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Re: Old Favorites in New English Translations

From: wbutcher <wbutcher~at~netvigator.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 09:40:27 +0800
To: "'Jules Verne Forum'" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

Dear Rick,

 

To Art’s timely intervention, I’d like to add my own congratulations! An
amazing achievement!

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

http://www.ibiblio.org/julesverne/

1A, Kai Kuk Shue Ha, Luk Keng, North District, NT, HONG KONG

 

  _____

From: owner-jvf~at~Gilead.org.il [mailto:owner-jvf~at~Gilead.org.il] On Behalf Of
aevans2 tds.net
Sent: 04 February 2010 09:32
To: Jules Verne Forum
Subject: Re: Old Favorites in New English Translations

 

Dear Rick,

Congratulations on this excellent translation project! I hope your omnibus
Verne collection has great success.

All best wishes,
Art



On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 8:11 PM, Rick Walter~at~comcast.net
<rick1walter~at~comcast.net> wrote:

Dear Friends,

 

I’m pleased and proud to announce the publication of a handy omnibus of some
of Jules Verne’s best-loved novels, available now from SUNY Press/Excelsior
Editions ($24.95 pb; ISBN 978-1-4384-3238-0). Amazing Journeys: Five
Visionary Classics offers my new, complete translations of Journey to the
Center of the Earth; From the Earth to the Moon; Circling the Moon; 20,000
Leagues Under the Seas; and Around the World in 80 Days. The book also
includes a foreword celebrating Verne’s unique mix of science and show
business, individual introductions to each novel, textual notes,
recommendations for further reading, and dozens of classic engravings by
Riou, Montaut, Roux, de Neuville, Férat, and others.

 

Over recent decades, as you know, Verne has fared tremendously well in
America, and scholarly editions of many less-familiar titles are now
available on the U.S. market. This item, however, is for the general reader.
America is full of smart people who aren’t literary scholars but who would
love to get acquainted or reacquainted with Verne’s essential works. Amazing
Journeys is aimed at them.

 

Over the years, I’ve translated six full novels and three fragments by
Verne, and in the process, I recall hobnobbing with scores of scientists and
engineers. One thing popped up time and again: they adore Jules Verne. They
grew up with his tales, he shaped their lives and careers. The same goes for
science fiction buffs, today’s high school students, and countless others.
These readers aren’t literary scholars, yet they, too, deserve the authentic
Verne. But there are so many watered-down adaptations and condensations out
there, and a good modern English translation of Autour de la Lune hasn’t
been commercially available for three decades!

 

Since Verne was a science buff with a showbiz background, he also shaped my
own life: for decades I’ve earned my living as a scriptwriter & broadcaster,
and my lifelong hobby has been fossil hunting. So, as the first factor in
this dual equation, I’ve worked to make Verne’s science clear and
accurate—something that’s far easier now that the internet is so enormously
developed. In the early 90s I did a lot of Vernian research, but it was on
my hands and knees in dingy library stacks or in front of museum specimen
drawers—many problems never got solved at all. But today I can pay
electronic visits to original French sources that Verne himself consulted,
so the litanies of fish in 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas or the catalogs of
craters in Circling the Moon can finally make sense to English-speaking
readers.

 

As for the showbiz half of the equation, I’ve put extra energy into
rendering the wit, humor, and comic hijinks in Verne’s yarns. Few readers
realize that he scripted sitcoms in his early career and was a top-flight
gag writer. Not surprisingly, that gift for comedy carried over into the
novels, yet much of it has gotten lost in translation. Hopefully not
here—Verne is one of literature’s slyest humorists and satirists, and I’ve
been burning calories to put this over in these new translations.

 

All five, needless to say, are complete down to the smallest substantive
detail, benefiting immeasurably from the many available online texts, the
electronic accessibility of the manuscripts housed in the Nantes municipal
library, and the countless achievements of contemporary Verne scholarship.

 

Here are the book’s vitals:

 

Jules Verne: Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics

$24.95 paperback; ISBN 978-1-4384-3238-0

680 pages; 40 b/w illustrations

Excelsior Editions, an imprint of State University of New York Press

 

Ordering details and additional information are available at the publisher’s
site, http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5036-amazing-journeys.aspx. Or you can
visit Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/
<http://www.amazon.com/+Amazing-Journeys-Visionary-Classics-Excelsior/dp/143
8432380/ref=sr13?ie=UTF8&s=books&>
Amazing-Journeys-Visionary-Classics-Excelsior/dp/1438432380/ref=sr13?ie=UTF8
&s=books&qid= 1263075919&sr=1-3

 

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed channeling it!

 

All the best,

 

Frederick Paul Walter

Albuquerque, New Mexico

 

 
Received on Thu 04 Feb 2010 - 03:40:42 IST

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