Don’t worry, the martini won’t be stirred in the new edition of the James Bond novels, which will be released in April to mark the 70th anniversary of the first novel “Casino Royale” – anything else would be jarring, uh, jarring .
Otherwise, however, the language mix in the new edition was checked, especially the N-word, which author Ian Fleming (1908 – 1964) often used to designate black people, was deleted from the works. This insight was first published by the British newspaper Telegraph, which recently also published the adaptations in children’s books by the popular author Roald Dahl – and thus caused some controversy.
In the case of Fleming, the rights manager Ian Fleming Publications emphasized that the author’s instructions were only being followed: Fleming himself, even before his death in 194, had distanced himself from the need for the N-word, which is particularly common in the novel “Live and Let Die”. and agreed to have it removed from US editions of his book.
“As close as possible to the original”
In the future, the books would be preceded by a note: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes that modern readers may find offensive were widespread,” it says (Editor’s translation). “Updates have been made in this edition with the aim of remaining as close as possible to the original text and the era in which the story takes place.”
The use of so-called “sensitivity readers”, which check texts for accessibility and their potential to disturb, is becoming increasingly common in the literary industry. The practice is sometimes denounced as censorship (keyword “cancel culture”) or as “smoothing out” for commercial reasons. In the field of translations, it has of course been customary since then to free the language of classics from outdated formulations and to adapt them to the respective language use.
