h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Prachett does occassionally use footnotes for cultural references. There was a good one on Milton Keynes once, which any Brit would recognise, but which presumably would be a joke which would fly over the heads of a non Brit. Mind you, the footnore was funny for British people too, so he may have just included it for the comedy value anyway. His books aren't particularly British specific.

Books before the mid-Eighties were 'translated' from American spellings to British (or at least I read a copy of Stephen King's 'Christine' with British spellings). However, I think there was a change in the British copyright laws which meant that US books couldn't be altered though it doesn't work the other way. My Mum has come across US copies of Agatha Christies which have completely different titles to the UK versions, and are even occasionally re-written in parts just to confuse matter further.

I think this argument has been well-covered, but I'd like to add a point.

"Order of the Phoenix" has most, if not all of the lingo and cultural references left in as it's seen to be a more mature book than the "Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone."

Maybe the age at which a person is expected to read the work should determine how much translation should take place.

P.S. It's also called "Sorcerer's Stone" in Japan, I believe.

""Order of the Phoenix" has most, if not all of the lingo and cultural references left in as it's seen to be a more mature book than the "Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone.""

Actually, I read an interesting article in The Wasington Post (I think) that said that Scholastic (the US publisher) decided to not change the fifth book so much becasue many Potter fans in the US objected to the changes on the grounds that they wanted to read the origional text.