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Centre of Earth--Stephen White

From: <1001~at~atlanticbb.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:38:38 -0400
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>
Cc: <uheuse~at~stanford.edu>

I have posted the first five chapters of Centre of the Earth translated by Stephen W. White on the following

   http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/sherwood/912-914.doc

also there is an htm file.

We are fortunate in having many good translations of this novel. The Hardwigg version seems to slowly be slipping into obscurity. The Robert Baldick and the Bill Butcher translations are good modern ones. The Ward-Lock Malleson translation and the Routledge 1875 translations are good public domain ones, although both have their shortcomings, and the former has come out in an updated edition by Ursula K. Heise. . The current translation by Stephen W. White may turn out to be the most literal of all. And there is always interest in reading a contemporary translation providing it is reasonably good.

Writing for a newspaper certain compromises were made.these have been rectified where possible. The girl's name Gretchen has been returned to Grauben as well as her nationality Virlandaise. Also although in the first chapter the word "devil" is used, later chapters have reverted to "deuce".. The devil has thus been returned to his rightful place.

One interesting error encountered was the substitution of "seventeenth" for "sixteenth" in three different places and in differing contexts. This turns out to be the clue as to how the translation was made.

We know from the White biography (Also on this page) that White was a French and German scholar who read Schiller in his spare time. He was also an early devotee of Gregg shorthand. When his job as private secretary to a wealthy banker evaporated on the bankruptcy of the latter in the Panic of 1873, White opened up a translation and stenography shop near the offices of the Evening Telegraph. White was thus an expert in taking down French and German spoken word and writing it down in shorthand. Thus the method of his translation was to have someone read the book to him in French while he took down the translation in English shorthand. This would have immensely speeded up the translation process, and might explain also the "17" error. The "XVIe might have been mis-read as "seventeen" as the "e" occurs in an elevated position. (Also there were two translations circulating, the 1863 and the 1867 which need to be compared on this point.) In any event the numbers have been corrected. I believe there must have been compositors who understood shorthand as reporters of the time took down verbatim transcripts of public speeches, and reading shorthand would be a publishing necessity.

This is necessarily a work in progress--while it may have been translated in a week it is taking considerably longer to re-constitute it.


nwolcott2~at~post.harvard.edu
Received on Sun 17 Aug 2008 - 22:41:11 IDT

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