They want changes to the text. Strange, when you realize that the Americans who would be offended by the novel don't usually read translations of novels--except for the Bible, of course, which they don't think of as a translation. It's almost as though the publishers are hoping to create a controversy to stir up interest in the book. Unless they really are as craven as this article in Canada's Globe and Mail (brought to my attention courtesy of the culture blog 3quarksdaily.com) makes them out:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061102.wxhuston02/BNStory/Entertainment/homeEnglish edition of Prix Femina winner delayed
JAMES ADAMS
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
A French-language novel by Calgary-born Nancy Huston that was awarded France's prestigious Prix Femina this week was expected to be published in English first -- but the novelist's Canadian publisher and New York agent held off doing that this year because they wanted Huston to change portions of her text to avoid offending U.S. readers.
...
At issue, it seems, is the extent of the changes her North American representatives want. Kim McArthur, who published Huston's previous two novels in English, said yesterday that the author "has promised us some slight revisions; it's very tiny . . . maybe four sentences" to permit Lignes de faille to be published in 2007 in Canada and, possibly, the United States with a new English title, Birth Marks. However, no contract has been signed as yet, and "it's all just sort of very dicey," McArthur acknowledged at the same time as she praised Lignes as "fantastic . . . It's just riveting . . . She's just so famous in France."
Related to this article
In an interview in September in Paris with Montreal's La Presse, Huston, 53, said that "they want me to remove half the pages concerning Sol, all of the material that revolves around Jesus, the war in Iraq, George Bush, the pornography, etc." The French version of the novel has been a bestseller in Quebec.
...
It's the first part, named after the young narrator, Sol, that prompted McArthur's concern and that of her North American agent, Rosalie Siegel. Sol, as described in La Presse, is a precocious, haughtily nasty American boy who, over the course of 128 pages, "gets turned on
by Internet pornography and images of the tortures at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison."
...
"There's a bit of a schism between the war in Iraq . . . versus the point of view from America," McArthur says. "You may remember 'freedom fries.' " Given that Huston has lived more than half her life in France, her "view is completely credible there," but "we were taking the long view." 
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