$Unique_ID{bob01481}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
Preface}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{french
frog
jumping


see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1893}
$Log{See Mark Twain*0148101.scf
}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        Jumping Frog, The
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

Preface

     I have scattered through this volume a mass of matter which has never
been in print before, (such as the "Jumping Frog restored to the English
tongue after martyrdom in the French," the "Membranous Croup" sketch, and
many others which I need not specify): not doing this in order to make an
advertisement of it, but because these things seemed instructive.

     Mark Twain.

[See Mark Twain: Mark Twain at Hartford about 1875]

The Jumping Frog

     The Original Story In English.  The Re-Translation, Clawed Back From The
French, Into A Civilized Language Once More, By Patient And Unremunerated
Toil.

     Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who
has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his best to
right himself.  My attention has just been called to an article some three
years old in a French Magazine entitled, "Revue des Deux Mondes" (Review of
Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of "Les Humoristes Americaines"
(These Humorists Americans).  I am one of these humorists Americans dissected
by him, and hence the complaint I am making.

     This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French,
where they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you start into
a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out alive or not).  It
is a very good article, and the writer says all manner of kind and
complimentary things about me - for which I am sure I thank him with all my
heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one unlucky
experiment?  What I refer to is this: he says my Jumping Frog is a funny
story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse anyone with
laughter - and straightway proceeds to translate it into French in order to
prove to his nation that there is nothing so very extravagantly funny about
it.  Just there is where my complaint originates.  He has not translated it at
all; he has simply mixed it all up; it is no more like the Jumping Frog when
he gets through with it than I am like a meridian of longitude.  In order that
even the unlettered may know my injury and give me their compassion, I have
been at infinite pains and trouble to re- translate this French version back
into English; and to tell the truth I have well nigh worn myself out at it,
having scarcely rested from my work during five days and nights.  I cannot
speak the French language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I
being self-educated.  I ask the reader to run his eye over the original
English version of the Jumping Frog, and then read my re-translation from the
French, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the grammar.  I
think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the French are called a polished
nation.  If I had a boy that put sentences together as they do, I would polish
him to some purpose.  Without further introduction, the Jumping Frog, as I
originally wrote it, was as follows - [after it will be found my
re-translation from the French]: