Review: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (novel)

Jules Verne was a good author. Unfortunately his works have been subjected to many, many terrible translations.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is an 1864 novel by Jules Verne. It's the third of his Extraordinary Voyages novels, and one of his best-known works. It's been adapted into at least four films and three miniseries. None of the adaptations stay close to the book.

The basic story is the same in both the original novel and the bad translations. Professor Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a mysterious message from a long-dead explorer claiming to have reached the centre of the earth. They immediately -- and reluctantly, in Axel's case -- go to Iceland, climb into a volcano, and set off for the earth's centre.

The translation I read made mincemeat of the novel, yet it still managed to be an interesting story. Unfortunately I can't read anything more complicated than basic French, and I don't know how to find a good translation. I suspect the translator responsible for what I read also couldn't read French. To start with, they changed the characters' names. Lidenbrock became Hardwigg and Axel became Harry. Apparently they also added scenes. I couldn't make heads or tails of Axel/Harry's bizarre dream(?) about a giant ape until I learnt it wasn't in the original novel.

I realised pretty quickly that I'd got one of the worst translations. When you read translated novels regularly you learn to spot the hallmarks of a subpar translator. If you're lucky you'll just get clunky prose. If you're unlucky, most of it's complete gibberish. But I persevered. As long as I reminded myself that the bad writing was the translator's fault and not Verne's, I could almost ignore it and focus on the plot.

Luckily the plot itself makes up for the translation. Sure, it's not at all plausible or scientifically accurate -- something the characters themselves comment on. But it's so interesting I had trouble putting it down.

If you find a good translation, this book is definitely worth reading. Unfortunately it's very difficult to tell which translations are good and which ones shouldn't be touched with a barge-pole. Even if you get one of the worse ones, you'll probably still enjoy the story -- though some scenes might leave you scratching your head.

Is it available online?: Yes, on Gutenberg. (Apparently this version is one of the better translations.)

Rating: The version I read gets 2/10. The story itself gets 7/10.