but then I realised that the problem with this kind of thing isn't so much in the questions the foreign writer knows need asking, but the ones they don't know need asking
That’s true, and I admire people for persevering. It’s the failure to get it right within canon that annoys me. A US student doesn’t need to know that British schools don’t have “extra credit” when we know the Hogwarts curriculum doesn’t (after all, if it did, Hermione would be doing it). There’s an otherwise good fic in which Lord Peter Wimsey affectionately calls Harriet “missus”. I am only assume that she thinks this a cute-sounding British endearment, and hasn’t considered that a man who has spent 5+ years trying to persuade a woman that if she marries him her identity need not be wholly subsumed in his, might not think this a good choice of word (notwithstanding that Harriet isn’t a Mrs anyway.) She could get that from canon without ever having to know that it is also the wrong class and the wrong part of the country.
I completely agree that not getting the canon-picking right is a much more serious failure than not getting the Brit-picking right. There are times when you just want to scream at people to read the damn books.
In my calmer moments, I try to remember that some of the Brit-pick errors are the result of American writers having read the American editions of the books in the first place, and thus it really isn't their fault.
Especially when in the film of OotP, Umbridge says students can join the Inquisitorial Squad for "extra credit". If the film makers can't get it right, why should fanfic writers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
That’s true, and I admire people for persevering. It’s the failure to get it right within canon that annoys me. A US student doesn’t need to know that British schools don’t have “extra credit” when we know the Hogwarts curriculum doesn’t (after all, if it did, Hermione would be doing it). There’s an otherwise good fic in which Lord Peter Wimsey affectionately calls Harriet “missus”. I am only assume that she thinks this a cute-sounding British endearment, and hasn’t considered that a man who has spent 5+ years trying to persuade a woman that if she marries him her identity need not be wholly subsumed in his, might not think this a good choice of word (notwithstanding that Harriet isn’t a Mrs anyway.) She could get that from canon without ever having to know that it is also the wrong class and the wrong part of the country.
no subject
In my calmer moments, I try to remember that some of the Brit-pick errors are the result of American writers having read the American editions of the books in the first place, and thus it really isn't their fault.
no subject