4 ms·

Anybody know why their copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas is "unavailable for legal reasons"? It's linked from wikipedia, but the link is dead (in America a

Anybody know why their copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas is "unavailable for legal reasons"? It's linked from wikipedia, but the link is dead (in America anyway) This book was written and translated into English ~150 years ago. Gutenberg has it. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules-verne/twenty-thousand-leagues-under-the-seas/f-p-walter https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules-verne/twenty-thousan...

Aransentin 4y ago
That URL contains "f-p-walter", so it was presumably his translation from 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Seas#English_translations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_...
acabal 4y ago
We produced it using Project Gutenberg's modern F. P. Walter translation. At the time, there was no copyright notice on the text, only PG's public domain boilerplate, so we produced it thinking it had been dedicated to the public domain. Some years later PG added a copyright notice, so we were forced to take our edition down. There is no acceptable PD translation of 20,000 Leagues; all the classic translations are widely considered to be slapdash, very bad, or severely bowdlerized.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Also some other classics like The Three Musketeers.
  - acabal 4y ago
    Yes, bowdlerization and poor translations were common in those days. We do our best to select a single "best" translation that scholars/readers agree is the most faithful of the public domain options. But in some cases, like 20,000 Leagues, we'd rather not host a book at all than host a bad translation, if that's our only option.
JJMcJ 4y ago
My understanding is that the standard public translations of many books are viewed as inadequate and there are newer and better ones. These days I try to order from the publisher when possible even if it costs a few extra dollars.

Aransentin 4y ago

That URL contains "f-p-walter", so it was presumably his translation from 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Seas#English_translations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_...

acabal 4y ago

We produced it using Project Gutenberg's modern F. P. Walter translation. At the time, there was no copyright notice on the text, only PG's public domain boilerplate, so we produced it thinking it had been dedicated to the public domain. Some years later PG added a copyright notice, so we were forced to take our edition down. There is no acceptable PD translation of 20,000 Leagues; all the classic translations are widely considered to be slapdash, very bad, or severely bowdlerized.

JJMcJ 4y ago
Also some other classics like The Three Musketeers.
- acabal 4y ago
  Yes, bowdlerization and poor translations were common in those days. We do our best to select a single "best" translation that scholars/readers agree is the most faithful of the public domain options. But in some cases, like 20,000 Leagues, we'd rather not host a book at all than host a bad translation, if that's our only option.

JJMcJ 4y ago

My understanding is that the standard public translations of many books are viewed as inadequate and there are newer and better ones. These days I try to order from the publisher when possible even if it costs a few extra dollars.