We need your help! We are a group of university students who are researching how you can make classic books more interesting and relatable, for young people (age 15-22), by rewriting them into a more easy-to-read language using AI.
We hope you will look into the quote below, and share your thoughts on our questions.
The quote is from the book Sense and Sensibility, where the first is the original text and the other is rewritten.
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How did you find the readability and relatability of the rewritten quote?
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What did you think about having a rewritten text as a replacement for the original text?
***We are aware that rewriting an author’s work with AI can be seen as plagiarism, and there’s a whole debate about taking creative ownership of the written work. These factors have been taken into consideration, and our work is for research purposes only.***
Original:
Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another! – and that other, a man who had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, – whom, two years before, she had considered too old to be married, – and who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!
Rewritten:
Marianne Dashwood was born with a pretty interesting destiny. She was destined to realize that her own opinions were false and to prove herself wrong by her actions. She was born to overcome a love that had only blossomed when she was seventeen, a love that was nothing more than strong admiration and friendship. And she willingly chose to marry someone else! And that someone happened to be a man who had also suffered from a previous failed love, someone whom she had considered too old to marry just two years ago. And to top it off, he still wore flannel waistcoats for health reasons!
I’m not a young reader anymore, but I would say ‘no’. The fun thing about books is that they also show a bit about customs and language use from the time they were written. A book is more than the story, it’s also the rhythm of the language.