I look up the Arsène Lupin books every now and then, just to see what's out there, and there's always some weird thing that comes up that I haven't seen before.
Most of the modern, physical prints of Lupin books (English) out there are just cheap ripoffs of the texts on Gutenberg. Like this one:
Wow! A bilingual edition with the English and French side by side! Cool idea, bad execution. They only did like 5 seconds of looking on Gutenberg and mixed up the translators (it's George Morehead, not Edgar Jepson). Also, using Morehead's translation for the purpose of "learning a new language" isn't great... because these translators 1. work off of different versions of the text and 2. tend to change things around, so it's not an accurate, one to one translation.
It's still a serviceable translation for English readers, but not for the purpose of having both texts side by side to learn the languages. You can literally see the differences on the very first page:
So yeah. Cheap and lazy.
To be fair, English information on Lupin in general is... kind of all over the place. On the Wikipedia page for the first book, Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar, it currently has this image as the "cover of the first American edition":
Except, no, that's not the cover of the first American edition. The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-burglar is the title of the George Morehead translation, which came out in 1910. The translation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos in 1907 is called The Exploits of Arsène Lupin:
...which is the actual first American version. They seem to be aware of this, seeing how they listed Alexander Teixeira de Mattos as the translator. But then we have to ask if crediting everything to a single translator is the best thing to do here? Especially since Lupin has many, many translations, especially for the first book.
Looking at the publication date (10 June 1907) they provided on the page, it seems like they want to dedicate this article to the de Mattos translation. But if that's the case, why is the page titled Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-burglar and not The Exploits of Arsène Lupin? Or maybe it's just the date copied over from the date of the original French publication of the book? But that goes back to the issue of why de Mattos is the only translator given here.
This page really feels like it hasn't been proofread at all. They list the titles of the short stories like this:
"The Extraordinary Life of Arsène Lupin in Prison," "The Extraordinary Life of Arsène Lupin: The Escape of Arsene Lupin," "The Extraordinary Life of Arsene Lupin: The Mysterious Traveler" etc.
It's taken from the original serialized titles in Je sais tout, except whoever originally wrote this page was inconsistent about how they translated them? I don't know why some of the accents on Arsène's name are missing, or why the parenthesis are fucked up, or why the second story is listed as "The Extraordinary Life of Arsène Lupin in Prison," and not "The Extraordinary Life of Arsène Lupin: Arsène Lupin in Prison" like the others.
Or, since they went as far as tracking down the original pages from Je sais tout, and took the time to translate all their little subtitles, why is Seven of Hearts listed as "How I Met Arsene Lupin: The Seven of Hearts," and not like "The New Adventures of Arsène Lupin, The Seven of Hearts: How I Met Arsène Lupin."
It's just inconsistent in what they choose to include or not. Why is "The Extraordinary Life of Arsène Lupin" included for stories that have them but not "The New Adventures of Arsène Lupin"? I feel like at this point they could've just left the titles in French, or not have included the little series-subtitles in the first place. I guess no one editing the article after it was made ever cared to correct it? Or trace the sources for any of this, since there were no links to the original scans.
And, to come back to my point about the different translators and translations, this also applies to the short story titles. Depending on the translator, the short story titles are very different. For example, de Mattos translates "Sherlock Holmes arrive trop tard" as "Holmlock Shears Arrives Too Late." But, for a page that seems to only list de Matto's version of the publication date, they listed that story as "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late" (which is used by, and not limited to, Morehead's translation).
The page mentions the name change from Sherlock Holmes to "Herlock Sholmès" that the later publications took up due to legal issues, but doesn't mention "Holmlock Shears," which is the version of the name de Mattos uses consistently in later books. So, if the translations on there aren't even the de Mattos translations, why is he the only translator listed? This Wikipedia page is just incredibly strange and incomplete.
// was looking through the Queen’s Necklace again and
“hereditary influence” “natural tendency to crime” made it sound like Raoul had some sort of biological thief genes inherited from Théophraste or like if he had kleptomania. But then you look at the original french and it was completely the opposite:
for comparison, another more accurate eng translation:
“his upbringing” “chosen vocation” implies it was more of the environment and outside circumstances, and also a conscious choice to continue with the career of thievery as an adult vs the inherent biological forces of the Thief Genes™
I finished the Translation From Hell last saturday (500 pages Japanese Light Novel… “light” my foot), and I’m now back to a more leisurely work rhythm (meaning I’m not cloistered at home all day long with no time for anything else, basically…), so maybe, i hope, I can resume drawing at last.
But obviously Huevember was kind of a bust, even before I stopped following the colors xD
But I think I lasted longer than last year, at least.
팬분들께서 보내주신 간식 증말 잘먹었습니다 양이 증말 많아서 켄타랑 서노랑 노나먹었습니닷 담주에 해요티비 에서 또 뵈어요!!!빵👉야👆
I ate and really enjoyed the snacks sent from the fans. There was so much, I shared and ate it with Kenta and Seonho. Watch us next week on HeyoTV too!!! bang👉ya👆
I’m (finally) watching Planet Earth except you know, since it’s on TV right now, I’m watching it in French
I’m on episode 3, entitled Fresh Water and I don’t know who the fuck translated this show but OTTERS ARE NOT “OTARIES”.
WHO THE FUCK CHECKED THIS TRANSLATION?? It’s not even the first time, Emperor penguins are not pingouins in French (ep1 or 2). It’s “nicher” and not “nider”. The fuck. The wiki page even has a dedicated section for translation fuckups. And people wonder why I always prefer the original version whenever I watch something.
It reminds me of when I had to correct an official translation (from french to english) from someone who had used “climactic” instead of climate in “climate change”. Fucking shameful from a supposedly pro translating team
