I noted in an earlier post that I had finished the translation work on Journey to the Center of the Earth, and since then I’ve finished the editorial work, the typesetting, and it is now live on Amazon! As was the case with my translation of Around the World in Eighty Days, I mentioned in the “About the Translation” section that I would post something on my blog about the process of translation, and this is that post.
Many of the same issues came up in translating the two works and it would be worth reviewing my other article if you haven’t read it, but there were a number of things that were unique to this work.
One of the most notable difference from my standpoint was the way that Verne used dialog between the two books. In Around the World in Eighty Days, the dialog was terse. I felt that there was a dichotomy between his prose descriptions of the physical world, plants, animals, and machinery, and human agency, which was largely expressed in dialog. I would contend that for the most part that when Verne wanted to tell the reader about something in Around the World in Eighty Days that he used third person narration. However, with a few notable exceptions, when he wanted something to happen he used dialog.
I was a little surprised to find that dialog is used in a very different manner throughout Journey to the Center of the Earth. To start with, I don’t think that I would describe the interactions as “terse.” Characters frequently launch into paragraph-long description or arguments. I had to adjust my style of translation slightly, and eventually landed on the idea of translating the dialog between Axel and Professor Lidenbrock in a conversational academic register. Imagine the sort of discussions that a professor and a graduate student might have. It’s a mix of scientific jargon, and informal discussion. The focus is no longer on human agency, but instead on dialectic. This is very Hegelian, and suits the main characters’ germanic heritage. Axel even alludes to this background in German philosophy in his description of his uncle, though more in reference to Professor Lidenbrock’s tendencies toward solipsism:
His teaching followed the principles of subjectivism, to use an expression from German philosophy–it was entirely for his sake, and not for others.
Another feature of both the dialog and the narration was the subtle humor throughout. Around the World in Eighty Days had a few laugh-out-loud moments, but Journey to the Center of the Earth is a consistently funny book. It does have a few particularly hilarious moments, but overall the humor is much more understated. Professor Lidenbrock takes on the role of the stereotypical “mad” scientist, and Axel is his fussy and neurotic assistant. Since Axel is also the narrator, we have to read between the lines at points, but this just makes things even more humorous.
Of particular interest are the scholarly, or “geeky” jokes that Axel (and Verne) make at times. For instance, when Professor Lidenbrock describes the Icelandic language to his nephew, Axel gleefully points out that all of the features his uncle mentions are also true of German:
Of course not!” retorted the professor. “A translation! What would I do with a translation? Who wants to read a translation? This is the original work in the Icelandic language. It’s a magnificent tongue, both rich and simple and at the same time. It allows a great variety of grammatical combinations, and even more inflections of words!”
“A lot like German,” I suggested with delight.
“Yes,” answered my uncle while shrugging his shoulders, “but with the difference that the Icelandic language has three genders, like Greek, and declines proper nouns, like Latin!”
Or when Professor Lidenbrock talks about consulting with a famous scientist:
Do you remember when the celebrated English chemist Humphry Davy visited me in 1825?”
“How could I? I wasn’t born for another nineteen years.”
“Ah. Well, Humphry Davy came to see me during his trip to Hamburg.”
Beyond Axel’s snide comment about not being born yet, this dialog is doubly funny to the observant reader. The book is set in 1863, and in an earlier passage, we are told that Otto Lidenbrock is fifty years old. This means that he was born around 1813, which would have made him roughly twelve years old when Humphry Davy visited. Davy would have been in his late forties at the time, so it hardly would have been a conference of equals, if it took place at all. This conversation is referenced frequently by Professor Lidenbrock as a justification for his trip, which changes the tone of the book once this fact is known.
I realize that this is delving more into the realm of literary analysis than translation, but my point is this. A careful reading of the book reveals that much of what initially appears to be serious discussion is actually said tongue-in-cheek. Some of the older translations did attempt to portray this, but much of the humor has been lost to modern readers due to the outdated language. I’ve tried to bring back as much as I can of Verne’s humor without being too obvious about it.
Another challenging feature of this particular book was the extensive use of the geological terms. Verne appears to have been heavily influenced by the book La Terre avant de la Deluge (The Earth Before the Flood) by Louis Figuier. This was a beautifully illustrated book that summarized the best information available at the time concerning the earth’s geological history and the fossil record. The terms that Verne uses to refer to the geological time scale are borrowed directly from this work. While this makes it very easy to figure out what Verne is referring to, it still presents a problem in translation due to the fact that Figuier’s terminology does not align with modern terminology for referring to geological time.
To begin with, the term “epoch” is used to refer to what is now called and “era.” This is a straightforward substitution. However, the names that Figuier (and Verne) use to refer to geological eras are Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, etc. In the case of Primary and Secondary, these correspond almost exactly to the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, so I translated them this way. Verne also talks about a “primitive epoch,” which might be thought of as precambrian, except this doesn’t really fit the idea of what is being described. As a result, I’ve chosen to translate this in a variety of ways, such as “the earth’s earliest era.” Things get tricky when it comes to Tertiary and Quaternary. These do not correspond directly to any modern terms for geological time, so I chose to leave them the way that they are. I realize that this results in a slight inconsistency (very obvious in the diagram at the front of my translation), but I feel that the translation in each individual passage is the best translation in context.
The names of the layers of stone are also taken from Figuier. These correspond to types of stone found at different levels at specific locations in England or France. I’ve included a few of them in my diagram when it was clear what level was being referred to. The most interesting of these from a translational standpoint is massif granitique, which literally means “granite massif.” Verne believed that the original surface of the earth was granite, and I’ve generally translated this as something along the lines of “granite bedrock.”
The names of prehistoric creatures also present difficulties in some cases. The names that Verne uses to refer to certain species do not correspond to names used for any currently known species. In other words, Verne may refer to an animal such as le Leptotherium or le mericotherium, but there is no animal known by this name that can be found in any modern reference work. This means that curious readers will not be able to look up any information about what these creatures are. In the course of my research, I was able to find information about these animals in older, 19th century manuals on paleontology, but I did not want to include footnotes since I feel that these distract from the flow of the narrative. Instead I added “helper” statements, and translated these terms as “the giraffe-like Leptotherium” and “the extinct giant camel, Merycotherium.” These are not the most elegant translations, but are not distracting in context, and give the reader a clear idea of what is being said.
In the case of the animals that can easily be looked up in an encyclopedia, I did not include these sort of helper statements, but instead tried to use the most recognizable form of their name. For well-known animals such as the mammoth or the pterodactyl, this was their common name (i.e. the ones I just gave). For lesser-known creatures, I used their scientific names.
As was the case in Around the World in Eighty Days, place names also presented certain dilemmas in terms of historical forms vs. modern forms. However, there were a few instances involving the Icelandic language that lead to some unique translational problems. One of these was how to refer to names that use Icelandic suffixes for terms such as “mountain” or “peninsula,” since these suffixes are not at all familiar to English-speaking readers. I already dealt with this in detail in my post on “The Place Name Dilemma,” so I think it’s enough to link to that here.
The other issue had to do with some terms that were incorrect in the original French text—in particular, the terms “aoalkirkja” and “pingstaoer.” I have only a rudimentary understanding of Icelandic, but immediately realized that these were not correct. On a hunch, I guessed that the letter o in each of these was supposed to be the letter eth (ð) from the Icelandic alphabet, and that the letter p at the beginning of the second term might be the letter thorn (þ). This yields the words “aðalkirkja” and “þingstaður.” These are actual Icelandic terms with meanings that fit what Verne describes. Once I had the correct words, I was able to verify this solution by locating a high resolution scan of Olsen’s 1849 map of Iceland (the same map given to Professor Lidenbrock in the book) on the Mapping Iceland site. The legend on the map gives the terms the way that I have spelled them, as well as the exact French descriptions that Verne uses. As far as I know, I’m the only translator to have worked out this piece of information.
On a similar note, Han’s use of Danish was also difficult from a translational standpoint. On the face of it, there is no problem. The meaning of what Hans says is either obvious from context, or else Professor Lidenbrock translates. The difficulty is that Hans is not speaking Danish. While Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are generally mutually intelligible when spoken, there are some very distinct orthographical differences between these three languages, as well as differences in vocabulary. The language Hans speaks is mostly fairly standard Swedish. I’m not sure why Verne mixed up Swedish and Danish. I don’t know enough about his process in researching and writing this book to have a solid theory. However, given this knowledge, I’ve tried to fix some of the inconsistencies in spelling to make it easier for someone who does know Swedish to undertand what is being said.
As was the case with my post on translating Around the World in Eighty Days, I could continue on almost indefinitely with all of the details of each translational choice that I made, but I won’t. I think the points that I’ve made about the use of dialog, humor, geological terms, Icelandic place names, and Hans actually speaking Swedish are the most pertinent and interesting topics to a casual reader. There are a few other specific cases that I could go into much more detail about, but I will save those topics for later blog posts.
Lastly, if you stumbled on this post somehow without having read either of my translations, here is the link to my new translation of Journey to the Center of the Earth on Amazon, and here is the link to my translation of Around the World in Eighty Days.