How To Be A Gardener--a book review

I am reading Alan Titchmarsh's "How to be a Gardener", published by the American Horticultural Society, and with the note, "From the host of Ground Force BBC" at the bottom of the cover. It's a beautiful book, nearly 600 pages, loads of photographs, just excellent. I bought it on Amazon.com from a "new or used" dealer for just under 2$ (retail price is nearly 40$). If you would like a copy, try here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159258036X

This book is fascinating to me, not just because I love gardening, but because I work in translation and localization. Alan Titchmarsh is one of the faces of British TV gardening. If you're American, you will probably only know him if you're in an area where BBC America is available, assuming you watch it (it's not on Cablevision, darn it!) But as a native Brit, I know his face and voice and mannerisms. Reading a book that is Alan through-and-through, I hear him talking, and the "localization" for the American market jumps out and bites me... and the missed localization makes me wonder what other readers in the USA make of it.

There is some hugely interesting, fascinating info about general horticulture: what makes things grow, how it happens, how plants "work". I am reading this book like a novel: page by page, beginning to end: not like a reference book that you dip into now and then. As a gardener, I love it. As a translation manager, I am very very picky :-)

(Who authorised (with an s) the replacement of the word "use" with "utilize"? Are you so afraid that "use" means "abuse" and so choose to u-til-ize a three-syllable non-tactile word instead? That one I never understand... Yes, it does have a place in the English language. No, it should not be used as a total replacement. See, I said "used" not "utilized". Yah boo.)

So... all the instances of "colour" have been replaced with "color". A section has been added (or replaced) to explain the North American hardiness zones. But when Alan talks about the different climates in the country, and how daffodils are in different states of bloom as you drive from north to south, I see him driving down the A1 from Yorkshire to London, not on any American freeway from the Canada border to Florida.

There are pictures of newly-emerged weeds, and their big brothers, to help new gardeners with identification. Bindweed and stinging nettle and dead nettle and giant hogweed.... but no poison ivy, no smilax, no rampant grapevine and none of this stuff with leaves that are a cross between chrysanthemum and poppy. (I would gladly trade my poison ivy for a patch of stinging nettles.)

And the animal/insect pests are all English :-) (yes, I asked for that comment, I heard you) though of course some of those are common to both sides of the Atlantic (slugs, snails), but are there Cabbage White caterpillars here, or are they called something else?

In the irrigation section, "you'll need an outdoor tap because you'll soon get fed up with running a hosepipe through the kitchen window", someone forgot to replace "tap" with "faucet", and they also forgot that a huge number of American homes already have an outdoor water supply, if not in-ground irrigation systems. Soaker hoses, made from recycled tyres (or tires, if you prefer) are more common that plastic hoses with holes in for slow irrigation.

I love the book, but the localization is not correct. I can read through it, and maybe enjoy it all the more, because I see both sides. But how does an American reader like it? Do you even notice? Is there so much good content that you ignore, or don't notice, the inconsistencies? Or is this the reason that I was able to buy this gem of a publication for less than two dollars...

Go on. Buy a copy and let me know.

Alan: I volunteer to be your editor next time :-)