Around the Moon

©2004— 2006

Introduction

 

One of the pleasures of revising an old translation of a Verne novel is to choose your own approach. There are basically three public domain translations of Around the Moon, an anonymous Ward-Lock edition of 1877, that of Thomas H. Linklater by George Routledge in 1877, and the original 1873 translation by Lewis Page Mercier and Eleanor Elizabeth King. The 1876 translation of Edward Roth (All Around the Moon) is more a paraphrase than a translation, but it is occasionally useful for insights into currents of the time.

The Mercier translation leaves out about 15% of the book, apparently on the instructions or editing of the publisher Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington. Both the Ward-Lock and the Linklater versions are practically complete. The Ward-Lock is the more literal but often choppy translation which often gets the science wrong as well. The Linklater is much more correct as to the science, but does considerable re-arranging of paragraphs and paraphrases more sentences than need be. Mercier, a Greek and Latin scholar, fluent in French and German, is perhaps the most linguistically gifted of the three translators. In spite of the errors (which are not very numerous), in the main his translation provides the best Victorian English translation, true to Verne's original. Since the Mercier translation is the one most often reprinted, it seemed appropriate to produce a freely distributable edited version in order to bring all of the book without excuse to all readers. In spite of the corrections and additions that were necessary, it is surprising how many of the pages flow one to the next without need for a single change.

Those who first encountered Verne through the Lewis Mercier translations will now have an opportunity to see how the book could have appeared had the deleted material been included. This revision was about 4/5 completed when I became aware of the Salemson (uncredited) translation (1970) published by Heritage Press, also a reconstituted Mercier version. However, in common with all extant reconstituted translations it has a restricted copyright, retains English units, and not reprinted since 1970, it has remained unknown to the public at large.

Some other changes in the current edition include the use of the metric system when used by Verne (as is done in the most recent new translations of Verne), and the retention of all of his original measurement units: foot, pied, pouce, toise, mile, league, yard, etc. In 1870 the metric system in France had only been officially adopted for 33 years (since 1837) and many of the old measures were still in common use. Hetzel, Verne's publisher, would have been eager to promote the new scientific French system, and what better way could there be than by using dozens of quaint units along with the new and simpler metric ones. Verne also uses the technique of constantly varying his units in order to keep the reader on his toes. By retaining Verne's original units we preserve a flavour which is lost in the usual conversion to English units. French currency, the franc, has been retained as such when used by Verne. French expletives do not translate well, particularly by the ubiquitous "By Jove!" employed so often by the Victorian writers. So the expletives and exclamations have been retained in the original French.

Michel Ardan also emerges as a more complete and complex person than the comic relief he appears in the abridged version. He philosophizes, asks the hard questions, questions to which Barbicane fumbles for an answer. "What is in a vacuum?" "What is the ether?" "How cold is space?" He asks Barbicane why he cannot be provided with a space suit to venture outside the capsule. While Barbicane parrots the "official" scientific response of the time, one cannot help wondering if Verne too did not share some of Ardan's skepticism of these patent replies.

This version has no claim to great originality. The original Mercier translation taken from the Scribner Edition of 1906 was used as a base, and the Ward-Locke and Routledge versions were adapted to fill in the gaps. The Livre de Pôche Autour de la Lune has been used as the French source, and for the measurements. In addition Christian Sanchez of Rosario, Argentina has been invaluable in finding many undetected errors in my original version.

Those who are approaching the complete Around the Moon for the first time will be surprised to find in it the mathematical equations for the physics of space flight including the first expression (I believe) in English for the escape velocity of a projectile on an inter-planetary mission. These equations are found in Chapter IV, "A Little Algebra", where the usual Mercier translation omits all of the algebra! These equations, although reprinted in other Victorian translations, in the Dover edition (1960) of the Roth translations, and in the Salemson (1970), still remain largely unknown. It is hoped that this freely available edition will make Verne's science much better known and appreciated. A discussion of these equations (pointing out the errors in the equations in the French edition) is included in an appendix.

Some of the descriptions of the voyage in Chapters VI and xxx presage the advent of Einstein's relativity theory. In fact Verne's description of motion in an accelerated frame might be considered the first statement of the theory of General Relativity.

In 1978 Walter Miller published The Annotated Earth to the Moon, a new translation of the first part of Verne's moon duo. In an appendix to that work he derives ab initio an (erroneous) equation for the escape velocity which (apparently unbeknownst to him) was published correctly by Verne in Around the Moon in 1870.

In 130 years language changes, and Victorian English is not always easy to comprehend. For this reason a glossary has been added to explain some of the more uncommon terms encountered in this book. The original words have been retained where possible in the text, as to attempt to modernize would produce neither fish nor fowl. Also an attempt has been made to annotate this version to the extent now possible with the use of the internet so that a deeper understanding of Verne's allusions will be possible.

This effort was inspired by the work of Walter Miller's Annotated 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1978) and Ron Miller's 20,000 Leagues (1980) both of which are reconstituted versions of Mercier translations. Both are now out of print, but Ron Miller has republished his as a Lulu POD book (2005). In common with Walter Miller this version attempts to show both the original Mercier translation and the updated portions. Here we have the original Mercier in black, with the changes and corrections in red, and the deleted words in a strikeout font. Thus we have the original with all deletions, additions, and changes (I— in black, strikeout, and red) ), the original with changes and additions; (II— in black and red); and finally a complete readable version (III— in black only). Thus the advantages of being able to publish three different versions at the same time on the internet.

A word might be added here about the errors found in the Mercier version. In research to be published elsewhere, I have come to the conclusion that Eleanor King read the French version to Mercier, paragraph by paragraph, and he subsequently dictated the English translation back to her from memory a paragraph at a time. Thus many words which sound alike in English or French become confused. It is also apparently the case that Mercier was unable to review the final version which then went to the editors uncorrected. Numerous errors which document this theory are marked in footnotes. It is amazing that these obvious errors have remained uncorrected through many editions for over 130 years.

As a companion to this text, we note there are books and interactive maps of the moon on the internet (mentioned in the Appendix) which will assist readers in following the voyage. The html version also has links to numerous illustrations.

An appendix lists the principal errors and corrections by chapter for easy reference.

For the convenience of English readers, the original figure captions of Mercier and King have been retained.