Philip from Ocracoke Island Journal has a funny story about reading War and Peace, the classic Tolstoy novel which some call the finest novel ever written. He purchased the ebook edition for his Nook, because reading a copy of the physical book on your lap will cause your legs, your kids’ legs, and your dog’s legs to all fall asleep. (Big book. Lots of pages. Very heavy.)
Philip noticed an interesting editorial decision midway through the prose:
As I was reading, I came across this sentence: “It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….” Thinking this was simply a glitch in the software, I ignored the intrusive word and continued reading. Some pages later I encountered the rogue word again. With my third encounter I decided to retrieve my hard cover book and find the original (well, the translated) text.
For the sentence above I discovered this genuine translation: “It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern….”
Someone at Barnes and Noble (a twenty year old employee? or maybe the CEO?) had substituted every incidence of “kindled” with “Nookd!”
I don’t even get why you would do this, but it’s pretty awesome.