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From: "Evelyn C. Leeper" <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom,rec.arts.sf.movies
Subject: Re: Captain Nemo's Timeline
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2025 21:04:41 -0400
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On 6/16/25 7:26 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Jerry Brown  <jerry@jwbrown.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>> My memory of the book is that Aronnax, etc escaped in a detachable pod
>> while Nemo and the crew were busy battling a storm, but it was about
>> 40 years ago that I read it.
>>
>> Maybe time for a reread.
> 
> If you are reading in translation, let me suggest that the recent translation
> is MUCH better than the old version we grew up with.
> --scott
> 

You mean the one where they translate "lentille" as "bean" (instead of 
"lens") and hence claimed Ned Land used a bean to make a fire?

Or as I wrote in my 2006 review of 20KLUTS:

If [Mercier] Lewis [the original translator] was not writing that the 
density of steel was "from .7 to .8 that of water" where Verne had said 
that it was "7.8 that of water," then he was having Nemo talk about 
"jumping over" an island where Verne says "blowing up" (the same word in 
French, but Lewis completely misses the meaning). In fact, Lewis 
consistently gets the numbers and calculations wrong. He frequently 
confuses the French "six" (6) with "dix" (10), and substitutes English 
measures for metric. The latter would be almost close if he substituted 
"yards" for "metres," but he sometimes substitutes "feet" instead! When 
you read this book, use either Miller's annotated version or a newer 
translation. (If the fourth paragraph mentions Cuvier and other 
naturalists, it is undoubtedly a newer translation.)

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a child: and when I was a man I decided
how foolish it would be to give all that up." --Mark R. Leeper