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

[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.