[djoldman]

> 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]

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 )

My latin was too rusty to be able to read Meditations on First Philosophy as it was written. ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306 ).

A translation from Latin to English ( 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

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]

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.

[evilduck]

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]

> 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

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

> 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/ and hāraḡ 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.

[47282847]

Why not translate it as “consciousness“? Seems quite obvious to me?

[shagie]

It likely came that way via the Vulgate ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate ) which was a translation of Greek into Latin in the fourth century. It was the official Catholic version in 1545 - 1563 (the KJV was translated in 1611).

in principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum

Though going back to logos - even that word changed meaning over the the centuries from Heraclitus (5th century BC) ( https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/17-the-heraclitean-logos/ https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/12/logos-of-hera... https://modernstoicism.com/heraclitus-and-the-birth-of-the-l... ) to the neoplatonist school (3rd century AD)

The early Christian church traditions were a battlefield of dueling scriptures and philosophies.

Some books that I'd recommend on that area. Note that my approach to the Bible isn't one of a believer but rather as another work of ancient philosophy (which was my favorite philosophy class of my almost not getting a CS degree) and stoicism is the branch within there that I've read the most of.

https://www.amazon.com/Stoicism-Early-Christianity-Tuomas-Ra...

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Christianities-Battles-Scripture...

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Scriptures-Books-that-Testament/...

[cxr]

It's a lot more complicated than that.

> some take their own liberties with interpreting the original text as it was written

The "original text" in many cases is simply not known; there are multiple "sources" to translate from, so part of the job of those who are putting together a new edition is to discern between the variant texts and work out which one should be treated as canonical. This can obviously have a major impact on the result, and it's all before any translation ever occurs.

[bombcar]

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.

[dhosek]

I’ve often wondered if Greeks were at a disadvantage in reading Homer since they would have the choice of reading either the essentially foreign original text or what would feel like a bowdlerization as a modernized text, while translations to other languages wouldn’t have that same negative association connected to them.

[alexey-salmin]

Funny thing is the original _text_ probably didn't even exist. Mainstream theory is that Iliad was a purely oral tradition at first and was written down (not written) a few decades or centuries later. The sack of Troy happened shortly before the Late Bronze Age Collapse which among other things destroyed the Greek writing system now known as the Linear Script B. The Greek Alphabet had only appeared 3 centuries later and the period in between is often referred as the "Greek Dark Ages", since there was no writing system for the Greek language at that time.

One way to see Iliad is as a bard's song about lost good time before the apocalypse -- when Greek cities were mighty, trade flourishing, armies big etc.

[mcguire]

Don't forget that you're not reading the text as it was originally written; the surviving texts are copies of copies. Reconstructing, partially, the original text is possible if you have many downstream copies from different sources but never perfect.

[scarmig]

Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame) has written a whole lot about this and related questions. Translator, Trader is a great essay (my favorite work of his) that anyone who thinks about translation and its implications a lot should check out.

[allturtles]

> 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]

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?

[allturtles]

> A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes.

If you want to sell an up-to-date, 2024 factbook, you should commission one. Providing up-to-date fact books is not a function that a back catalog can or should serve. You shouldn't take a 1950s fact book and try to make some ham-handed edits to it and sell it as if it's the same book.

> 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?

If a publisher feels that issuing a particular book in ebook form would be injurious to the public, than they are certainly within their rights to not issue it. Or to add an editorial note "This book is for historical interest only, don't try to use the recipes, because for some reason the author was trying to kill all their readers." Again there are a zillion cookbooks and it's not hard to get someone to write a new one.

[GJim]

> 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]

> 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?

[NeoTar]

> It's a book, not a web page!

That's a distinction you are making - that books cannot or should not be updated, whilst web pages can/should be. It's no longer intrinsic to the nature of a book as a digital text.

Perhaps a list of heads-of-state is a silly example to use, but a text-book may be a better example - in a digital world it may be a reasonable expectation that a text-book would be 'correct', and so receiving updates would be appropriate. Or a particle physics data-sheet, where an updated value for the mass of a particle could be included.

Of course this should be consensual - "The publisher has provided an update to this text. Please accept, reject or review the changes", and it would be great if e-books and readers had a mechanism to scroll back and forward through editions (but perhaps that is a pipe-dream).

> 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.

That's pretty much what I said in my comment. Sometimes the historical context is important, valuable or interesting.

[cxr]

> it may be a reasonable expectation that a text-book would be 'correct', and so receiving updates would be appropriate[...] Of course this should be consensual

It is implicitly consensual—when the consumer chooses to buy/download the newest edition. Don't try to "change" what's an an ebook, though. (Not that it's even possible.) Make new editions available if you want and allow the reader to decide whether to go for them. Otherwise, it is not consensual.

[everforward]

> 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]

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.

[bityard]

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.

[HalfRadish]

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]

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]

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...

[dhosek]

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.

[creer]

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]

> 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]

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