They need to change their name. I am very afraid.

[a_t_rain]

Remember No Fear Shakespeare?

Well, I went to Barnes & Noble today, and it seems they have a new product out. It is a translation of The Scarlet Letter. Into English. Because apparently high school kids these days aren't capable of figuring out that it is already in English. Or something.

Some examples. I'm not making any of these up.

Real Hawthorne: It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally.

No-Fear Hawthorne: It’s not appropriate to spill your guts, even when you’re writing impersonally.

Real Hawthorne: “I feared the woman had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!”

No-Fear Hawthorne: “I was worried that the woman was simply trying to make her child look like a clown!”

Real Hawthorne: Then, all was spoken.

No-Fear Hawthorne: And when she'd said that, she'd said everything there was to say.

Also, for some reason, No Fear translates "malefactresses" as "hussies" but "hussies" as "sluts."

Comments

[sandokai.livejournal.com]

Ugh!

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Huh?

It's one thing to use a guide*; I don't have a problem with that, although we didn't really use one in high school. I think we had a small one for Romeo and Juliet, but it wasn't a full guide or translation, it just had a few explanations as to what certain words meant and some contextual information, I believe.

But this seems to go beyond helping students - it seems to want to be "cool." Besides, as you said, most of those things are already pretty understandable if you just read carefully or ask your teacher/Professor. (Since fair enough, just reading carefully isn't an option for all kids.) And if you do that, hey, maybe you'll have learned something.

Also?


No-Fear Hawthorne: And when she'd said that, she'd said everything there was to say.

I find that even more confusing than the original words.

*And even thennn... I dunno. I understood TSL okay without a guide. I had to re-read every chapter at least once, but is re-reading ever a bad thing? The only time I used a guide line-by-line was for Chaucer, and even then, I still stuck to the original when it came to papers and other assignments.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

...WHAT.

I will confess to having used Cliff's Notes for The Pilgrim's Progress in eleventh grade, but this doesn't even make sense.

Also, No Fear Hawthorne apparently believes that all malefactresses, regardless of malefaction, are sluts?

[k-navit.livejournal.com]

(weeps)

[tunxeh.livejournal.com]

And ther with the teres fylle in my eyen.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

But but but . . . a mountebank is nothing like a clown!

I'm all for footnotes glossing lesser-used words as well as references that aren't easily picked up on anymore, but seriously? And why do "modern" paraphrases always end up so clumsy and ill-worded that they're actually harder to read than the original they're supposed to be simplifying?

[a-blue-jay.livejournal.com]

Because they're written by bad writers who are in no way either Hawthorne or Shakespeare? :P

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh God. Admittedly I'm not sure I'd set The Scarlet Letter for high schoolers in the way I've seen it done (summer reading followed by a test at the start of term, with no actual teaching on it at all, which is just idiotic), but that's really not the solution.

[tree_and_leaf]

And how does "malefactress" mean "hussy"? What's wrong with "evil-doer"? Or "villain?" Or, God help us, "she's one of the bad guys?"