"Gotten" in the US editions of the HP books

[emmagrant01]

In a private conversation about Brit-picking, a friend of mine told me that she'd seen the word "gotten" in her (American) copy of HPSS. I have the PDFs of the US versions of all the books, so I thought I'd do a search on "gotten" and see what I found.

It turns out that there are 20 occurrences of the word "gotten" in SS, two of them in dialogue (one said by Ron and one by Hermione). I also have the British editions of the books, and in them each of these is "got". So this was clearly a change made by the American editors, possibly because it made the text "sound right" to American readers.

I extracted all of the examples in SS and they are posted below. I included chapter numbers but not page numbers, since those vary so much.

20 occurrences in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:

It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. [Ch 2]

The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. He had had it as long as he could remember, and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten it. [Ch 2]

Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. [Ch 2]

On the other hand, he'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. [Ch 2]

Harry recognized him at once from the card he'd gotten out of the Chocolate Frog on the train. [Ch 7]

Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there. [Ch 7]

The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher's look -- a feeling that he didn't like Harry at all. [Ch 7]

Just then, the mail arrived. Harry had gotten used to this by now, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning, when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast, circling the tables until they saw their owners, and dropping letters and packages onto their laps. [Ch 8]

At the start-of-term banquet, Harry had gotten the idea that Professor Snape disliked him. By the end of the first Potions lesson, he knew he'd been wrong. [Ch 8]

At breakfast on Thursday she bored them all stupid with flying tips she'd gotten out of a library book called Quidditch Through the Ages. [Ch 9]

"We should have gotten more than ten points," Ron grumbled. [Ch 10]

He didn't know how he'd have gotten through all his homework without her, what with all the last-minute Quidditch practice Wood was making them do. [Ch 11]

"I've heard of those," he said in a hushed voice, dropping the box of Every Flavor Beans he'd gotten from Hermione. "If that's what I think it is -- they're really rare, and really valuable." [Ch 12]

Percy Weasley stuck his head through the door, looking disapproving. He had clearly gotten halfway through unwrapping his presents as he, too, carried a lumpy sweater over his arm, which Fred seized. [Ch 12]

Then, during one particularly wet and muddy practice session, Wood gave the team a bit of bad news. He'd just gotten very angry with the Weasleys, who kept dive-bombing each other and pretending to fall off their brooms. [Ch 13]

Hermione jumped to her feet. She hadn't looked so excited since they'd gotten back the marks for their very first piece of homework. [Ch 13]

Little did Harry know that Ron and Hermione had been secretly practicing the Leg-Locker Curse. They'd gotten the idea from Malfoy using it on Neville, and were ready to use it on Snape if he showed any sign of wanting to hurt Harry. [Ch 13]

"What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They're very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don't know what's gotten into me...." [Ch 14]

Filch was already there -- and so was Malfoy. Harry had also forgotten that Malfoy had gotten a detention, too. [Ch 15]

It winked and put the Stone back in its pocket -- and as it did so, Harry felt something heavy drop into his real pocket. Somehow -- incredibly -- he'd gotten the Stone. [Ch 17]

The number of occurrences was lower in the other books, but doesn't really seem to follow a pattern:

COS: 0 occurrences
POA: 9 occurrences (3 in dialogue)
GOF: 11 occurrences (3 in dialogue)
OOTP: 0 occurrences
HBP: 1 occurrence

Interesting. :-)

ETA: Thanks to dorrie6 for this interesting link: American Pie: American/British English Translation, and to atdelphi for the link to this list of all the differences between PS (UK) and SS(US), including many things I didn't know were different. :-P

Comments

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Since the Canadian version is the same as the British, I've always found it a bit odd (and in cases like this, oddly thorough) that they bother to Americanize a book with a British setting by a British author. Maybe it's that British kid-lit is more popular here - I grew up reading Enid Blyton and E. Nesbitt and the like and puzzled my way through figuring out why children at boarding schools had torches and just what boxing someone's ears meant, and along the way developed a better ear for the differences between U.K. and North American grammar.

Mind, I totally agree that no one should be jumped on for something as small as using "gotten", especially when it's actually in the U.S. books - but I think it's completely ridiculous that the publishers think American kids aren't smart enough to deal with a few differences in diction and syntax.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I totally agree that no one should be jumped on for something as small as using "gotten", especially when it's actually in the U.S. books

And that's pretty much my point. :-)

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I got that. I missed whatever prompted this - I'd just meant to point out that while a fanwriter certainly isn't in any way stupid for using "gotten", I personally think the editors are. *g*

[aliciajd]

I recently mentioned in another community that JKR, herself, uses the word cabin to describe Hagrid's dwelling in the British version of Philosopher's Stone. This was after someone had criticized an American writer for calling a quickly constructed hut in the Forbidden Forest a cabin. An English member of the community responded that she felt that JKR had misused the term, that ‘cabin’ wasn't proper British English at all. I did not comment again in the thread because it was becoming apparent to me that a few of the Brit pickers (certainly not all, or even a majority) involved in the conversation were using the community to American bash rather than to be genuinely helpful.

Another thing that people seem to forget is that the wizarding community is quite separate from mainstream modern Britain and well might retain a more archaic version of the usage of 'got'.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Interesting story! And yes, I've gotten that feeling before when discussing this topic. In this fandom, stating that you're not that concerned about making your writing sound as British as possible is practically an invitation to be dismissed as a shitty writer by a lot of people.

A lot of Americans will say privately that they resent being made to feel like their fic by definition is not well-written if they don't make every effort to make it sound as if it were written by a British writer -- but few will say it in public. American-bashing seems to be part of the culture of the HP fandom. I've gotten to the point that I can usually ignore it, and I try to avoid the people who do it. :-)

[pensnest]

(here via metafandom link to your next post, but this is interesting...)

American-bashing seems to be part of the culture of the HP fandom

[Necessary disclaimer] I'm not a part of HP fandom any longer (back in the mists of time I used to frequent the SugarQuill), so I don't know what it feels like from the inside.

I do wonder, though, if maybe it feels like persecution because you (American HP fans) aren't used to it? At least in part? Most fandoms are set in the US, or in a setting that derives from the US, so American fans are going to 'get' the idiom without having to think about it. It's the non-US fans who've always had to adapt, unless you're in Blake's 7 or Pros or Dr Who fandom from way back.

Harry Potter is so very deeply rooted in its British setting and antecedents (by which I mean the 'School' stories of deeply unrealistic boarding school life, which I am *certain* J K Rowling read as a kid), I think the Britishness does inhabit the canon in a way that, say, American-ness inhabits Buffy canon. Is it really surprising that British fans feel protective of the Britishness inherent in HP? No, of course that's not an excuse for rudeness, but I wonder if sometimes, something that is perceived as American-bashing may not have been meant that way, it just feels that way because it really doesn't happen in other (fannish) contexts. Perhaps some of the British fans like having the chance to be 'authorities' on canon because in so much of fandom, they really aren't.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I think that's a really valid point, so thanks for sharing it!

I think my own fannish background is part of my feeling about this, actually. I came to HP from the Star Wars fandom, and while that's also very international, it doesn't really belong anywhere in the way that HP or Buffy do. There was no sense that any one group of people had more "ownership" of the canon (for lack of a better way to say it) than any other, simply by virtue of living in the place where the canon was set. Even though I've been in HP for a few years now, a lot of my feelings about fandom were cemented there.

It's just bizarre to me that there are (granted, a very few) people out there who genuinely think that some one like me will never be able to write a decent HP fic simply because I'm not British. There are so many other good reasons not to like my writing! ;-)

[fernwithy.livejournal.com]

Since the Canadian version is the same as the British, I've always found it a bit odd (and in cases like this, oddly thorough) that they bother to Americanize a book with a British setting by a British author.

In some cases, it's silly. In others, I can sort of see it. Changing "jumper" to "sweater" made sense at the start, because you don't really want to stop the reader long enough for him to imagine Molly knitting Harry a nice, emerald green pinafore. It wouldn't kill the scene, and you'd know that probably wasn't what they meant, but enough of those little things, and it gets distracting. Now that the confusion is cleared up, it's no longer necessary, but when they started, they didn't know that half the world's internet resources would be tied up by HP conversations, in which people would be able to say, "Oh, a jumper's a sweater." (Having different words for the same thing is fun; having the same word for two entirely different things... that's where it gets confusing, especially if the absurd version could, in some circumstance--say, the weirdness of the wizarding world--make sense.)

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Well, personally I think it's silly all 'round - if only because I'm glad I learned those differences through reading as a kid, so that I don't pause over things like that when I read British works as an adult. And, I guess, as a Canadian it just seems to smack a little of U.S-centrism to me. I just can't picture a U.K. publishing house doing the same, changing all the mentions of "pants" in an American work to "trousers" so that kids wouldn't imagine underpants. *g*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

But American kids (prior to the release of the first HP books) really didn't have a heck of a lot of exposure to British English. Maybe Canadian kids do, but American kids generally don't. I don't think it's US-centric so much as was a practice that publishing companies engaged in because they thought it would help books sell and make them more money. It's changing now, primarily because those same people have realized through the HP example that it isn't necessary (and hence not worth the extra cost to pay editors to do it, eating into their profits).

Everything those companies do is about making money, really. They aren't making any political statements.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose, but I think it's telling that one of the first changes was to rename the first book (despite the fact that it refers to a historical concept that serves as an important plot point) because they felt that American children would be put off by the word 'philsopher.' Whereas I believe the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series was coming out around the same time, and while it didn't hit the magic formula the way the Potter series did, it's certainly proved extremely popular while still throwing around words and concepts that most modern North American (and British) children would have to look up.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's not true. There was an interview last year on Pottercast (episode 31 (http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/pottercast/episode/show/31)) with Scholastic editor Arthur Levine, in which he explains why the title was changed. Here's an excerpt from the transcript (http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/pottercast/transcript/show/31?ordernum=4) of that interview:

AL: Now me, on the other hand, are thinking, well actually we think there's a bigger audience for this particular book. How can we convey that? How can we convey the nature of the book? So I went to, went back to Jo. This is also, by the way, an extremely common occurrence in books that come from other countries, that we say, is this the best title? It's also an extremely common occurrence for books that we originate.
MA: Okay.
AL: An author sends in a manuscript that has a given title. It's one of the favorite things for a sales and marketing departments to discuss.
MA: Okay.
AL: Because it seems like a big thing and if they can get the title that they want then it gives them confidence going into the market selling the book to book sellers, etcetera. And giving the people who are selling the book confidence is an important part of a successful publishing effort. Whether you want to do that, if you can accomplish that while keeping the author happy, then you do it. It's only, it only makes sense.
MA: Yeah.
AL: So, the next step is to go to the author because whatever you do, it's the author's book.
MA: Right.
AL: And she has to be happy with the title. So, I went back to Jo and I remember the conversation, what the title that I suggested was, how about "Harry Potter and the School of Magic?" Because it seems like Hogwarts is a very important part of this.
MA: Right, especially that first year.
AL: And she thought about it and said, "I'm not really sure about that. How about, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?" And I said, "Oh, Sorcerer's Stone, okay." That evokes magic more directly and obviously. Why don't I take that back and I took that back and everyone was like, oh yes, that's great that's great. (MA laughs) So, oh, okay, so the sales and marketing department are happy the author is happy. The book goes out.

So according to the publisher it was JKR who changed the title, not the American publishers.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. :-) At the same time, though, isn't this saying that she changed it at the publisher's prompting? And, it being the first book, I'm assuming she was going to be pretty amenable to changes if it meant being published in the American market (and if it meant not having it published under as stupid a name as "Harry Potter and the School of Magic.") The philosopher's stone is a real thing (well, real imaginary - you know what I mean *g*) and I think it's weird that it's seen by the American publisher as not playing to a "bigger audience." To me, that's not too far from a philosophy of thinking they have to appeal to some sort of lower common denominator.

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

(and--I'm just putting this in, since my comment about it is down thread, UK publishing houses *have* done the same (http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/LP/np-great.html). More than once (http://www.tomswift.info/homepage/british.html). And that's just what I found in the first couple pages of one quick google search.)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Interesting! Though I'm not surprised, because (as I said above) it's all about maximizing profits. ;-) Thanks!

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

I think it's partly about maximizing profits, and partly about actually helping a work be properly understood by its audience. But in any case, I'm happy to pass on the info. :)

[house-illrepute.livejournal.com]

it's not US-centrism anymore than having German editions are. The US isn't pre-emptively striking at European publishers and saying "print it this way for all the world mwuahahahaH!"... we're not Imperial Britain after all... ;)

I'm being silly, again. But seriously. I doubt the british would appreciate a surge of books written in Welsh... in fact, I remember quite the stink when two BIG BROTHER participants were SPEAKING it to each other...

With something like this, you'd want as little interference as possible when presenting something to a group of people. Little things like the differences in prepositions aren't so bad, but some things simply disrupt the flow.

a canadian would be used to it because... well, you're USED to it. isn't most things up yonders British English, mostly? When I've gone to T-dot and Montreal, I only recall BE spellings, except the not the -xion for -ction, (ie. connexion/connection -- do Brits even do that anymore???)

But for someone in Montana, seeing BE in all its glory may disrupt the story alot more than Rowling and publishers would like.

In the world of publishing, I doubt you'd want to give readers an excuse NOT to buy the next installment, yeah?

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

You know, I actually don't object so much to the spellings - I think it's a little silly, considering both versions tend to be perfectly readable on both sides of the pond, but it's more the changing of grammar and vocabulary that irks me (and especially the changing of the first title.) I actually read a little editorial a while back that summed up some of my feelings on it: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/23/specials/rowling-gleick.html

(If you don't want to read the whole thing, it mostly came down to: "By protecting our children from an occasional misunderstanding or trip to the dictionary, we are pretending that other cultures are, or should be, the same as ours. [...] By insisting that everything be Americanized, we dumb down our own society rather than enrich it.")

I really don't think it's quite the same as providing a translation across languages, because, as I said before, you don't see other anglophone countries changing American works to local standards to keep their kids from being confused over the fact that some people say scotch-tape and some people say sellotape. It's not a huge deal, but, just for me, I'm glad that the Canadian editions preserve the British flavour. :-)

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* And, I just realised that link requires a registration. If you do care to read it, you can just google "Harry Potter, Minus a Certain Flavour" and hit the cache. Sorry about that. :-)

[house-illrepute.livejournal.com]

i had read that article before, i think... i remember the "trip to the dictionary" comment. but things like 'jumper' 'loo' isn't in our dictionary. so that wouldn't even help them. i mean, chances are, context clues would help them figure it out and the lessening of the switches in later books shows that it was AMERICANS ADULTS thinking less of AMERICANS KIDS and that it was unwarranted.

but the issues of the britpicking and thoughts of 'US-centrism' are linked in more ways than one. i mean, the issue is the sheer one-way road by which some AE-bashers (not you, mind), tend to travel down.

take a look at what you just said.
think it's a little silly, considering both versions tend to be perfectly readable on both sides of the pond,

really? because you're canadian, right? you're used to it. Likewise, you're probably used to AE, too, especially if you're in an area that has alot of US influence due to people coming back and forth for work and what not.

so you can't really make the judgment call of 'what's readable' to a 10yr old american kid that's never been exposed to that, could you?

likewise, i think if it were you throwing down the money on publication, you'd have a different take on it. don't get me wrong, i prefer reading the british version. the only reason why i listen to Jim Dale's US audio readings is because i prefer his voice to Steven Fry's, otherwise, i'd only listen to Fry's UK renditions. but that's because I LIVE brit stuff... always have. from the first moment i saw girl bits flashing on the Benny Hill show when I was 9 yrs old then fell in love with every member of Duran Duran i've ALWAYS loved the brits -- and how they spoke (except that annoying extra 'r' at the end of some -a words). but i can't expect every american to be the same way.

plus, all of the confusion with regard to Spelling Bees... i mean, i don't think "But, that's how they spelt it in Harry Potter" would go over so well when you spelled 'inflection' with an 'x'.

;)

I really don't think it's quite the same as providing a translation across languages,

AE is dif't than BE, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion about it, right? it's so different that some brit readers won't read AE-based fic, or talk shit about AE-fics. It's such a pain to go from BE to AE that apparently it's been talked about in HP Fandom ad nauseum. Again, that's one-way'edness ... gawd, that faux-word gets worse and worse ...

AE is no less 'proper' than BE, period. It's our language. And it's not UScentric to want to read things in our language. It'd be UScentric if we pushed AE on other coutries, which we don't.

But Emma brought up a point when she said its slightly american bashing. it is

it's okay for people to be British-centrist when it comes to the language of stories. but it's not okay for an american to want to write and read in AE? i find that... well, i had another faux-word for it, but it looked ridiculous when i saw it typed out.

in essence, i think we can both agree to disagree on this matter.

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Y'all kinda touched on this earlier, but remember that when Webster wrote his American dictionary, it was precisely to distinguish American from British, and to give us a sense of pride in our "own" language. That's always in the back of my mind when Brits rag on Americans for using our own language. They are NOT the same thing. They are NOT mutually comprehensible. And I don't see how when Brits say, "AE is okay in narration but not in dialogue " -- how do they expect Americans to suddenly know how to "speak" proper British?

And of course, German almost became our national language. In the part of the country were I live, a wave of German immigrants came over in the mid 19th century. Some of the older folks here still speak German. But it is not the way people speak it in Germany today. They speak an older, archaic version that died out in the "motherland" long ago. They have trouble understanding modern German.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

but the issues of the britpicking and thoughts of 'US-centrism' are linked in more ways than one. i mean, the issue is the sheer one-way road by which some AE-bashers (not you, mind), tend to travel down.

take a look at what you just said.
think it's a little silly, considering both versions tend to be perfectly readable on both sides of the pond,

really? because you're canadian, right? you're used to it.

Well, on the spelling front I meant that everyone can still read "gray" vs. "grey" or "center" vs. "centre" perfectly well despite whether they've encountered it before, as the differences usually have to do with a single letter. It's not like the BE spelling of "color" is "cloryjbrai". I remember I had never seen the word "connexion" before reading Tolkien as a kid, but it was clear enough.

I really don't think it's quite the same as providing a translation across languages,

AE is dif't than BE, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion about it, right?

Well, my point was that CE is different from BE too, and the Canadian publishers don't edit for language. We may use the same spelling in most cases, but we likewise use "gotten" and don't say "sellotape" or "jumper" and all that.

it's okay for people to be British-centrist when it comes to the language of stories. but it's not okay for an american to want to write and read in AE?

In my opinion, no - it is not British-centric to preserve British spellings and culturally-appropriate words in a book set in Britain and written by a British author. It would be British-centric if British people were changing American works set in America to BE; which is exactly what the American publishers of HP are doing. BE and AE are not separate languages - they're two dialects of the same language which, in the written form, differ in extremely minor ways. We will have to agree to disagree on this one, because I just can't stop seeing a 'translation' as pretty silly. :-D

[fernwithy.livejournal.com]

but things like 'jumper' 'loo' isn't in our dictionary.

Some things, you can pick up from context. "Loo," for one thing, is pretty well known, but even if it weren't, if someone says he's headed for the loo, you can more or less guess what it is, the same as you could guess it if a Navy guy said he's on his way to the head.

"Jumper" is more problematic because it does have a distinct meaning here, and one that's related to clothes. In the wizarding world, people wear things that seem odd in the Muggle world, so people would suddenly start picturing everyone dressed in pinafores, and, well, that would be distracting as well as giving everyone a bad impression.

In some cases, the bad impression isn't horrible enough to worry about. American kids probably thought Harry had it even worse than he did at the Dursleys, since a "cupboard" would be thought of as very, very small, but it's described enough to know that he at least doesn't have to crouch in a fetal position there. If a kid is thinking of it as something like a biggish kitchen cupboard instead of as a broom closet, it's not really going to be problematic in following the story.

The only thing I can think of with "gotten" is that there may be issues of misperceiving a character's social status (maybe associating it only with kids who got a bad education or something), but I doubt it went that far. I'd guess it's just a standard search and replace because the book is "translated" into American English, not much different from replacing "colour" with "color," which doesn't have much point other than making sure kids don't get their spelling lists wrong. I don't remember ever being confused by Dickens when I was little (or if Lewis got the -our to -or treatment), though. Then again, I'm from Buffalo, and grabbing a day at the Falls or Crystal Beach wasn't exactly exotic, so I saw BE spellings pretty frequently in everyday life.

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

You know, I actually don't object so much to the spellings - I think it's a little silly, considering both versions tend to be perfectly readable on both sides of the pond,

I think this is a very sketchy assumption. I haven't read the British versions of these books, so I don't really know how far they go, but I can say that a while back, two friends from England came to visit with my husband and me, and when the two of them were talking to each other, say, in the back seat of the car, my husband (an intelligent and well-educated American) could understand maybe every third word they said. I did better, because my immersion in HP fandom gave me a broader understanding of UK slang and such, but we both required a lengthy explanation of some terms ("Chav," for instance, is one I remember fondly), and so I think what you're saying here may not be quite true.

Also, I really resent the implication that translating something into American English is the equivalent of "dumbing down." I'm all for promoting cultural diversity and understanding, but I fail to see how teaching children British slang is an essential part of that. It's interesting, certainly, and I wouldn't discourage a child who was keen to learn about it, but it wouldn't be at the top of my "must do" list. There is a lot more for a child (or adult) to take away from the HP books than the specifics of language or details of British culture (which, by the way, there are still plenty of in the American versions of the books), and I am constantly boggled to hear that this is apparently the issue of paramount concern to so many in fandom.

[dorrie6.livejournal.com]

For additional reference, here is an interesting website (http://www.americanization.com/english.htm) explaining why (in the author's opinion), translating from British to American English (and vice-versa) is genuinely a matter of translation, and why (and when) that translation has been made in both directions.