I’ve been working on my translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for around ten months now, and I am only halfway done. There are several reasons for this, some personal, and some having to do with the text itself.
I have had to cut back for a while on how much time I spend each day working on my translation projects, but this is not really the full story. I compiled a rough estimate of the amount of time that I’ve spent on this project, and with the same number of hours of work, I was done with Journey to the Center of the Earth, and nearly done with Around the World in Eighty Days. So if it’s not purely an issue of the amount of time, then what is going on?
To start with, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a much longer book. When it was first published, it was printed in two volumes due to the length. Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty days were both published as single volume editions. This gives a rough sense of how much larger of a book it is. While it is not quite double the length of the those others, it is close.
The second issue is that it is a much harder book to translate. Verne loved giving detailed descriptions of the plants, animals, buildings, and machinery encountered by his characters, and this work is no different in that regard. What is different is the extent of these descriptions. Throughout 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Verne uses the technique of listing out the myriad of species that Professor Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land encounter on their adventures as a means of dazzling the reader with the vast range of aquatic life.
Older translations sidestepped the issue entirely by not translating these sections. They simply skip over the lists of aquatic creatures. While this may suit some readers, it takes away from the effect that Verne was trying to accomplish.
There are at least two more recent translations that I’ve found that do take the time to “translate” these lists in their entirety, but in one case the translations are really more transliterations of the French terms that Verne used and do not reflect the common English or scientific names of these animals. In the other case, the names are often translated correctly, but also transliterated when it is not as obvious what Verne was referring to.
I’m proud to say that I’ve been able to work out what was being referred to in nearly every single case, and in the handful of instances where I was not completely sure, I was able to make a good, educated guess as to the genus or species based on the context. The result are lists and descriptions of the marine life encountered that accurately reflect both the content and spirit of Verne’s original text.
As much as possible (and assuming it fits the context), I’ve used unambiguous common names for the genuses and species mentioned. When it is clear that Verne is intending to be precise, or if the common name if overly ambiguous, I use the scientific name. In all of these cases, information about these animals can be found by looking them up under the names that I’ve used in my translation.
Similarly, there are also more figures and measurements than in the other two books that I worked on. These are largely in metric units, which are not difficult to convert, but sometimes they are used as a part of an equation in a technical explanation. In these cases, I’ve taken great pains to not simply convert the units, but to make sure that the equation still works, and that the overall gist of the explanation is understandable.
Lastly, I got a little sidetracked researching the voyages of Dumont D’Urville and Peter Dillon. These figure prominently in the chapters where the Nautilus travels through the South Pacific. In some cases, I was unclear what was meant by certain references to their voyages, and found that I could make sense of it by studying the original source materials. Of course, this was a fascinating topic in its own right, and I spent far longer working on those chapters than I really needed to.
My attitude toward all of this is that I want to take the time to complete everything the way that I feel it should be done, and not cut corners to finish the project sooner. I wish I was further along, but I’m very pleased with the work that I’ve done so far, and am excited to continue through the second half of the book.