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rrthomas / hpmor

PDF, ePUB and Mobi versions of “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”, from LaTeX source
http://hpmor.com/
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remove unnecessary slur against the Roma community #146

Closed forsakenquantum closed 1 year ago

forsakenquantum commented 1 year ago

Using the word gypped (deriving from Gypsy) to mean "robbed" is a hurtful slur against the Roma community, which unfortunately still suffers violence for who they are to this day. This change removes the slur without changing the meaning at all.

rrthomas commented 1 year ago

Thanks for this!

AlexJeffcott commented 8 months ago

Apart from the wider conversation on this topic, this change does, in fact, change the meaning both in terms of the ‘raw’ meaning of the word and also in terms of how the word feels.

Purely from the ‘dictionary definition’, “Harry had been robbed” does not mean the same as, “Harry had been gypped” even if you ignore things like tone.

A far closer equivalent would be, “Harry felt cheated” but that also strips the feel of the word. I actually do not know of a word that can replace “gypped” ‘without changing the meaning at all’.

In terms of the context, the meaning of gypped here is more like “cheated” or “swindled” than “robbed”. In this context Harry does not appear to feel a sense of having lost something unjustly, but rather a sense of exasperation and disappointment at having been misled by a trope.

As far as I can tell, this PR sought to remove a word because someone didn’t approve of its probable etymology, not how it is used today or when it was written. In this effort, they changed both the ‘raw’ meaning and the tone.

rrthomas commented 8 months ago

Thanks for the analysis; I agree that "cheated" would be better, and I think "swindled" is better still, so I'll go with that. I agree too that no change will completely mimic the original, but that's part of the joy and frustration of language (well I know it as a translator!).