The Reading Room

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8:06 AM

@Randal'Thor I encourage you to edit the question to improve it. (But instead of trying to disambiguate "best", I recommend changing it to something like "What are the qualities of the different English translations of Jules Verne? How do they compare?")

2 hours later…

b_jonas

9:50 AM

@GarethRees Why?

Gareth Rees

10:21 AM

@b_jonas Why what?

If you mean "why did I encourage Rand to edit the question to improve it", that's because I support the general principle that site regulars should be brave in editing questions to make them better suited to the site. See this conversation for a discussion of the reasons I support this principle

b_jonas

10:39 AM

@GarethRees Yes, but specifically. This isn't like Poe's Raven that is old enough that every good poet tried to translate, so we ended up with five really good translations, and you can discuss whether Kosztolányi's is literal enough or not. For Verne novels, I think it's genuinely the choice between bad translations and good translations, and the drawback of good translations is that they're harder to find and usually weren't printed with the original etchings.

So I'm guessing the original phrasing of "which ones are the best" may be appropriate, though I don't read Verne in English so I can't be sure.

Gareth Rees

10:57 AM

@b_jonas Ah, you mean, "why did I suggest changing the focus of the question?" That's because I suspect that the OP did not consider the trade-offs in translation and that "best" for one purpose might not be "best" for another. Accordingly, I doubt that the OP would be helped by trying to make them pin down what they mean by "best" — it would be more productive to leave the question open-ended as I suggested

b_jonas

Though I think a bigger problem is that it's a big question because Verne has like a hundred books.

Gareth Rees

@b_jonas I agree with that.

3 hours later…

Bookworm

2:11 PM

Q: Does 'In a Grove' assume that dead people don't lie?

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Bookworm

2:51 PM

Q: Can anyone identify this parody of 'Consider the ant'?

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