Talk:Jules Verne Translations

So why did I create this page? It's complicated. Not the reasons, but because Jules Verne translations are complicated and there's a lot of them. My hope is that this page will allow people to navigate this complexity without having to hide information.

LAYOUT

The entries are separated into three categories, based on title type - Novel, Short Fiction and Non-fiction. Just trying to break up the list a bit.

Within the categories, entries are listed by the canonical French titles in alphabetical order. The only reason for this is because I wanted to organize them the same way the database does (making syncrhonization easier) and used the French title because it a) matched the database and b) gave a logical place for a link to the parent title for all of the translations. Alphabetical order was the simplest and to tell the truth, most people won't use the table of contents because they don't know the French titles. I expect they will do a text search for the title they have in hand.

Within a title, the translations are organized by the translated language, in alphabetical order using the English name. I am hoping to add some additional information regarding the French editions regarding how many parts they were published in and how these were titled. This may help editors understand the range and selection of translated titles.

Within each language is a table listing the translations. As I assumed the primary use for the page would be to locate the title corresponding to a book in hand, the order of fields was intended to make that easier. A translator is generally the most definitive way, so it's on the left. The corresponding text follows as it would be the next best technique. If the editor is working from catalogue information and not the actual text, knowing the original publisher and date may be useful if the book / entry noted the information. The final entry is the ISFDB-defined title entry, which incorporates a link under which the editor could "Add a publication". The translations are ordered by the earliest publication of the translation, regardless of title and the titles are ordered by their first publication and not alphabetically. The exception to this rule is that modified translations by named translators will be sorted to follow the original translation.

If a translation is published under multiple titles, the ISFDB database has a separate TITLE entry for each. This is handled in the tables by splitting translation rows and providing multiple date/publisher/title entries under a single translation. There really is no reason to keep the date and publisher for subsequent titles beyond keeping the layout clean.

The amount of text included is not always the opening paragraph. I've tried to keep the text to being as small as possible while keeping enough to distinguish translations and be relatively complete sentences and / or paragraphs.

There are a three major complications - multiple parts to a title, multiple versions of a translation and abridgements.

Multiple parts to a title

Jules Verne delivered his novels in similarly sized 'books'. A single novel would be comprised of one, two or even three of these 'books'. In some cases the novels are known by an overarching title and in others by their sub-titles or 'Partie'. The wiki page follows the title convention used in the ISFDB database. Translations could be of the overall title, the individual titles, as full titles or sub-titles, as omnibuses and, in at least one case, three-part novels published in two parts.

Where this occurs, translation text is provided as multiple paragraphs with each part identified by an italicised, bracketed identifier, all within the same translation cell. Where a given title includes less than the full text, it is followed by a similar identifier.

Multiple versions of a translation

A number of translations have used earlier translations as their source, rather than the original text. The wiki page makes no assessment of how different the translations are, it follows the ISFDB database, treating two separate titles as different translations. The approach taken in the tables is to provide a separate row for each translation. Where the translator is known the name is repeated along with the editor. Where the translator is an unknown hand, the text alone would distinguish translations.

Abridgements

Regrettably, many of the translations of Jules Verne are also abridgements, sometimes rather extensive. The rule is not as firm here, but the wiki still follows the ISFDB database. If the abridged text is varianted to the French, it will be included.

WIKI SOURCE

Each French title forms a separate editable section. The forrmat and coding standard is:

Header

=== [link_to_French_TITLE_record French_title_text] ===

Language break and header

'''LANGUAGE'''

Table header

{| border="1" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" style="background-color: FFFFD0; "

! rowspan="2" style="background-color: #f5f5f5;" | Translator

! rowspan="2" style="background-color: #f5f5f5;" | Translation text (from opening paragraph)

! colspan="3" style="background-color: #f5f5f5;" | Title Information

|-

! style="background-color: #f5f5f5;" | Date

! style="background-color: #f5f5f5;" | First Publisher

! style="background-color: #f5f5f5;" | Title

|-

Simple translation entry

|| Translator or an anonymous hand or an unknown hand

|| Translation

|| Earliest publication date

|| Publisher of earliest publication

|| [<nowiki>''link_to_translated_TITLE_record'' ''translated_title_text''<nowiki>]

|-

Multi-title translation entry

| rowspan="n" | Translator or an anonymous hand or an unknown hand

| rowspan="n" | Translation

|| Earliest publication date 1

|| Publisher of earliest publication 1

|| [link_to_translated_TITLE_record translated_title_text 1]

|-

...

|| Earliest publication date n

|| Publisher of earliest publication n

|| [link_to_translated_TITLE_record translated_title_text n]

|-

Table closing

|}

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