OT: excellent book on information theory

[Max Erickson]

Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote in
news:dqird8$jke$1 at sea.gmane.org: 

> Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2006-01-16, Tim Peters <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>>>http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/Potter.html
>>>
>>>[Grant Edwards]
>>>
>>>>That made me smile on a Monday morning (not an insignificant
>>>>accomplishment).  I noticed in the one footnote that the H.P.
>>>>book had been "translated into American".  I've always wondered
>>>>about that.  I noticed several spots in the H.P. books where
>>>>the dialog seemed "wrong": the kids were using American rather
>>>>than British English.  I thought it rather jarring.
>>>
>>>You should enjoy:
>>>
>>>   http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/differences.html
>> 
>> 
>> Very interesting.  And rather sad that editors think the
>> average Amermican reader too dim-witted to figure out (in
>> context, even) that a "car park" is a "parking lot" and a
>> "dustbin" is a "trash can."
>> 
> They know that the average American could work it out. They also know 
> that the average American doesn't like to do anything remotely like
> hard thinking, hence they make these changes so the books don't read
> like "foreign literature".
> 
> regards
>   Steve

A rather less cynical interpretation is that they are attempting to make
a children's book accessible to as many children as possible, i.e., the
youngest readers as is practical. I don't mean to disparage the book by
calling it a children's book, I have read and enjoyed several of them,
but the target audience for the books is clearly kids. 

max