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In which book have parts of the English text been modified for all subsequent editions of that book? When and why did this happen?

N.B. This does not refer to apparent errors (e.g. the omission of two lines from the 2004 Alph-Art), or changes to the typeface (i.e. the new editions of Tibet), but changes to the content of the text.

Ed

In which book have parts of the English text been modified for all subsequent editions of that book? When and why did this happen?

Which book? Do you mean the original English text[i] of The Castafiore Emerald?

The Castafiore Emerald?

No I'm afraid not yamilah, or at least I'm not aware of any changes being made to the English text of that story between editions.

Ed

I suppose it's The Black Gold, that took place originally in Palestine, that later turned into Khemed, after the real-life political changes that occurred in Middle East in 1947, when the English rule came to an end.
The original version was supposed not to be understood by the young readers.

Hi Ed
I believe that there are several things that could apply.
In page 56 of Tintin in the Congo, the whole format, and therefore all the writing is differant. Although this was originally done for the Scandinavian versions, but copied for the British version.
But yamilah's answer is more correct in my opinion as the changes were done specifically for the English edition.

I believe that changes were made to the text in a number of the books (rather than ‘book’ in the singular). The ones which spring to my mind are Crab, Ottokar and The Shooting Star. This was because of decimalization. Thompson is slipped a ”dud half-crown” in early editions of Crab later changed to a fifty pence piece.

I don't have the early edition to hand but in Ottokar the Thompsons hats cost somthing like 9 and 11 shillings which is later altered to £3.95. And, for no apparent reason, the miles have been converted to kilometres in later editions of The Shooting Star.

I couldn't give an exact date but I assume the changes would've taken place in the early 70s; decimalization in Britain occured in 1971. There may be other books with imperial/metric changes but these are the ones I'm aware of.

Am I close Ed?

To deal with the answers in turn:

yamilah: The changes were made by Hergé before the book was translated, so all the English editions of Black Gold are the same. So, incorrect I'm afraid.

SingingGandalf: We're only concerning ourselves with the modern colour editions, and there has been only one English one of these so far.

Harrock n' Roll: Spot on! The answer I was actually looking for was The Shooting Star; while I might have accepted a half-point for the few instances in Crab and Sceptre, The Shooting Star shows the most changes.

These aren't too difficult to spot, looking closely it is clear that some of the text is in a slightly different style. The instances are: p.11, fr.a1; p.12, fr.a2; p.36, fr.d1; p.37, fr.a1; p.37, fr.d1. They all refer to imperial measurements that are turned metric, mostly measures of distance, except for one that refers to Phostle's request for "ten pennyworth of bull's-eyes". As Chris suggests, this was done shortly after Britain adopted decimal currency in 1971 - though not for measures of distance, for which miles are still the norm in the UK. The Shooting Star is therefore now something of an anomaly, and ironically now has more in common with the continental system (bull's-eyes notwithstanding)!

So congratulations Harrock n' Roll, and particular kudos because I don't think this has been discussed on these boards before.

Ed

1 point to Harrock 'n' roll then. Congratulations. It's your turn.

One other thing to mention about the miles to kilometres conversion is that on page 37, where Tintin calculates how long it would take to catch up with the “Peary”, the maths no longer add up.

According to Tintin the “Aurora” is 4 knots (nautical miles per hour) faster than the “Peary”. 4 nautical miles = 7.4080 kilometres, not 6 kilometres.

Therefore they would've gained on the “Peary” (had they not answered the false distress call) by 7.4080 km each hour and caught up with them (250 km ahead) in just under 34 hours (I think...!)

Cheers!