Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
And I would have voted that way had there been another tie. Personally, I'd much rather read Verne, but I don't consider it to fit the category as I understand it.
So which is the best and most complete currently available English translation?
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There is a translation by Frederick Paul Walter done in 1991 with the original illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou for $2.45 in the Kindle book store.
http://www.amazon.com/original-illus...+under+the+sea
It claims to be "an unabridged translation from the original French" and the illustrations are certainly very good.
For the same price
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Full Version (Annotated) (Literary Classics Collection) [Kindle Edition] is available. This uses the older Mercier translation--but
not the cut version of it originally published in English. It is actually quite a good translation in its original form. If the language sounds dated, remember that it is more-or-less contemporaneous with Verne himself. However, judging by what I have read so far of the two, Walter's translation does flow more naturally.
There are several complete works of Verne--but I'm not sure which translation they use.
The Greatest Hits of Jules Verne (Five Books) [Kindle Edition] for only $1.23 does use the Walter translation which one of the reviewers describes as "excellent, modern and unabridged".
Halcyon Classics I've usually found reasonably good and the Verne collections are described as "unexpurgated" but the specific translation isn't given, though a set done in 2009 by Raleigh St Clair Books does use the modern version.
The copy in the mobile read library is a complete version prepared by Harry T--and it's bound to be pleasant to read and excellently formatted.
