Hello nepre-ga,
Thank you for the opportunity to get familiar with the new English
translations of a book that I first read in fourth grade in Hungarian.
I was always puzzled why the English versions did not match what I
remembered from my first reading of the story. It seems that the
English translations for this Verne novel have a complicated history
and that although the book was first published in French in 1874 and
translated into English by W.H.G. Kingston in 1875. Many abridged
versions were published. Some translations even changed the names of
the characters. This situation was remedied by the almost simultaneous
publications of the two translations you ask about.
http://www.j-verne.de/verne19_7.html
THE FASCINATION OF THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
Perhaps I give you a few hints to some differences in some English
versions of this story. The first English translation was available by
Sampson Low in 1875, translated by W.H.G. Kingston. Based on this
first English version followed many other variants of translations or
abridged versions. Most of them are with a lot of changes to the
French original, or with deleted passages. The important unacceptable
change was the creation of new names of the central figures of the
novel. So Cyrus Smith become Cyrus Harding, Pencroff Pencroft and
Harbert Herbert. The free use of the original text started by Kingston
in 1875. Until today we can find the non original names in most of
English-speaking films and most books in English.
You ask which one I would recommend.
The Mysterious Island
by Jules Verne, Jordan Stump (Translator), Caleb Carr (Introduction),
Jules Ferat (Illustrator), Modern Library, (December 18, 2001)
The Mysterious Island (Early Classics of Science Fiction)
by Jules Verne, Sydney Kravitz (Translator), Arthur B. Evans (Editor),
William Butcher (Introduction), Sidney Kravitz, Wesleyan University
Press, (February 2002)
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue250/books2.html
The Mysterious Island
After more than a century of butchered translations, a mysterious
masterpiece is finally made whole
Trying to find information about what differentiates the two new
translations I discovered that Verne has a huge following and that
there are dozens of Web sites dedicated to his work. I would recommend
Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection as a starting point. Not only does
he offer a huge collection of Verne resources, but if you join the
Jules Verne Forum you can then access the Jules Verne Virtual Library
and read the Kravitz translation of Mysterious Island online – both a
text only or an illustrated hypertext version. You could then draw
your own conclusions about the style and quality of the translation.
http://jv.gilead.org.il
Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection
Jules Verne Virtual Library
A comprehensive library of Jules Verne works in electronic form,
French, English, and Spanish: 19 novels, 8 short stories, 2 essays and
5 interviews.
My warm thanks to Sidney Kravitz for making his unabridged 200,000
word English translation of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island
available to the readers of this page.
Looking further for a forming a basis of comparison of the two
translations I found the following articles.
http://home.netvigator.com/~wbutcher/reviews/paul_di_filippo.htm
Paul Di Filippo, Science Fiction Weekly, January 2002
Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island appeared in 1874 in France, but
the history of English-language editions of Verne's masterpiece has
been a sad and sordid one. Bad translations which abridged much of the
original text (the Bantam edition of 1970 contained only 90,000 words
of Verne's 200,000, for instance) guaranteed a reading experience that
would pale in comparison to what Verne intended. This current edition,
buttressed by massive but reader-friendly scholarly apparatus,
remedies the deficits of all previous versions. ….
The many good things contained in this book begin and rely on
translator Sydney Kravitz's wonderful rendering of Verne's original
words. There is nothing fusty or dull about this tale, as filtered
through Kravitz's talents.
http://www.literarymoose.info/literature/verne.html#mysterious
The Mysterious Island ~ exotic novel of adventure ~
The Mysterious Island was first translated into English still in the
XIX century, and until last year, that was the only translation
available. The morose fact is that the translation in question
deviated substantially from the original. ….
Anno Domini 2001, as irony would have it, two new English translations
appeared in print, both of which claim to restore the authoritative
text of Jules Verne. What a treat! If you spent many an hour in your
youth reading The Mysterious Island, I heartily recommend this new,
updated translation. (Refers to Jordan Stump version) If you have not
had an opportunity to discover the hilarious world of adventure by
Monsieur Verne, it's high time you started
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2002/2002-01-03-jules-verne.htm
Jules Verne even more 'Mysterious'
… Thirty-one years later, Stump is a professor of French at the
University of Nebraska who translates modern French novels. When an
editor at Random House asked him to recommend someone to do a new
translation of what some scholars now see as Verne's most important
work, Stump took on the project himself. ….
His translation of The Mysterious Island (Modern Library, $23.95) is
out this week. Coincidentally, another English translation — the first
unabridged one since 1876 — by retired scientist Sidney Kravitz
(Wesleyan University Press, $24.95) was published last month. Both are
part of a resurgence of interest in Verne, the first author to
popularize science fiction.
http://www.j-verne.de/verne19_7.html
THE FASCINATION OF THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
In 2000 this confusion and mutilation of the text was finished. A new
unabridged translation into English of this classic Verne novel by
Sidney Kravitz was published in the USA (for bookworms: ISBN
0-8195-6559-8). In this book I found an interesting introduction by
William Butcher. Foe example, the original name Cyrus Smith is a
fusion of the first name of Cyrus Field (the great American who
installed the Atlantic cable – Verne knew him from a passage on the
Great Eastern across the Atlantic) and the surname Smith refers to a
blacksmith. I like this simple explanation very much.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0415/290_print.html
Eerily Prescient
New novels cinch Jules Verne's reputation as the Nostradamus of
technology.
The good news for Verne readers: Steadily, the 40-odd badly translated
works are being improved in new editions. One of his most wonderful
adventure stories, The Mysterious Island, about five men stranded in
the South Seas, has just been reworked into English by two different
scholars (Modern Library, $24 and Wesleyan University Press, $40).
Modern Library's is the more elegant, inviting translation, but
Wesleyan's has the advantage of including all 150 of the gorgeous
woodcuts created for the original French 1870 version.
As you can see, only the Forbes article makes a direct comparison of
the two translations. Taking their characterization doesn’t make it
easier to choose. I think I would take the best of both worlds by
reading the Stump version as a book and logging onto the Jules Verne
Virtual Library I mentioned above to look at those “gorgeous
woodcuts.”
If you’re a big Jules Verne fan, I’d recommend borrowing both volumes
from the library (at the same time, if possible) and read the two in
tandem. I don’t think you can go wrong with either new translation.
Enjoy!
czh
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