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Monday, May 1, 2017

From the Earth to the Moon: Web Edition Updated

In December 1996, I posted a Web edition of From the Earth to the Moon, an English translation of Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune. This is a rather poor English translation of Verne's novel—it reads like it was prepared by a person for whom English was not their mother tongue. It has the merit of being in the public domain, allowing it to be freely distributed without restrictions.

I have just posted an update to this on-line novel. Documents have been updated to XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS Level 3 style sheets, and Unicode typography is used for special characters. The resulting document should be easier on the eye than its predecessor, which reflected Web standards of two decades ago. The text isn't any better, however. I have fixed several typographical errors and translation howlers, but turning this into idiomatic English which reflects and nuance and depth of Verne's original French would amount to making a whole new translation, and that's beyond the scope of this project (and my talents).

The French edition, also available on this site, was similarly upgraded to contemporary Web standards in February 2017.

Posted at May 1, 2017 22:27