Today’s guest blogger is Luisa Plaja, author of Split By A Kiss. She’s written a fabulous post about YA books in the US and the UK, and I know you all will really enjoy it!
Travelling Trousers and Pants on Fire: When YA Titles Cross The Ocean
In suburban London, England, my friends and I grew up thinking we understood what it was to be an American teenager. Actually, I’d go further than that: we thought we were American teenagers. We had Stars and Stripes pens and NFL folders for our coursework. We watched John Hughes films and 90210, we read Sweet Valley High. We knew all about ‘lunch ladies’, ‘principals’, ‘proms’ and ‘graduating’ from high school in a big ceremony, as contrasted with the British experience of dinnerladies (or just vending machines), head teachers, and taking exams before slinking off quietly for the summer, waiting for a scrappy printout of our results to arrive in the post in August and certainly not a whiff of any mortarboards thrown in the air.
British teens of today might not have NFL emblazoned on their iPod skins, but many are just as well-versed in the ways of schools across the pond as I was. They watch films and television programmes set there, they devour books by American authors and they don’t need a glossary to understand that when Meg Cabot’s J.P. says he hates ‘corn’, he means ‘sweetcorn’. (Or at least, I think he does. Someone correct me if I’m wrong!)
When I lived in the United States, I discovered that the same does not hold true the other way round. The teenagers I met in the States did not know very much about life in Britain. Well, why would they? They don’t watch hours of primetime telly programmes (er, television shows) set in Britain, or read masses of contemporary British teen fiction.
But some British fiction has made it to the USA. I’ve heard that Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson comedy series, soon to be released as a film (er, movie), has brought the term ‘snogging’ to the USA, as well as creating a generation of Brit-literate American teens. I believe the books are published with a glossary, but then so are the British versions. Nicolson-ese needs as much translation in Billy Shakespeare land as it does in Hamburger-a-go-go land.
I’ve always thought that you can tell a lot about a culture from their teen book titles. Jaclyn Moriarty (who is Australian, but that’s a whole other post) made me think of this. The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (USA) is called Becoming Bindy Mackenzie in the UK, and The Year of Secret Assignments (USA) is Finding Cassie Crazy in the UK. I used to think this meant that the US audience demands more dramatic, thriller-ish titles while Brits prefer to ponder their identity and sanity. But perhaps not. After all, you only have to look at Louise Rennison titles to see a certain randomness: And That’s When It Fell Off In My Hand is called Away Laughing on a Fast Camel in the USA, and the USA’s On The Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God is a translation of Britain’s It’s OK, I’m Wearing Really Big Knickers.
Well, I can see that ‘knickers’ and ‘pants’ might not cross the cultural divide, and I notice that Meg Cabot’s Pants on Fire became Tommy Sullivan is a Freak in the UK. But, confusingly, Sue Limb’s Girl 16: Pants on Fire is Girl Going on 17: Pants on Fire in the USA, so perhaps it’s not the pants that are at issue. After all, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants gained an ‘l’ in the UK but did not change its ‘pants’ to ‘trousers’, perhaps because ‘travelling trousers’ sounds faintly ridiculous, though possibly not as hilarious as the idea of travelling knickers. And, back to Louise Rennison, the latest Georgia book has been translated from Luuurve is a Many Trousered Thing to the plainer Love is a Many Trousered Thing, but fully retains its trousers. And both nations are awaiting the imminent release of the same title: Stop in the Name of Pants!
Putting pants, knickers and trousers aside, maybe the truth is that title changes don’t say very much about a culture after all. I recently heard that the prizewinning British novel Ways To Live Forever by Sally Nicholls will be issued in Dutch with a title that translates as “By The Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead”. I immediately scratched my chin wisely and thought, “Hmm, clearly a cultural difference in attitude to death.” But perhaps not. It seems that the second title just sounds better in Dutch.
If you have any theories on this matter, or know of any interesting UK/US book title changes, I’d love to hear them!
And if you’d like to read a novel about a British girl in a US high school, you could check out Split by a Kiss, available on Amazon UK, or here with free delivery to Hamburger-a-go-go land.
Plus I’m giving away one copy to a Teen Book Review reader. Please leave a comment below for a chance to win! You have until midnight EDT on Wednesday, April 30 to enter.
April 24, 2008 at 5:08 am
And don’t forgot Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone and the golden compass (grr)… maybe some editors just like changing titles?
April 24, 2008 at 7:11 am
Great guest blog – thanks. Also, Lord of the Rings was British and hugely popular in the States. I would have to agree, however, I don’t think teenagers know much about teen life in other countries.
April 24, 2008 at 7:43 am
Great post, Luisa! Title changes fascinate me also. Meg Cabot says that Tommy Sullivan is a Freak was her preferred title, but her US publishers thought it was too long.
As for Harry Potter … I heard that US publishers changed “philosopher” to “sorcerer” because they didn’t think US readers would know what a philosopher was!
April 24, 2008 at 9:00 am
Hi, can people in US enter this giveaway?
April 24, 2008 at 9:47 am
Hi! Yes, people in the US are very welcome to enter. :)
Keris, that’s interesting about Tommy Sullivan. And how could I forget Harry Potter, and Northern Lights! Just because they don’t have ‘pants’ in them, they fall off my radar?! :)
April 24, 2008 at 2:26 pm
This was SUCH an intriguing post. I really enjoy finding out about these sorts of ‘little’ differences and quirks. Thanks, Luisa. :)
April 24, 2008 at 5:53 pm
This book looks really cute and I also loved the post. I would love to win a copy of the book:)
April 24, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Great blog. I think it’s weird sometimes why titles change, but it is interesting to see how they are changed…and which title I prefer.
As for American teens not knowing as much about British teens or just other countries in general..I agree with that and I was just thinking recently, that I’d love to read more books, whether YA or not that are written by authors out of the US. I have in the past of course and there are a lot of things that I understand that is British slang and whatnot, but I think it’s interesting…just sometimes hard to find a lot of books!!
Lauren
April 25, 2008 at 7:54 am
Great blog, it was really interesting and funny. This book sounds great I would love to read it. =D
April 26, 2008 at 6:20 pm
That’s one of the best guest blogs I’ve read in a while :) I think Brit spelling and vocabulary is much more charming, to be quite honest. Which region did you grow up in? Dying to know which sort of accent you have.
Oh, and please enter me to win your book! It sounds awesome.
Steph
April 29, 2008 at 7:54 am
The horrible (and wonderful) thing about the internet is that I can read about titles unavailable in the US. Argh. At least we do get a few in by authors around the world. Sigh.
May 21, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I wish we’d had glossaries in the American teen fiction I read. It took me about three books to realise what “bangs” are!
That’s your fringe, right?
September 17, 2008 at 10:49 am
Sorry…I’m coming to this blog quite late!
I actually worked at Macmillan when Finding Cassie Crazy and Becoming Bindy Mackenzie were published in the UK and I’m afraid the reasoning behing the titles is fairly dull – they just follow the format started by her first book, Feeling Sorry for Celia…
November 10, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I came to this blog a bit to late aswell!Lol I love split by a kiss, im readingg it right now !Rofl.
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