Pirated, knock-off… books?
I’ve always liked the idea of semantic space at the intuitive level where human experience is a multi-dimensional topology filled with Venn diagrams on steroids. Each bubble (or blip or Mobius* strip or whatever) is a word, and very few words from language to language are exactly alike, which is to say in this topology that they do not have exactly the same shape. Often a bubble from one language doesn’t have a specific word in the next language and so a paraphrase is required.
In a lot of situations the lack of equivalence is trivial and uninteresting. But occasionally I’m struck by one that seems unexpected. The other week it was meliorative-pejorative. Today it’s coming out of some market research I’m doing for a publisher. We interview people about what books they buy, which inevitably leads to discussion about whether the books are the genuine article from the publisher or are knock-offs. Since we’re talking to students, it’s almost always the latter. But as I write up the report, I start to doubt my own English intuition. Sure, you can use genuine vs pirated, but it just doesn’t seem to quite fit as well as in Mandarin, which has the comfortable pair of opposites well-standardized in common usage:
- 正版 zhèngbǎn, meaning “genuine / legal”, character-for-character something like “true edition”
- 盗版 dàobǎn, meaning “pirated”, character-for-character something like “stolen edition”
In my head the semantic space for “genuine” sort of fits, but it’s much too large. It wouldn’t be immediately apparent to me if you said “I bought a genuine book” what you were talking about. Even tougher for pirated, whose semantic space, for me, is too closely linked to the digital realm. If I heard that someone bought a “pirated” book, I might first think it was a digital copy. As for “knock-off”, I’m thinking more about luxury brands than about books.
Still, knock-off is what I’ve gone with. It seems to expand in the direction of books without too much mental effort, and my guess is that if English-speaking countries suddenly had to deal with a flood of knock-off books, that’s the word that would get selected as the standard. Then again, maybe my English is becoming kind of dàobǎn.
[Update: this is from JDMartinsen’s good work in the comments below. He did what I should have done, instead of relying on my very faulty intuition about whether “pirated” goes well with “books”, I shoulda researched it! Here’s his 1886 reference which he introduces by saying “’Pirated edition’ has a long pre-digital heritage. From the New York Times, 1886(the century that the USA was dealing with a flood of knock-off books):”
PROFITS ON A PIRATED BOOK
CHICAGO, April 27.—In the copyright case of Charles Scribner, of New-York, against Belford, Clark & Co. to restrain them from publishing a pirated edition of Marion Harland’s “How to Cook,” the Master in Chancery, H. W. Bishop, filed a report to-day before Judge Blodgett, showing the profits on the book. The defendants issued two books, one—”How to Cook, Harland”—selling at about $1, of which they sold 9,500 copies and realized a net profit of $720, and the other—”The Economy Cook Book”—of which 44,000 were sold at 10 cents apiece, the net profit being $375.
Now precedence is not tyranny. I could still go with something besides “pirated”. But at least we know it’s been done before.
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*Möbius strip, for the umlaut-inclined. Personally, I grit my teeth at foreign diacritics when they’re not critical to the text, because they seem to serve as a reminder that the word is not mine. But maybe I’m just sensitive.
What’s wrong with “illegaly copied”? I know, it’s not a sweet single word, but it’s more precise and doesn’t have the conotations of knock-off, pirated, or bootleg. Actually, bootleg might work?!
I’m at a loss for ‘genuine’ though. ‘Genuine’ books really sounds very strange..
“Illegally copied” doesn’t sit well with me. In my day-to-day speech, in which the topic has come up quite a bit recently (what with a new semester beginning and many people unwilling to pay full price for single-use texts), we just say that the books are “copies”.
And what about words italicised to denote their foreignness which are now commonplace in English? Personally I’m a big fan of the diacritic even in things like naïve.
Don’t be such language purists, guys! 😛 It’s just as bad as when people are complaining that their language is being anglicized! 😉
@Max, probably you’re right and I should just go with “illegally copied”, but there’s something ungainly about it. And I can’t help feeling that it’s more judgemental than daoban, but I can’t claim to have a native feel for that, so, well, whatever.
@Kellen (and Max again). The thing is, I don’t have any problem with Chinese sinofying words with hanzi. I don’t have any problem with Latvian latvianizing them either. I just wish English had a good way to do the same. But what we have is a moderately dysfunctional spelling system that, in the case of an imported word, no one knows how to use. So we just maintain dead diacritics and then fight over how they’re “supposed” to be pronounced.
@Max: hey, why did I skip bootleg?! That’s a pretty good choice too. Maybe a bit heavy on the alcoholic connotations, but nice, clean, clear…
You’re raising a good point, but on the other hand, no one knows how to use foreign words anyway. Look at “Porsche”, the car brand. I’ve heard people fighting over whether you pronounce it “Porsch” or “Porsch-EE”, and there aren’t even any diacritics involved! With diacritics, there’s at least a way to find out how the word is supposed to be pronounced (Not that this would keep people from mispronouncing it. See Porsche).
Then again, I’m not really arguing that one should keep diacritics, I’m just saying it’s nothing one should “grit one’s teeth at”!
BTW, you guys have to fix your smileys! Or is that a way to get people to write more properly? [imagine a smiley here]
There’s also authorized/unauthorized edition, which brings out the copyright issue that’s at the root of the matter.
“Pirated edition” has a long pre-digital heritage. From the New York Times, 1886 (the century that the USA was dealing with a flood of knock-off books):
Am I wrong, or does 盜版 not include a wide variety of different things, in the same way that “pirated” can refer to a few different kinds of “less than legal” products.
No less than the great Microsoft has struggled with this great linguistic “feature, not a bug” of english and come to the conclusion that something is better than nothing. Hence, we have “Windows Genuine Advantage”, the highly unsuccessful coinage that indicates “not pirated”, by the utilizing the widespread usage (not really) of the term “genuine” to mean “not pirated.”
I don’t personally, (and I doubt I’m the only one) think “knock-off” purses and “pirated” movies have anything to do with each other other than being possibly illegal, or in violation of some sort of IPR. Those adjectives and their respective paths to existence seem non-interchangaeble, and clearly distinct in English. Furthermore, I don’t see how some publisher who publishes an unauthorized translation of Harry Potter and a street vendor who sells paper copies of a book he bought are doing something terribly similar either. I mean english has got a lot of terms to deal with a lot of these different phenomenon, it just seems lacking the massive easy to use, all encompassing cases that chinese has. I guess “pirated” stretches pretty far, but I doubt it matches the scope of 盜版.
We do seem to have standard words for all the new phenomenon that have sprung up over the past decade or so: illegal mp3s, pirated software, etc. I guess we don’t have the old stuff because books have always just been books. Movies, if they aren’t downloaded or bootlegged, are just movies. Mp3s, if they aren’t illegal, whatever, are just mp3s, or music. Ok, done here.
My fault on the smilies. Meant to fix it two weeks ago but then never got around to it.
And hey, I like the diacritics.
My apologies, Kellen, I must have imagined a “not” in there somehow. That’s how wars get started, I suppose O_O
@JDMartinsen: nice backdating on “pirated books”! I’ve copied it as an update to the post.