Are the Discworld books edited in the United States?

[cmcl]

(I tried searching before posting, but did not find a topic that addressed this. Google wasn't any help either, sadly.)

I live in the U.S., and it has always bugged me the way the Harry Potter books were edited for American audiences, with various British terms and phrases being changed because they "wouldn't make sense" to American readers. I want to start buying my own copies of the Discworld books, but I just wonder if the versions published in the U.S. have been diluted in the same way. Even as a kid, I loved reading books by British authors and learning on my own that people from other countries use different words for things, and I hate the idea that people would actually put down a book because they don't know what a "lorry" is, or something.

So, rant aside, can I order the Discworld books cheaply on, say, Amazon.com and get the same books that British readers get, or do I have to order from Amazon.co.uk just to be sure?

[chris.ph]

welcome to the site cmcl

[ShadowNinjaCat]

Welcome cmcl
as to the ordering I don't know Amazon sorry....

[Tonyblack]

Hi cmcl and welcome to the site

As a Brit married to an American, I've read both the UK and US versions and as far as I can tell, there's very little editting at all (apart from differences in spelling). The one or two things we've spotted are very minor - such as a character in Thief of Time saying 'boom-boom' in the Uk copy and 'badda-boom' in the US.

If you want to get the UK copies without paying a fortune in shipping, try using Amazon Canada as they carry the UK copies and charge much less shipping to the US.

[raisindot]

As Pooh pointed out in the Thud! Discussion:

"On page 8 of the US hardcover it says "Woerworld" instead of Uberwald. In the UK edition it says "Uberwald."

In the same paragraph, the word "remember" is also misspelled.

Which suggests that, in some cases, the U.S. publisher may get an original Pterry electronic file from the UK, change some of the spellings, and then run a spell check on it, or a lousy editorial assistant manually changes things.

I've seem really bad typos in some of the American editions. Just can't think of them off the top of me head.

J-I-B

[Tonyblack]

There are a few in the UK versions as well.

[cmcl]

Thank you all for the welcome! It's been a few years since I originally read the first few Discworld books and at the time I wasn't thinking along these lines. Thanks especially Tonyblack, that's the kind of info I was wondering about, and I'm very glad to hear the books are not being "Americanized."

I was thinking of ordering the US paperbacks from Amazon.com and taking advantage of their "free super saver shipping" if at all possible, but only if the books were the real deal. Thanks for the tip about Amazon Canada, though. That's definitely something I didn't think of and will keep in mind.

Thanks again, everyone!

[Tonyblack]

Sharlene, my American wife has all the books in US version and I've had to explain some of the Britishisms in them.