnecessary. What you want doesn't necessitate changes to anything except maybe the reader software. Annotation and commentary has been around for millennia. What you want is for the reader to inline the commentary. That's fine.

HalfRadish 2y ago

This captures a new problem that's sort of sneaked in with the advent of digital publishing. In a print book, you can make corrections or revisions in a new edition, but the old edition is still potentially out there, in libraries and private collections, preserving its own history. In a digital publication, if you make a revision, the old edition disappears by default; older versions are only preserved if someone does so deliberately. At the very least, the reader should be informed of the initial publication date as well as the dates of any revisions, which I believe is already standard practice in the print world. This is essential context for the reader. When a text revised in 2024 purports to be [entirely] from 1948: bad. When a revised text mostly written in 1948 purports to be [entirely] from 2024: also bad. To me, this is way more important than the question of whether or not to make revisions per se.

NeoTar 2y ago
But an advantage of digital texts could be that you buy a text in 2024, and it shows you all revisions of the text from 1948 to 2024…
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  Well somehow that's the opposite of what happened when Roald Dahl books were updated for political correctness. "Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed. Puffin Books, the company which publishes Dahl novels, updated the electronic novels, in which Augustus Gloop is no longer described as fat or Mrs Twit as fearfully ugly, on devices such as the Amazon Kindle." https://archive.ph/20230302163549/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/roald-dahl-collection-books-changes-text-puffin-uk-2023-rm2622vl0 https://archive.ph/20230302163549/https://www.thetimes.co.uk...

bityard 2y ago

I'm okay with someone taking an older work and editing it to suit their own (necessarily personal) ideas of political correctness, but only so long as it is made obvious somewhere on the cover and title page that it is not the original work. Anything else is fundamentally underhanded.

creer 2y ago

How did we ever manage with paper print? The mind boggles. (We managed with later printings and later revisions. Which is one reason people sometimes seek an earlier edition or printing.)

Clamchop 2y ago

> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen. This doesn't suit the concept of all books, particularly non-fiction references. The article name-drops _The Joy of Cooking_, which is a suitable example of a book that strives to be useful and that benefits from new editions gently reworked to be correct and current.

djoldman 2y ago
That's fine. Each edition is a new work and should be frozen when completed.