Maupassant Short Fiction

[Vince]

I have begun the process of assembling Guy de Maupassant’s short stories. It’s something of a mess, because 1) of differences between the French name and the English name(s), 2) he published two (or three) different stories with the same name multiple times, and each has different names in English, if they’re translated at all, 3) PG has most but it doesn’t appear to be all of the translated into English stories, and 4) there is at least one case, and possibly more, of a story being attributed to Maupassant, and being published in a Complete/All collection (and showing on the various Wiki pages), that weren’t in fact written by Maupassant.

I found a wonderful French website that lists all(?) of his work, has links to translations in several languages including English (mostly but not all PG), has publication details, etc. I thought it was exhaustive, but I have subsequently found a couple of stories that don’t appear to be there; per the above, they may or may not be his, I’m still investigating. Once I have everything together, I’ll make an attempt to ask them about the other stories I found. I can use Google Translate as a last resort, but if François is still around and willing, I would love some help translating my questions. It will be a few days, though, I think.

It for sure looks like not all of his short stories have been translated. I’ve identified a little over 300 stories total in French, and around 230-240 in English. I assume we’re good to publish just the English ones even if everything hasn’t been translated?

I also found, late last night, that there might be a novella or two that fits under our limit for short fiction (40K, right?). I just found the scans, not transcriptions yet, so I don’t know if they’re small enough or not, I’ll know more once I dig those up. Anyone know a rough estimate on # of pages in a typical book of the period for 40K words?

[Alex Cabal]

OK, sounds good. Yes, we can do this even though his whole corpus hasn't
been translated. 40k words is the general breaking off point for when a
work should be its own ebook. So anything under would go in this
compilation.

On 2/12/21 1:27 PM, Vince wrote:
> I have begun the process of assembling Guy de Maupassant’s short
> stories. It’s something of a mess, because 1) of differences between the
> French name and the English name(s), 2) he published two (or three)
> different stories with the same name multiple times, and each has
> different names in English, if they’re translated at all, 3) PG has most
> but it doesn’t appear to be all of the translated into English stories,
> and 4) there is at least one case, and possibly more, of a story being
> attributed to Maupassant, and being published in a Complete/All
> collection (and showing on the various Wiki pages), that weren’t in fact
> written by Maupassant.
>

> I found a wonderful French website <http://maupassant.free.fr> that

> lists all(?) of his work, has links to translations in several languages
> including English (mostly but not all PG), has publication details, etc.

> I /thought/ it was exhaustive, but I have subsequently found a couple of

> stories that don’t appear to be there; per the above, they may or may
> not be his, I’m still investigating. Once I have everything together,
> I’ll make an attempt to ask them about the other stories I found. I can
> use Google Translate as a last resort, but if François is still around
> and willing, I would love some help translating my questions. It will be
> a few days, though, I think.
>
> It for sure looks like not all of his short stories have been
> translated. I’ve identified a little over 300 stories total in French,
> and around 230-240 in English. I assume we’re good to publish just the
> English ones even if everything hasn’t been translated?
>
> I also found, late last night, that there might be a novella or two that
> fits under our limit for short fiction (40K, right?). I just found the
> scans, not transcriptions yet, so I don’t know if they’re small enough
> or not, I’ll know more once I dig those up. Anyone know a rough estimate
> on # of pages in a typical book of the period for 40K words?
>

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[Weijia Cheng]

Tolstoy's short story "Family Happiness" has about 34k words in one English translation, which is about 100 pages: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.149072/page/n29/mode/2up

I think 120 pages or so might be a good estimate for 40k words? But it obviously depends a lot on the font size and such.

[Vince]

Excellent, thanks, Weijia, that’s helpful. I was just looking for a ballpark so I would know what I could ignore and what I need to look more closely at.

[Vince]

This is quite a bit more complex than even I thought. I’ve found the French site (which is definitely not complete; I suspect it just contains what they’ve found transcriptions for) and three “complete” collections, and while there is significant overlap, there is also significant uniquenesses. The good news is that it appears that most of the stories have transcriptions; so far I believe there’s only a couple of dozen that don’t. (Famous last words.)

But, it’s going to take some time to unwind, so I’m going to table it for now until I at least get Decline and Fall to the point of proofreading. I may noodle a bit here and there, but the hard core work will have to wait a bit. I would still like to lay claim to it, if that’s OK.

[Weijia Cheng]

Haha, as a fellow compiler of a non-English author's short stories, I'm very sympathetic to your plight. With Tolstoy it helps me a lot to centralize all of my research on a Google Sheet. You might find it helpful as a template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ArL5dfX30wa_ook1djY0AYyR191NFpv0U7IoAO2_c84/edit?usp=sharing

[Vince Rice]

Oh, I have three or four spreadsheets going, believe me. :) But due to translation, non-standard English names, and absence of French source in many cases, determining what English story goes with French one is proving to be difficult in a lot cases.

On Feb 13, 2021, at 7:50 AM, Weijia Cheng <weijia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Haha, as a fellow compiler of a non-English author's short stories, I'm very sympathetic to your plight. With Tolstoy it helps me a lot to centralize all of my research on a Google Sheet. You might find it helpful as a template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ArL5dfX30wa_ook1djY0AYyR191NFpv0U7IoAO2_c84/edit?usp=sharing

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[B Keith]

Maybe post it as public? I went through a lot of this when I was try ing to sort out the Verne canon—maybe people could chip in. Especially if you are putting it to one side..

Bruce

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[Vince]

With Gibbon finally finished, I’m going back to this. The magic of Safari’s new (since I last looked at this) auto-translation is already proving to be invaluable in matching up the stories. It’s still going to take quite a bit of time to wrestle everything in place, but I at least have hope it can be done. I’ll get back once I have the spreadsheet complete.

[François Grandjean]

Don’t hesitate to ask me if you have any doubts or questions.

[Vince]

Oh, I have a feeling you’re going to get a workout, never you fear. lol

I have yet another English collection I might want you review. More when I know more.

Thanks for all your help so far, and for that to come! :)

[Vince]

All right. Here is a link to a Google sheet with way too much information.

The “canonical” source I started with was the maupaussant.free.fr French web site, which is a goldmine of information on Maupassant in general and his short stories in particular. At the time I started this, it was the only French source I had found that had all of the short stories listed.

Since then, I found scans for Ouevres Complete, a French compilation of all his work (novels, plays, poems, etc.), not just the short stories. The short stories map to maupassant.free.fr with the exception of a few short stories that the latter has that the former doesn’t. None of those have translations, either, so they’re out of scope for us, anyway.

I have also found/listed five different English “complete” collections of his work, none of which are actually complete, and all of which contain stories that are not in either of the French sources. More on that in a moment.

I asked François last year to read a few stories from each of the three English collections I had at the time. Complete Writings and Complete Works are new since then, but Complete Works appears at first glance (of a couple of stories) to be the same translation used in Complete Original Stories, the one PG used for their transcription. Of the three different translations, COS/CWks, Complete Short Stories (CSS), and Works, he said Works was the preferred one. I need to see if Complete Writings is a different translation of one of those three, and depending on that, I’ll have him look at it as well. But, the translation is the least of our issues, so this doesn’t need addressing yet.

The bigger issues are:

1. What stories to include, and
2. What English names to give them.

For the first issue, as I said, I have two French “canonical” sources, where by “canonical” I mean that they’re French and they claim to be “complete,” so they’re not leaving out things that are untranslated, etc. It’s obviously entirely possible that they are missing a story or three, although, as I said, they agree almost across the board, with a few entries being on the web site that aren’t in Ouevres Complete.

However, there are seventy-five stories total that appear in one or more of the five English collections that are not in either of the French sources. I’m willing to believe that a story or two might have slipped through, but I find it nigh on impossible that there are seventy-five Maupassant stories that neither of the French collections have. So I immediately suspect that some/all of those stories aren’t really Maupassant stories. Other than the French collections, however, I don’t know how we would verify them one way or the other. I’ve also found no indication that he wrote almost four hundred stories; almost every source I’ve found says around three hundred.

Thus, the first question is: do we include those English stories that do not appear in either of our French sources?

The second issue is what to call the stories that we include. There are four categories of stories:

1. Instances where the English story name is consistent across the English collections, and the English story name is a reasonable translation of the French name.
2. Instances where the English story name is consistent across the English collections, but the English story name has nothing to do with the French name (instead usually using something from the text of the story itself).
3. Instances where the English story names are not consistent across the English collections, and maybe one of the names is a reasonable translation of the French name.
4. Instances where the English story names are not consistent across the English collections, and none of the names have anything to do with the French name.

Since none of the English collections have all the stories, we’re going to have a mix-and-match set regardless (i.e. stories from multiple English collections and probably multiple translations), and so “Use the name from X collection” doesn’t really work.

Thus, the second question is: how do we want to decide what English name to use for the stories?

[Alex Cabal]

I agree that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for an English
collection to include stories that don't exist in French collections. Is
there some other source we can look at to get an idea of what's going
on? Maybe this needs some old-fashioned research in books - maybe
Maupassant biographies have some clues?

Re. titles, can't we just use whatever title the translator selected? If
story X was translated by some particular person, and we use their
translation, then we would just use their title.

On 7/19/22 2:20 PM, Vince wrote:
> All right. Here
> <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xso9v1FYk77TQgMh-NdYdO-r4WFfCwVHbDIngzNL-UM/edit?usp=sharing> is

> a link to a Google sheet with way too much information.
>
> The “canonical” source I started with was the maupaussant.free.fr

> <http://maupaussant.free.fr> French web site, which is a goldmine of

> information on Maupassant in general and his short stories in
> particular. At the time I started this, it was the only French source I
> had found that had all of the short stories listed.
>

> Since then, I found scans for /Ouevres Complete/, a French compilation

> of all his work (novels, plays, poems, etc.), not just the short
> stories. The short stories map to maupassant.free.fr

> <http://maupassant.free.fr> with the exception of a few short stories

> that the latter has that the former doesn’t. None of those have
> translations, either, so they’re out of scope for us, anyway.
>
> I have also found/listed five different English “complete” collections
> of his work, none of which are actually complete, and all of which

> contain stories that arenot in either of the French sources. More on

> that in a moment.
>
> I asked François last year to read a few stories from each of the three
> English collections I had at the time. Complete Writings and Complete
> Works are new since then, but Complete Works appears at first glance (of
> a couple of stories) to be the same translation used in Complete
> Original Stories, the one PG used for their transcription. Of the three
> different translations, COS/CWks, Complete Short Stories (CSS), and
> Works, he said Works was the preferred one. I need to see if Complete
> Writings is a different translation of one of those three, and depending
> on that, I’ll have him look at it as well. But, the translation is the
> least of our issues, so this doesn’t need addressing yet.
>
> The bigger issues are:
>

> 1. What stories to include, and
> 2. What English names to give them.

>
>
> For the first issue, as I said, I have two French “canonical” sources,
> where by “canonical” I mean that they’re French and they claim to be
> “complete,” so they’re not leaving out things that are untranslated,
> etc. It’s obviously entirely possible that they are missing a story or
> three, although, as I said, they agree almost across the board, with a

> few entries being on the web site that aren’t in /Ouevres Complete/.
>
> However, there are /seventy-five/ stories total that appear in one or
> more of the five English collections that are not in /either/ of the

> French sources. I’m willing to believe that a story or two might have
> slipped through, but I find it nigh on impossible that there are
> seventy-five Maupassant stories that neither of the French collections
> have. So I immediately suspect that some/all of those stories aren’t
> really Maupassant stories. Other than the French collections, however, I
> don’t know how we would verify them one way or the other. I’ve also
> found no indication that he wrote almost four hundred stories; almost
> every source I’ve found says around three hundred.
>
> Thus, the first question is: do we include those English stories that do
> not appear in either of our French sources?
>
> The second issue is what to call the stories that we include. There are
> four categories of stories:
>

> 1. Instances where the English story name is consistent across the

> English collections, and the English story name is a reasonable
> translation of the French name.

> 2. Instances where the English story name is consistent across the

> English collections, but the English story name has nothing to do
> with the French name (instead usually using something from the text
> of the story itself).

> 3. Instances where the English story names are not consistent across

> the English collections, and maybe one of the names is a reasonable
> translation of the French name.

> 4. Instances where the English story names are not consistent across

> the English collections, and none of the names have anything to do
> with the French name.
>
>
> Since none of the English collections have all the stories, we’re going
> to have a mix-and-match set regardless (i.e. stories from multiple
> English collections and probably multiple translations), and so “Use the
> name from X collection” doesn’t really work.
>
> Thus, the second question is: how do we want to decide what English name
> to use for the stories?
>

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[Vince]

Re the story titles, yes, we can certainly do that. I don’t think a lot of the story names make a lot of sense, myself, but that option is certainly reasonable and takes all of the guesswork out of it.

I’ve already dropped a note to the owner of the French web site. I haven’t found anything else anywhere I’ve looked and read about him.

In the meantime I’ll concentrate on the ones we know are valid.

[Alex Cabal]

There might not be much online but keep in mind that print books at
libraries have a lot of information that the internet doesn't have yet.
Biographies and other nonfiction might be a good source of information
on these discrepancies.

[Vince]

The editor/owner of the French site gave me a great link, which confirms those stories are fake, and can be traced back to, ironically, the Works collection which is our preferred translation. So, I’ll use the Works translation for the “official” stories (fortunately, PG has several of the volumes, but it looks like I’ll have to transcribe 30 stories or so), but skip the fake ones, and fill in the rest of the “official” ones with the other translation(s).

[Alex Cabal]

OK great. This would be a good thing to put in the production notes.

On 7/20/22 5:39 PM, Vince wrote:
> The editor/owner of the French site gave me a great link

> <https://marvellousmaupassant.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/fake-maupassants/>,

> which confirms those stories are fake, and can be traced back to,

> ironically, the /Works/ collection which is our preferred translation.
> So, I’ll use the /Works /translation for the “official” stories

> (fortunately, PG has several of the volumes, but it looks like I’ll have
> to transcribe 30 stories or so), but skip the fake ones, and fill in the
> rest of the “official” ones with the other translation(s).
>
>> On Jul 19, 2022, at 6:40 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org

>> <mailto:al...@standardebooks.org>> wrote:
>>
>> There might not be much online but keep in mind that print books at
>> libraries have a lot of information that the internet doesn't have
>> yet. Biographies and other nonfiction might be a good source of
>> information on these discrepancies.
>>
>> On 7/19/22 6:16 PM, Vince wrote:
>>> Re the story titles, yes, we can certainly do that. I don’t think a
>>> lot of the story names make a lot of sense, myself, but that option
>>> is certainly reasonable and takes all of the guesswork out of it.
>>> I’ve already dropped a note to the owner of the French web site. I
>>> haven’t found anything else anywhere I’ve looked and read about him.
>>> In the meantime I’ll concentrate on the ones we know are valid.
>>>> On Jul 19, 2022, at 4:04 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org

>>>> <mailto:al...@standardebooks.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I agree that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for an English
>>>> collection to include stories that don't exist in French
>>>> collections. Is there some other source we can look at to get an
>>>> idea of what's going on? Maybe this needs some old-fashioned
>>>> research in books - maybe Maupassant biographies have some clues?
>>>>
>>>> Re. titles, can't we just use whatever title the translator
>>>> selected? If story X was translated by some particular person, and
>>>> we use their translation, then we would just use their title.
>>>>
>>>> On 7/19/22 2:20 PM, Vince wrote:
>>>>> All right. Here
>>>>> <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xso9v1FYk77TQgMh-NdYdO-r4WFfCwVHbDIngzNL-UM/edit?usp=sharing
>>>>> <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xso9v1FYk77TQgMh-NdYdO-r4WFfCwVHbDIngzNL-UM/edit?usp=sharing>>
>>>>> is a link to a Google sheet with way too much information.
>>>>> The “canonical” source I started with was the maupaussant.free.fr

>>>>> <http://maupaussant.free.fr> <http://maupaussant.free.fr

>>>>> <http://maupaussant.free.fr>> French web site, which is a goldmine
>>>>> of information on Maupassant in general and his short stories in
>>>>> particular. At the time I started this, it was the only French
>>>>> source I had found that had all of the short stories listed.
>>>>> Since then, I found scans for /Ouevres Complete/, a French
>>>>> compilation of all his work (novels, plays, poems, etc.), not just
>>>>> the short stories. The short stories map to maupassant.free.fr

>>>>> <http://maupassant.free.fr> <http://maupassant.free.fr

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[Vince]

Definitely; I’ll probably mention it in the long description as well.

For Thoreau’s essays, I put a bridgehead on each essay listing when and where it was first published. What do you think about doing the same here, including the French title for the story as well? Since the English titles are all over the place, this might be helpful to allow a story to be found by its known French title. His Wiki list, e.g., has the French names.

[Alex Cabal]

No, we typically don't do that for short fiction.

[Vince]

Well, no, having done a pretty large one already, I realize that. :) But this is something of a special case where the original story names are better known than the English ones, and there is no standard among the English names for the same story. This can make it difficult to find a story. Maybe have the French name as a subtitle?

[Alex Cabal]

Eh... we don't do that with titles of regular books in translation, so I
don't think we should for these either. I think few people reading an
English translation would be searching for specific short stories in
their original French name. We should just go with whatever the
translator of the story selected.

[Vince]

And, again, having produced a dozen or so “regular books in translation,” I realize that. A book is a single entity and has one translated title that seldom varies and is usually but not always just a translation of the original title, and the book is typically well-known and always referred to here by its English name.

There are going to be 300’ish short stories in this collection, and as already noted, the English names of each have a large amount of variance in them (same story referred by two or three or four different titles), and there is often zero correlation between the English name and the original French one. Our edition is going to be a combination of multiple translated collections since no one collection has all of them, and therefore we’re going to be inconsistent in our naming. (For a given collection; we’re consistently using the name of whatever translation we use for that particular story.)

For possibly some of these reasons, as also already mentioned, the wiki entry for his list of short stories uses the French names, not English ones. The end result is that there are lots of things in play here that are not in play with “regular books in translation.” or maybe even in our other translated collections of short fiction (I don’t know, I haven’t had to research any of them). Thus, IMO, having both names available to be searched would be handy.

But, we don’t want that, so OK, we’ll move on.

[Alex Cabal]

Any translation of anything is going to have variance. Dostoevsky's
"Demons" was also translated as "The Possessed" or "The Devils". That
doesn't mean we included the Cyrillic original as a subtitle in our
(forthcoming) edition. Whatever Wikipedia did is their own business, but
I don't think we need the French titles here.

On 7/21/22 5:19 PM, Vince wrote:
> And, again, having produced a dozen or so “regular books in
> translation,” I realize that. A book is a single entity and has

> /one/ translated title that seldom varies and is usually but not always

> just a translation of the original title, and the book is typically
> well-known and always referred to here by its English name.
>
> There are going to be 300’ish short stories in this collection, and as
> already noted, the English names of each have a large amount of variance
> in them (same story referred by two or three or four different titles),
> and there is often zero correlation between the English name and the
> original French one. Our edition is going to be a combination of
> multiple translated collections since no one collection has all of them,
> and therefore we’re going to be inconsistent in our naming. (For a given
> collection; we’re consistently using the name of whatever translation we
> use for that particular story.)
>
> For possibly some of these reasons, as also already mentioned, the wiki
> entry for his list of short stories uses the French names, not English
> ones. The end result is that there are lots of things in play here that
> are not in play with “regular books in translation.” or maybe even in
> our other translated collections of short fiction (I don’t know, I
> haven’t had to research any of them). Thus, IMO, having both names
> available to be searched would be handy.
>
> But, we don’t want that, so OK, we’ll move on.
>
>
>> On Jul 21, 2022, at 4:49 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org

>> <mailto:al...@standardebooks.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Eh... we don't do that with titles of regular books in translation, so
>> I don't think we should for these either. I think few people reading
>> an English translation would be searching for specific short stories
>> in their original French name. We should just go with whatever the
>> translator of the story selected.
>>
>> On 7/21/22 4:27 PM, Vince wrote:
>>> Well, no, having done a pretty large one already, I realize that. :)
>>> But this is something of a special case where the original story
>>> names are better known than the English ones, and there is no
>>> standard among the English names for the same story. This can make it
>>> difficult to find a story. Maybe have the French name as a subtitle?
>>>> On Jul 21, 2022, at 1:18 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org

>>>> <mailto:al...@standardebooks.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> No, we typically don't do that for short fiction.
>>>>
>>>> On 7/21/22 1:00 PM, Vince wrote:
>>>>> Definitely; I’ll probably mention it in the long description as well.
>>>>> For Thoreau’s essays, I put a bridgehead on each essay listing when
>>>>> and where it was first published. What do you think about doing the
>>>>> same here, including the French title for the story as well? Since
>>>>> the English titles are all over the place, this might be helpful to
>>>>> allow a story to be found by its known French title. His Wiki list,
>>>>> e.g., has the French names.
>

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[Vince]

There are three stories of novella length, all three in the same collection. I have transcribed two of them. For those two stories, the average words/page is 255. The third story is 160 pages, which, if it keeps to the average, would make 40,800 words, just slightly over our cutoff. But, that’s obviously an estimate (albeit one that should be fairly accurate; the 250’ish words per page has applied for the short stories I’ve looked at as well).

I don’t want to do is transcribe it and then find out I can’t use it. :) And I’m not interested in doing it separately. Is that close enough to the limit that we can squeak it into this collection, or do you want to leave it out based on the estimate?

[Alex Cabal]

Sure, you can include it

[Vince]

Alex, one of the stories consists of letters between two women. Their last names are abbreviated to just their initial, as shown. Should I leave them like that, or do you prefer I add 2em dashes to each of them?

[David Grigg]

My two cents: 

I would tag them as : Madame de <abbr epub:type="z3998:surname" class="eoc">L.</abbr> etc., because the page scans don't show dashes. In other words, they are abbreviations, not obscured words.

On 10 Aug 2022, 2:13 PM +1000, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org>, wrote:

Alex, one of the stories consists of letters between two women. Their last names are abbreviated to just their initial, as shown. Should I leave them like that, or do you prefer I add 2em dashes to each of them?

<PastedGraphic-1.png>

<PastedGraphic-3.png>

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[Alex Cabal]

Agreed

On 8/9/22 11:24 PM, David Grigg wrote:
> My two cents:
>
> I would tag them as : Madame de <abbr epub:type="z3998:surname"
> class="eoc">L.</abbr> etc., because the page scans don't show dashes. In
> other words, they are abbreviations, not obscured words.
> On 10 Aug 2022, 2:13 PM +1000, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org>, wrote:
>> Alex, one of the stories consists of letters between two women. Their
>> last names are abbreviated to just their initial, as shown. Should I
>> leave them like that, or do you prefer I add 2em dashes to each of them?
>>
>> <PastedGraphic-1.png>
>>
>> <PastedGraphic-3.png>
>>
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[Vince]

A few of the stories are written as letters. Per discussion with Dangerous Liaisons, the letter tag goes in the article header, since we’re not quoting anything. That means no blockquote and therefore no blockquote header. That leaves the question of where the things that would normally go in that header, i.e. the dateline and salutation.

If I just make them the first two <p> paragraphs, then lint complains because the first paragraph after salutation doesn’t have indent: 0. I can obviously fix that in CSS for each of the applicable stories if that’s the way we want to go.

<h2 epub:type="title">Good Reasons</h2>

<p epub:type="se:letter.dateline"><b>Solles Villa</b>, <time datetime="1883-07-30">July 30, 1883</time>.</p>

<p epub:type="z3998:salutation">My dear Lucy:</p>

<p>There is nothing new. We still live in the parlor, looking out to see the rain fall. 

I then thought I could use hgroup, and add them to a header after the <h2> for the story header.

<hgroup>

<h2 epub:type="title">Good Reasons</h2>

<header>

<p epub:type="se:letter.dateline"><b>Solles Villa</b>, <time datetime="1883-07-30">July 30, 1883</time>.</p>

<p epub:type="z3998:salutation">My dear Lucy:</p>

</header>

</hgroup>

That works, but the gap after the header title is now after the hgroup as a whole, so there’s not much space between the title and the dateline. Again, I can fix this with CSS (as I’ll have to fix the salutation being normal aligned), but I wasn’t sure if mixing what was in the hgroup was something we want to do.

Which do you prefer, Alex?

[Alex Cabal]

<hgroup> can only have <h#> and <p> children, no other kinds of
children. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/hgroup

I think approach 1 makes the most sense.

On 8/18/22 8:22 PM, Vince wrote:
> A few of the stories are written as letters. Per discussion with
> Dangerous Liaisons, the letter tag goes in the article header, since
> we’re not quoting anything. That means no blockquote and therefore no
> blockquote header. That leaves the question of where the things that
> would normally go in that header, i.e. the dateline and salutation.
>
>

> Which do you prefer, Alex?
>

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[Vince]

I know we don’t want to get into translation issues. But…

One of the stories is titled “La Roche aux Gillemots”. The English translation is “The Penguins’ Rock”. There are a few problems with that:

• Guillemots aren’t penguins. They fly, and penguins don’t. The story refers to their flying, which doesn’t make sense when the birds are being referred to as penguins.
• The story isn’t even consistent in referring to them as penguins. One of the paragraphs: “They passed through the Manne-Porte, an enormous arch beneath which a ship could sail; they doubled the promontory of La Courtine, passed the little valley of Antifer and the cape of the same name; and suddenly caught sight of a beach on which some hundreds of seagulls were perched. That was the Penguins’ Rock.” (emphasis added) The same word (guillemot) is translated “seagulls” and “Penguin” within a few words of each other. (Guillemots aren’t really seagulls, either, but at least seagulls fly.)

We can leave it as is, but I think it renders the story nonsensical.

We can just replace all the occurrences of penguin (and seagull) with guillemot; it’s a word in English as well, so there’s no real reason to translate it. We can also endnote it to note the change, if desired.

We can add our own endnote to the title and say something to the effect that they are guillemot’s, not penguins/seagulls.

What do you think, Alex?

[Alex Cabal]

I think we should stick to the plan, which is keeping the translator's
original title. It might not make a whole lot of sense but that's the
title they picked, and we're not translators, nor are we editors of
translation. In the world or translation there are certainly better and
worse translations, and we just have to deal with it. (This is why we
don't have 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, because the only PD translation
is widely considered to be terrible.)

On 8/20/22 1:30 PM, Vince wrote:
> I know we don’t want to get into translation issues. But…
>
> One of the stories is titled “La Roche aux Gillemots”. The English
> translation is “The Penguins’ Rock”. There are a few problems with that:
>

> * Guillemots aren’t penguins. They fly, and penguins don’t. The story
> /refers/ to their flying, which doesn’t make sense when the birds

> are being referred to as penguins.

> * The story isn’t even consistent in referring to them as penguins.

> One of the paragraphs: “They passed through the Manne-Porte, an
> enormous arch beneath which a ship could sail; they doubled the
> promontory of La Courtine, passed the little valley of Antifer and
> the cape of the same name; and suddenly caught sight of a beach on

> which some hundreds of /seagulls/ were perched. That was the
> /Penguins/’ Rock.” (emphasis added) The same word (guillemot) is

> translated “seagulls” and “Penguin” within a few words of each
> other. (Guillemots aren’t really seagulls, either, but at least
> seagulls fly.)
>
>
> We can leave it as is, but I think it renders the story nonsensical.
>
> We can just replace all the occurrences of penguin (and seagull) with
> guillemot; it’s a word in English as well, so there’s no real reason to
> translate it. We can also endnote it to note the change, if desired.
>
> We can add our own endnote to the title and say something to the effect
> that they are guillemot’s, not penguins/seagulls.
>
> What do you think, Alex?
>

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[Vince]

Well, in this isolated case, we don’t have to deal with it, we choose to. Again, I get not wanting to be in the translation business, but when it’s a single word, or a single endnote, that will prevent reader confusion, I don’t understand the reluctance to fix (or at least address) an obvious error. (And “slippery slope” and “opening the door” do not apply. I have only brought up extremely targeted, i.e. single word, issues for a reason. I have found plenty of other translation issues, but they are out-of-scope precisely because they are not a single word.)

But, I also get I don’t have to understand. :)

Anyway, moving on. Many of his stories are set in Normandy.  This is a period landscape of that area, PD proof here.

[Alex Cabal]

Looks good, thanks!

On 8/21/22 7:08 PM, Vince wrote:
> Well, in this isolated case, we don’t /have/ to deal with it, we choose

> to. Again, I get not wanting to be in the translation business, but when
> it’s a single word, or a single endnote, that will prevent reader
> confusion, I don’t understand the reluctance to fix (or at least
> address) an obvious error. (And “slippery slope” and “opening the door”

> do not apply. I have only brought up extremely targeted, i.e. /single
> word/, issues for a reason. I have found plenty of other translation
> issues, but they are out-of-scope precisely because they are /not/ a

> single word.)
> But, I also get I don’t have to understand. :)
>
> Anyway, moving on. Many of his stories are set in Normandy.  This is a
> period landscape of that area, PD proof here

> <https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437683>.

>
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[Vince]

Although I like that one, I’ve been looking for something a bit more abstract; I liked that aspect of the O Henry cover, since it’s hard to get a representative cover when there are 200-300 stories.

What about this? It’s a Cezanne of a French château that he painted several times. PD proof here. I also think it's a better fit for Maupassant’s overall “mood”.

On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:12 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:

Looks good, thanks!

On 8/21/22 7:08 PM, Vince wrote:

…

[François Grandjean]

Neat. I saw another Cézanne painting this morning and thought his style would be a good fit for Maupassant.

[Alex Cabal]

Sure, that looks good too!

On 8/28/22 12:32 PM, Vince wrote:
> Although I like that one, I’ve been looking for something a bit more
> abstract; I liked that aspect of the O Henry cover, since it’s hard to
> get a representative cover when there are 200-300 stories.
>
> What about this

> <http://www.malerei-meisterwerke.de/images_large/paul-cezanne-chateau-noir-01452.jpg>?

> It’s a Cezanne of a French château that he painted several times. PD
> proof here

> <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne/SvXPLhqi8JkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=noir>.

> I also think it's a better fit for Maupassant’s overall “mood”.
>
>
>
>

>> On Aug 21, 2022, at 7:12 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org

>> <mailto:al...@standardebooks.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Looks good, thanks!
>>
>> On 8/21/22 7:08 PM, Vince wrote:
>>> …
>>> Anyway, moving on. Many of his stories are set in Normandy.  This is
>>> a period landscape of that area, PD proof here
>>> <https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437683

>>> <https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437683>>.
>
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[Vince]

It was actually a different Cezanne, one of his of Mont Saint-Victoire that is in Paul Allen’s collection that’s being auctioned off, that got me started looking at him. I really like the abstract-ish look of the Château Noir for a collection, and especially for his.

[Vince]

A couple of questions, Alex.

I know we don’t care if a book mixes US and British english; we just choose the prevalent one and stick with it.

Is it the same with short stories, where the stories are coming from different collections, and we know the source? Most of the stories I’m using are British English, so I have en-GB in the metadata and those stories. But there are ten or so that are coming from a US collection, and so have US English. Do we care? That is, should those stories also have en-GB even though they’re not, or should they have en-US and a lint ignore for the error?

This story has scene notes in italics throughout, but other than that it’s normal dialog, i.e. not structured like a play. Should these just be unsemanticated italics, or a class, or …? There’s too much of it to make using “clever selectors” an option.

[Weijia Cheng]

We have a precedent for mixing en-GB with en-US in the Tolstoy short story collection. Basically you pick the most common English type for content.opf but mark individual stories with en-GB or en-US. Then you add a lint exception for each story in the less common English type.

[Vince]

Alex, this is in one of the stories. I can get there one way if the receipt lists (Bread, milk, butter…) are tables, and a different way (but with text markup) if they’re not. (No dot leaders either way.) Do you consider that tabular data or no?

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, I think so. Dot leaders are not possible with CSS in the general case.

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[Vince]

One of the stories has parts that are labeled “Scene 1,” etc. There is no dialog in Scene 1.

Scene 2 does have dialog.

Should I just use unsemanticated italics for everything, Alex, or do you think this warrants trying to use a play structure?

[Alex Cabal]

I think you can use play styling since it appears to be framed as a play

On 10/11/22 11:53 PM, Vince wrote:
> One of the stories
> <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b596904&view=1up&seq=134> has parts that are labeled “Scene 1,” etc. There is no dialog in Scene 1.

>
>
>
>
>
> Scene 2 does have dialog.
>
>

> Should I just use unsemanticated italics for everything, Alex, or do you
> think this warrants trying to use a play structure?
>

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[Vince]

I was afraid of that. :)

Scene 2 looks like a play, but I’m not sure how to handle scene 1. Do I treat all the text as unattributed, i.e. no persona, “dialog”? That is, just put it in the second <td>, with nothing in the first one? Should each paragraph be in a separate <tr>, or in separate p’s within a single tr? (I’ve read 7.6, but scene 1 doesn’t look anything like a play other than the stage direction, so I’m not clear on the details.)

[Alex Cabal]

Maybe scene 1 can just be regular prose, with the scene header styled to
look like the play-structured scene 2 header.

[Emma Sweeney]

1. Since scene 1 isn't given any personas you can use empty <td>s.

2. Paragraphs can be in separate <p>s within a single <tr>. I've recently done this in Love's Labour's Lost.

Emma

[Vince]

I think that makes the most sense; it also gives the text the full width of the page. I’ll proceed that way.

[Vince]

Emma and/or Bruce, a couple of questions.

Scene 2 starts this way.

I have put the two stage directions on their own row, and left the persona empty on the first two dialogs, since that’s how it is in the text.

I think, looking at it, that I should probably add his persona to those two dialogs, just for clarity, as an editorial change. But those stage directions should be their own row, correct?

Then there are a number of dialogs that look similar to this, i.e. with a word or two after the name:

The way I read 7.6, I formatted these as:

Is that correct?

(Sorry for all the questions. I’ve avoided drama for a reason: I’m not smart enough to mark it up. :)

[Emma Sweeney]

1. Yes, those stage directions should in their own row.

2. The inline stage direction looks good!

Emma

[Vince]

Great, thanks so much, Emma!

[Vince]

Alex, I bought a copy of Frances Steegmuller’s biography of Maupassant, A Lion in the Path, when I was looking into the “fake” Maupassant stories. It has four stories translated in it that do not exist in any other English collection I have found. I did the work to confirm that the copyright was not renewed on the biography (it was published in 1949) and submitted it to PG, and just received the OK clearance from them.

I am not interested in transcribing the entire book (at least right now), I really just wanted the clearance so that we could include those four stories in our collection, since they don’t exist anywhere else. Is the clearance OK from PG good enough? I can forward it to you if so.

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, that's fine. Good work! Can you forward it to me?

On 10/23/22 2:32 PM, Vince wrote:
> Alex, I bought a copy of Frances Steegmuller’s biography of Maupassant,

> /A Lion in the Path/, when I was looking into the “fake” Maupassant

> stories. It has four stories translated in it that do not exist in any
> other English collection I have found. I did the work to confirm that
> the copyright was not renewed on the biography (it was published in
> 1949) and submitted it to PG, and just received the OK clearance from them.
>
> I am not interested in transcribing the entire book (at least right
> now), I really just wanted the clearance so that we could include those
> four stories in our collection, since they don’t exist anywhere else. Is
> the clearance OK from PG good enough? I can forward it to you if so.
>

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[Vince]

I have an unusual situation (I know, pretend to be shocked).

There are multiple instances of more than one story with the same title. NBD, I just made the id on the second story blahblah-2 in each case (and, in one instance, there is also a blahblah-3 as there are three stories with the same name).

However, one of the stories I just added is the second of the same name, and the first one had chapters. So I already used blahblah-2 in the first story with chapters.

First story

title="The Legacy"

id="the-legacy"

chapter 1 id="the-legacy-1"

chapter 2 id="the-legacy-2"

Second story

title="The Legacy"

id="the-legacy-2” … oops, already used!

So, Alex, which of the id’s should I change, and what should I change it/them to? Making the second story id the-legacy-3 feels wrong.

[C T]

what about the-legacy-1 as story id, with chapters the-legacy-1-1, like we do with 'books' vs 'chapters' in a novel?

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[Alex Cabal]

You can just say `the-legacy-1-chapter-1` etc.

On 10/24/22 7:56 PM, Vince wrote:
> I have an unusual situation (I know, pretend to be shocked).
>
> There are multiple instances of more than one story with the same title.
> NBD, I just made the id on the second story blahblah-2 in each case
> (and, in one instance, there is also a blahblah-3 as there are three
> stories with the same name).
>
> However, one of the stories I just added is the second of the same name,

> /and/ the first one had chapters. So I already used blahblah-2 in the

> first story with chapters.
>
> First story
> title="The Legacy"
> id="the-legacy"
> chapter 1 id="the-legacy-1"
> chapter 2 id="the-legacy-2"
>
> Second story
> title="The Legacy"
> id="the-legacy-2” … oops, already used!
>
> So, Alex, which of the id’s should I change, and what should I change
> it/them to? Making the second story id the-legacy-3 feels wrong.
>

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[Vince]

Thanks! And my apologies—I completely forgot about our new fancy build-ids command (endnote trauma, I’m sure), which would also have solved the problem.

[Vince]

I believe this is ready for review.

Apropos of nothing, this project was done twice. I did everything the first time with the two English collections that partially exist in PG and transcribed a significant chunk from a third that didn’t, and had proofread about 25% of it, before discovering a later PD collection of much better quality (both in terms of translation and that it didn’t include any “fake” Maupassants). I started over from scratch using that collection, none of which was transcribed.

Thus, all 823K words were self-transcribed. Thankfully, the scans were all pretty clean, so the text from the epubs was as well, at least as far as the words; the punctuation, dashes, etc. were all a mess as usual, along with the occasional out-of-place phrases and all of the regular fun that comes from OCR.

Several things noted in the production notes, so please be sure to read them before starting.

[Alex Cabal]

Robin, do you have time to review this?

823k words of transcription is serious business, congratulations on
getting it completed! Maybe next up will be a nice 40k pulp novel...

On 10/27/22 9:24 PM, Vince wrote:
> I believe this
> <https://github.com/vr8hub/guy-de-maupassant_short-fiction_ernest-boyd_storm-jameson_jeffery-e-jeffery_lafcadio-hearn_m-walter-.git> is ready for review.

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[Robin Whittleton]

I can find some time this weekend, yep.

> On 28 Oct 2022, at 21:13, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:
>
> Robin, do you have time to review this?

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[Vince]

The Sir Percy is 90K, but yes. :)

[Robin Whittleton]

Right, review notes. Obviously trying to review a book of this size is difficult, but here’s a starter set anyway:

General:

• review find-mismatched-diacritics: e.g. coteaux vs côteaux in two different stories in the same piece of verse

content.opf:

• In the longdesc 300 -> three hundred (https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.7.0/single-page#8.8.3)
• “Boule de Suif” should have an xml:lang="fr" (also the story title, ToC entry and introduction)

colophon:

• maybe reads better as “was compiled from short stories published between 1876 and 1921 by” and “They were translated from French”
• Co. and Inc. need wrapping with abbr
• Painting name should have xml:lang="fr"

introduction:

• seems to be en-US, not en-GB. (The stories also seem to be mixed, but that’s a bigger set of work to untangle.)
• “par excellence” and “à priori” are in MW
• bunch of French titles after “such gems of narration” that could do with <span xml:lang="fr">

a-surprise:

• “pays de Caux” should probably have <span xml:lang=“fr">

room-no-eleven:

• missing abbr from No. in the heading (and ToC)

the-revenge:

• I think Gil Blas refers to the novel, not the magazine, in this context

local.css:

• #madame-hussons-may-king table td:first-child - a hanging-punctuation rule makes this look a little nicer in WebKit.

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[Vince]

Thanks, Robin, eagle-eyed as always!

coteaux—Fixed.

François, if you see this, can you weigh in? I’m not sure how French works with accents, i.e. can the same word sometimes have an accented and sometimes not? I’ve assumed yes, but we know where assuming gets us. For example, are both “aime” and “aimé” valid, or is it just one or the other? And if the latter, what’s the best way for us to figure that out? In this case, both are used in the same story.

Qu’importe ton sein maigre, ô mon objet aimé!

S’il aime le talent, la beauté,

If we have to know French in order to figure it out, then I’m leaving them all as is. :) (I tried looking “aim[eé]” up in a couple of online French dictionaries, and neither was of any help.)

300—I went back and forth on that, but I see the rules have changed (clarified, rather) since the last time I looked at them. Fixed.

Boule de Suif, painting name—I’m not opposed to these, but per 8.2.9.2, they’re not things we typically do. Neither of those are mispronounced as English. (The pays de caux I simply missed adding the tag, fixed.)

colophon—yep, good catches (for painting see above).

Introduction

• Yes, the stories are mixed (ten or so are from US editions), and I actually asked about it a few weeks ago, and Alex said pick one and go with it, so I did the same with the intro as with them.
• Par excellence and à priori are part of a group that is specifically excepted, see 8.2.9.9.
• See Boule de Suif, etc. above. 

room-no-eleven—Yep, totally missed that. I wonder why semanticate didn’t catch it? (rhetorical)

the-revenge—I went back and forth on this, both here and in a couple of other places. There’s no real hint either way; why do you think it’s the novel? (I decided it was more likely to be the magazine, since Maupassant wrote for it, but again, could go either way.)

CSS—good thought, added.

[François Grandjean]

Yes, accents in French are a big deal: their primary purpose is to indicate sound and syllable length, and this in turn can change meaning—although that mostly, but not exclusively, applies to verbs. The trend over the past centuries has been to remove accents when the sound isn’t ambiguous, therefore their presence can be an archaism and you could encounter both versions, e.g., côteau is the archaic version of the modern coteau

Your example uses the verb aimer (to love). Both words derived from it, aimé and aime,  come from the same root but sound different and have slightly different purposes and meanings: aimé in this case is the adjective (loved or beloved) although it could also be the past participle; aime here is the third person singular, part of il aime (he loves).

Unless you are familiar with French, telling the difference is going to be a long, painful, and error-prone process. I don’t mind lending a hand if you need the help—with the caveat that I need the time for it. For what it’s worth, most of these cases are trivial to identify for native French speakers since that’s what we learn in basic education.

[Vince]

Excellent, thanks as always, François. As I said, if one has to know French to figure it out, I’m going to leave everything as is. :) There are too many instances of with/without accents for either of us to mess with.

(I removed the circumflex from côteaux because in that case a dictionary was helpful, but glad to hear that was in fact the right choice.) 

[Robin Whittleton]

OK, that all works for me. Re: Gil Blas, I guess I just assumed that if someone was deep in study it’d be the book, not the magazine. But that was just a thought :)

-Robin

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[Vince]

No, it’s a great thought; as I said, I went back and forth. Where I ended up was that it was more likely for him to mention a magazine he wrote for, and that “The Revenge” was published in (so the person reading the story would be “studying Gil Blas,”) than a 150-year-old (at the time) book. And given that it is a picaresque novel, I figured that the magazine was as likely to be “studied” as the novel. :)

I’ve pushed all of the changes, let me know if there’s anything else.

[Robin Whittleton]

Had one more run through and really the only thing I noticed was that I’d typically mark introductions etc up specifically as z3998:non-fiction. Apart from that, I did run through a set of 5-10 stories with a spellchecker to see if there were common transcription errors but I couldn’t find anything so well done on that part.

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[Vince]

Oh, yep, should be, fixed and pushed.

The OCR for Collected Novels and Stories was really good, so I didn’t have too many problems. The ones from the Works/Writings/Completed Works were in worse shape, but there were few enough of them it wasn’t difficult to read through and catch them. And I did a similar thing, isolated the words and ran them through aspell. I don’t have a British dictionary fora aspell, so I did get a lot of false positives.

The biggest issue text-wise was words/phrases in the wrong place, i.e. in the next sentence, paragraph, etc. I proofed the text files before I built the ebook and read through the entire ebook after, so hopefully I got everything.

[Robin Whittleton]

Yep, that’s the same approach I’ve taken when doing compilations of OCRed transcriptions.

OK Alex, over to you!

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[Alex Cabal]

Alright, another excellent production! I've gone ahead and released it.
Thanks Vince!

On 10/27/22 9:24 PM, Vince wrote:
> I believe this

> <https://github.com/vr8hub/guy-de-maupassant_short-fiction_ernest-boyd_storm-jameson_jeffery-e-jeffery_lafcadio-hearn_m-walter-.git> is ready for review.

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[Alex Cabal]

Forgot to mention, this is now our 6th-longest ebook, with 3 of the top
6 having been produced by Vince :)

[Vince]

I can do eight 100K books and have to find eight covers, or one 800K and only have to find one cover…