Oops!
One of the larger Spanish publishers (Espasa-Calpe) has just published a translation of twenty-three tales of “William Sidney Porter, más conocido como [= better known as] O’Henry”. The web-page includes a picture of the cover of the book: though blurry, it’s just clear enough to show the same error on the jacket. I wonder how long it will take them to figure out the problem, or if they already have and decided to sell it anyway. I also wonder whether anyone has been fired, or will be. Illiteracies like this can’t be good for sales. When I was in college, I was having trouble making up my mind which of two inexpensive paperback editions of Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion I should buy, until a classmate pointed out that one of them had different titles printed on the cover and spine. I immediately bought the other one.
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“O’Henry”
Dr Weevil has noticed that Espasa-Calpe has published a collection of shorts by William Sidney Porter, misspelling his pen name. I thought at first that they’d Oirish-ised it for marketing reasons which I cannot conceive, but they’re just plain stupi…
Trackback by k’alebøl — Tuesday: June 21, 2005 @ 4:02 AM GMT-0500
The explanation is simple. Whoever “William Sidney Porter” might have been, it’s eminently possible that he went by the nom de plume “O’Henry”.
Of course, if they meant the American writer William Sydney Porter, that’s another story entirely.
Comment by Colby Cosh — Wednesday: June 29, 2005 @ 9:59 PM GMT-0500