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Re: RE: 20000 Leagues ? seas? League=?

From: Ralf Tauchmann <ralf.tauchmann~at~t-online.de>
Date: 01 Apr 2004 07:48 GMT
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

"Norm Wolcott" <nwolcott2~at~kreative.net> schrieb:
> It should be pointed out that all of this confusion occurs only
> because of using theEnglish system of measurement.
> There is no marine kilometre!

Dear Norm, dear all,

Just some linguistic comments, because my vague impression is that
the title, at least in French, shouldn't be understood too literally.

The old Larousse (19th century) gives a long list of different
leagues (lieues) in existence in France. I will not reproduce that
here, but they vary between 3 and 5 km. What seems important in the
French title is that both "twenty" (vingt) and "thousand" (mille)
are words normally used to say "a lot", "very many". In French,
at Jules Verne's time, "thousand leagues away from" (être à mille
lieues de...) meant "I would have never imagined that...".

I know that this remark is only relative, because Verne gives
distances in his novels, but for the title, it certainly is
something like "A long long journey under water".

As to singular or plural, "sea" or "seas", I think that the French title
of the novel is born from a simple antonymic idea : "sur les mers --
sous les mers". The same English approach would give "under the sea".
The plural in English seems to be common only in collocations like
"seven seas" or "Southern seas". The disadvantage of the singular
is the potential misunderstanding that the number (20,000) refers
to depth (as is the case also in German). The plural is better in
this respect, but seems a bit "artificial" linguistically, because
unusual.

What is also interesting is to see that "sea" is normally used
metonymically as "sea level" (in French as well as in English
or German). Otherwise, we should say "(with)in the sea". There
actually is an older German translation saying "20000 Meilen
unter dem Meeresspiegel". The disadvantage is that this way to
put the tile places additional stress on depth.

So I think, the singular is the better linguistic solution,
because it is common use. The potential confusion as to
depth or travel is not so critical. At school, "serious"
teachers used to say, when I said Verne was my favourite
author, that the ocean is not that deep (20,000 leagues).
This is a "catch 22" situation, because: if you know the ocean
is not that deep, how can you believe that the author meant
that ? Language is never clear and you always need background
knowledge to understand what is meant. A "paper model" is made
of paper, but a "paper mill" is not. Who would dare say:
Saying "paper mill" is silly, because the mill is not made
of paper. So I think the singular is fine...

Kind regards,

Ralf Tauchmann
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tel: +49-351-8336141 fax: -8336142
http://www.ratau.de ; http://tauchmann.ratau.de
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Received on Thu 01 Apr 2004 - 09:48:41 IST

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