Les Misérables - Les 5 tomes + Annexes (Annoté) (French Edition) Kindle Edition

I advise those perusing these reviews to take with a measure of salt the dogmatic pronunciations on the quality of Rose's translation. Provenance is important, and one should always "consider the source." (Yes, even with me.)A number of interviews with Rose are available online, in which she discusses her work, and her work on this novel. The novel has a lengthy and detailed Translator's Preface, in which she discusses the novel, the translation process, and her approach to it. You also can find online some independent articles about this translation.The great translator of Spanish language literature, Edith Grossman, said:"I can't say what makes a book translatable, but I do think that all texts can be translated. The question of whether or not a work is "translatable" stems from a mistaken and widely held notion that a translation is really a one-for-one set of equivalences with the original--a straightforward lexical problem--when in fact it is a rewriting of the first text. Some, of course, are immensely difficult (they're usually just as difficult in the original) and challenge the translator's sensitivity to nuance, levels of meaning, and artistic impact in both languages. I see my work as translating meaning, not words."Rose has spoken similarly about her work."I think the essential difference is that...and I'm not saying that translators always have to do this, there are reasons for departing a little bit further from a writer's text where it just won't work in English. I found on the contrary what really worked better in English was to follow Hugo much more closely than anyone else seems to have done. So I've actually followed his syntax as closely as possible, I've followed the rhythm of his sentences and I've actually broken it up the way he has and stuck more closely to what he says." -- Julie Rose, interview, 2009She's translated more than thirty French works into English -- plays, poetry, novels, genre fiction. She worked on Les Miserables for three years. She has been awarded three international prizes for her translations. I'm willing to take the leap of faith -- she is "fluent in French." I recommend others accept the facts in plain sight, and do likewise.I stopped reading works in translation in the early 1980s, and didn't start up again until around 2005. The reason I stopped was that I concluded that I could not hear the author's voice in the translated work. The reason I started again was that Rose, Grossman, and some others showed that they understood this challenge, accepted it, and that it is possible to capture the author's voice in a translation, by actually listening to the author's intent.According to one account, the Rose translation is almost 100,000 words longer than the 1976 Denny "translation" -- that's how much material he excised from the novel to "improve it." Denny, in fact, is on record as saying that Victor Hugo was a terrible writer, and needed some "tidying up." If you're just looking to pad your reading CV with another of the "great books," then it doesn't matter which one you read. Might as well go with a shorter one. If you're looking to read the translation of Les Mis, that will make you feel like you are reading the original, hearing Victor Hugo's voice, then pick up Rose's translation.

I am by no means a scholar . I cannot compare translations as this is the first book by Victor Hugo that I've read. After seeing the musical I decided to read the book. I'm glad that I did it in this order. Having seen the musical I did not get lost in the book's twists and turns and I had patience when the story went off into different avenues. Likewise I could selectively read the sections on history. I have always been moved by the story's theme of morality based on law versus morality rooted in love. This book is unquestionably worth reading!! The development of the characters and their struggles are so rich that I found myself crying during parts of the book. While the musical is a moving and touching story , it is nothing compared to the book itself. The best compliment I can give to a book is that touched my life and that its main characters shall live on within my heart. My life is richer for having read this book. The many sections that I have highlighted I shall revisit over and over for years to come.

Thank God I got the Kindle version for my Kindle Keyboard 3G. I read through 12% of the book before wondering 'how long will it take me to finish!!?". So I measured my reading speed pages-per-minute and estimated the total reading time for the entire book to be 64 hours. Seriously. So I took a different approach: I would read for an hour or two, then when fatigue started setting in, I pressed the "shift-sym" keyboard shortcut to activate text-to-speech, and just sat back or laid in bed while the kindle AI voice read it to me. This book famously takes place in France, and a lot of the names of people / places / streets are in French, so it's nice having the AI effortlessly pronounce them. My favorite was hearing it pronounce "Champs-Élysées" over and over again. It was pleasant, almost hypnotizing. Text-to-Speech allowed me to focus on the incredible story and not hassle through the pronunciations. Victor Hugo goes off on many tangents, such as 30+ page histories of the battle of waterloo, and the construction of the sewer system in Paris. It's quite fascinating and adds much to the story. There are many nuanced scenes that I continually go back to in my head, like the back passages behind the court room for transporting lawyers, and the one for transporting the criminals. And the ideas of whether a person can ever redeem themselves in society, contrasted with the situation that society is often times a poor judge of how to redeem oneself, and whether they should be deserving of redemption. It is an honest critique of criminal justice that is probably as relevant today as it was then.My understanding is that this "penguin classics" version has a better translation than the "free" version going around on the internet. It you're going to devote ~64 hours to an experience of life and death in old France, best put in a few bucks to get the best translation possible. For today's generation, the length of the story can be a bit jarring and leaves you wondering "will this story ever end?" I say this book is not at all to be treated as a story. It's not a television show. It's not a movie. It's not a musical. Les Miserables is an EXPERIENCE. So get the good version on Kindle, and have the AI voice continue the reading when fatigue starts to set in.