English translations

[lannamichaels]

I've got a weekend family thing happening, so naturally I want to bring the Brick with me and hopefully finish the parts of it I haven't read yet. I've been reading the Hapgood translation on Project Gutenburg, but that's an ebook. I've got the following dead tree translations on hold at the library and was wondering which is considered the best/you like better?

• Charles E. Wilbour
  
• Julie Rose
  
• Norman Denny
  

Comments

[genarti]

Sadly I have no firsthand experience of any of these! I've been reading the Fahnestock-MacAfee translation.

What I've heard is that Julie Rose aims for a much more modern colloquial translation than the others, which is a totally valid choice that nonetheless a lot of people find hilarious and/or jarring at times. Denny does more editorializing than most -- I think he puts a bunch of the digressions at the end instead of where they are in the text, or edits them out entirely, or something? -- which a lot of people object to (and I would, personally) but I've been told he also has some gorgeous sections. I can't remember what I've heard about Wilbour -- is that the first English translation?

[lannamichaels]

I've been reading the Fahnestock-MacAfee translation.

I didn't see that one on my RESERVE ALL OF THE TRANSLATIONS pass through the catalog, but I just checked again and they have it. (Although possibly not enough time for me to get it unless I go to the branch that has it available after work, which I could do). The cataloug entry says it's based on the Wilbour translation.


Denny does more editorializing than most -- I think he puts a bunch of the digressions at the end instead of where they are in the text, or edits them out entirely, or something? -- which a lot of people object to (and I would, personally) but I've been told he also has some gorgeous sections.

Oh my. Thanks for letting me know. I'm avoiding all of the abridged options and I defintely don't want things to suddenly be moved around. Especially because of the importance of knowing when things show up in the book; I accept that I'll be Wrong On The Internet, but I don't want it to be because of *the translation I was using. ;)

[genarti]

Yeah, the Fahnestock-MacAfee is from the 1980s -- it's got the iconic Les Mis poster picture of Cosette in tricolor on the front, or at least my copy does, along with a "now a Broadway musical!" tagline thing. I think it's an updating of the Wilbour, mostly, although I haven't read both to compare.

[tenlittlebullets]

Fahnestock-MacAfee is based on Wilbour in the sense that they tightened up and modernized the prose. Not to the extent of jarring colloquialisms like Julie Rose, more that Wilbour can read extremely archaic at times, much more archaic than Hugo's actual writing style. (Hapgood has the same problem, with bonus mistranslations and inaccuracies littered all over; Hapgood and Denny are the only two versions I'll actively hate on, Hapgood for objectively terrible translation and Denny for not respecting the text.)

Fahnestock-MacAfee also lines up with my preferences on how to treat 'untranslateable' things: snippets of verse, difficult argot, complicated puns. It gives them in French with a footnoted translation/explanation instead of trying to work a half-baked English equivalent seamlessly into the text.

Edit: So yes, F-MA is the translation I'd recommend. In order of preference I'd rank them F-MA, Lascelles Wraxall (hard to find, but +1 million for translating 'Oreste à jeun et Pylade ivre' as 'Orestes Sober and Pylades Drunk'), Wilbour|Rose depending on your jarring-archaism/jarring-colloquialism preferences, Denny, Hapgood.

[carmarthen]

I'm curious about Hapgood and all the mistranslation, because so far I've found a bunch of places where she's more accurate than FMA (we probably care about different parts of the Brick).

[cahn]

...This is mostly just me talking at random about translations, since my French is not good enough to justify any sort of pronouncement by me.

-The infamous Gorbeau incident bit, where Hapgood says that Javert says the pistol would "missed fire." Okay, maybe that's archaic? And it's actually better than the Julie Rose translation, where I think I read someone say that Javert says Thenadier will "miss," thus making him apparently telekinetic. (Though maybe that explains a lot about fanon Javert?)

I had issues with Hapgood's translation of "Javert déraillé," although maybe it's because I have read this particular chapter of F-MA so many freaking times. But for example, the key line

Une chose l'avait étonné, c'était que Jean Valjean lui eût fait grâce, et une chose l'avait pétrifié, c'était que, lui Javert, il eût fait grâce à Jean Valjean.

Hapgood translates this

One thing had amazed him,—this was that Jean Valjean should have done him a favor, and one thing petrified him,—that he, Javert, should have done Jean Valjean a favor.

F-MA translates this

One thing had astonished him -- that Jean Valjean had spared him, and one thing had petrified him, that he, Javert, had spared Jean Valjean.

Hapgood gets more of the French sentence structure (which honestly I actually prefer about F-MA, English isn't French, and it makes it rather more difficult to read to use the French structures), but I think "spare" is more accurate than "did a favor," both in terms of the actual translation (I think, I'm relying on google here, but it sounds like there's a resonance with "grace" that Hugo's taking advantage of) and in terms of not making me think totally inappropriate things (no, not like that! Stuff like, oh, I guess Javert let him borrow a cup of sugar!)

There's et s'apercevoir subitement qu'on a sous sa mamelle de bronze quelque chose d'absurde et de désobéissant qui ressemble presque à un cœur! -- somehow the on a became "one cherishes" in Hapgood, which is really just... weird.

This is a totally minor thing which I know is just me, but in the last chapter Hapgood (and I think Wilbour as well) translates Valjean's response to Marius as "Thanks," which seems oddly flippant to my ear ("Thanks a lot, dude!") and sort of ruins the whole crying-my-eyes-out feel of that section. F-MA is the only pre-2000 translation I know of that translates it "Thank you."

I see what you're saying about Hapgood being more true to a word-by-word translation for the most part, though; I do think she is. It sort of reminds me of the KJV version of the Bible -- with my extremely extremely halting knowledge of Greek, it seems to me that the KJV is actually much better than more modern versions at getting at the word-by-word Greek, except sometimes when it gets the translation just wildly wrong.

[lannamichaels]

Yay, thank you! Very useful :)

[elsane]

I agree with Carmarthen -- yes, I've found spots where Hapgood is wrong, but they're usually easy to spot, and, while they're irritating, they're surface errors. In other places, often in description of physical things, she's more precise than FMA. Also, her word choice is often really gorgeous to my ears, if, yes, old fashioned. What about Hapgood do you find really unforgivable?

[melannen]

Ooh, is Wraxall actually good about things other than Orestes and Pylades? :D I'm going to be switching to Wraxall once I get to Marius (the only paper Les Mis I own is a really really old Wraxall but I only have volume two, so I'm mixing F-MA and Hapgood for the first half). I've seen kind of mixed reviews of Wraxall in the fandom, but I've also seen very little about Wraxall at all...