Jules Verne Forum

<jvf@Gilead.org.il>

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec 19961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009

Re: new 20K

From: thomas mccormick <tom_amity~at~hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:23:37 +0000
To: jvf~at~Gilead.org.il

This sounds like a very interesting edition with a lot of useful features.
If it uses the Mercier translation, though, I find that disappointing
because I don't think the translation is very good. Personally, I disagree
with the statement that Mercier conveys the flavor of Verne well---I don't
think he does, and I don't understand how he would be "incompetent" if he
did!

Tom McCormick


>----- Original Message -----
>
>From: spaceart~at~att.net
>
>Date: Monday, October 10, 2005 10:19 am
>
>Subject: new 20K
>
>
>
> > I will have the new 20K available by the end of the week. I hope
> > not to have the problems I had initially with Journey (which took
> > three tries before an acceptable version was made available).
> >
> > The text of 20K is essentially that of the old Unicorn edition---
> > albeit with as many of typos corrected as I have been able to find
> > (Unicorn did not proof the typescript before printing, which
> > certainly annoyed me). Since the Unicorn book came out so long
> > ago, I thought I'd explain just what it is. It is based on the
> > justly-reviled Lewis Mercier translation, which I went through
> > literally word-for-word, comparing it with the original French
> > edition. I made about 3000 individual textual corrections, in
> > addition to replacing all of the missing text.
> >
> > I discovered that while Mercier was an incompetent translator, he
> > was also an extraordinarily !
> lazy one. There was an advantage to
> > this: he made no attempt to superimpose his own voice onto
> > Verne's. The result is that his version conveys, I think, very
> > accurately Verne's style of writing. In other words, the Lewis
> > Mercier translation---for all of its myriad faults---reads very
> > much like what Verne would have produced had he written the book
> > in English.
> >
> > At the time the Unicorn edition was published, it was the most
> > complete and accurate English edition of the novel available.
> > There have, of course, been far more scholarly translations
> > published since, but none, I think, that makes any effort to
> > preserve Verne's writing style---the cadence of his sentences, for
> > instance. There is certainly justification for modernizing the
> > language of the book---but in some ways this is like modernizing,
> > say, Mark Twain or H.G. Wells or Dickens. These a!
> re Victorian
> > novels and part of the fun of reading them, I th
>ink, is the
> > language in which they are told.
> >
> > The version that will be available this week will contain most of
> > the illustrations from the Unicorn edition (albeit in B&W),
> > numerous maps, a schematic of the Nautilus, diagrams of 19th
> > century submarines, etc. etc.
> >
> > R
> >
> > --
> > Black Cat Studios
> > http://www.black-cat-studios.com
> >

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Received on Tue 11 Oct 2005 - 05:23:51 IST

JV.Gilead.org.il
Copyright © Zvi Har’El
$Date: 2009/02/01 22:36:11 $$