The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a new translation (by Marie-Thérèse Noiset) of Jules Verne's The Self-Propelled Island, just out from the University of Nebraska Press.
This was long overdue: as Arthur B. Evans noted back in 1992, when someone published the very old version yet again:
This was long overdue: as Arthur B. Evans noted back in 1992, when someone published the very old version yet again:
To summarize, a revised and more accurate English translation of Verne's L'Ile à hélice would have been genuinely welcome and would have done honor to any publisher. In contrast, this book brings shame: it represents a commercialized resurrection of a translator's travesty, and it aptly demonstrates how an industry's profit motive can sometimes overpower its sense of literary integrity.The University of Nebraska Press has now stepped up -- but Noiset isn't entirely true to the Verneian spirit either in her translation, admitting in her Translator's Note: "the narration has been translated into the past tense" (while Verne wrote it in the present tense). You can sort of understand the reasons for the shift -- and yet ..... (Personally, I think there's a lot to be said for the feel of greater immediacy the present tense gives (or would give) this story .....)