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Re: The translation problem

From: Arthur B. Evans <aevans2~at~mail.tds.net>
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 12:42:45 -0500
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>

Leigh,
I can't reply to all your questions, but here's an brief answer to the
following one:
(3) Didn't Jules Verne and his publishers object to these bad translations?
Didn't they consider doing their own translation?

Hetzel was not particularly concerned about textual integrity--in the
foreign translations or in Verne's original texts. So long as the books
sold well, he was satisfied (sound familiar?).

But Verne, in his correspondence, did complain about how bad the foreign
translations were:

In a letter to a young fan, Mario Turiello, on October 5, 1897, Jules Verne
remarked “Je ne suis point
surpris que les traductions dont vous me parlez soient mauvaises. Cela n’est
pas spécial à l’Italie, et en
d’autres pays elles ne valent guère mieux. Mais nous n’y pouvons
rien—absolument rien (I am not surprised
that the translations you speak of are bad. That is not particular to Italy;
in other countries they are no better.
But we can do nothing about it, absolutely nothing).”

Remember that international copyright laws did not go into effect until
around 1921. This sort of "butchering" would be more difficult to get away
with today (I hope!).

Art
Received on Sat 05 Feb 2000 - 20:41:01 IST

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