Victorian-era translations of Jules Verne are very mixed.
Some translators just didn't bother to get the science right (this is evident in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth.") They would mis-translate units of measurement (using feet instead of meters) and just simply eliminate the "boring geology" that they didn't understand.
Verne was also a Frenchman and the English translators were mostly British. So any anti-British or liberal tendencies were removed so as not to offend Victorian sensibilities. This sometimes included racist stereotypes that Verne never intended.
Finally, Verne was (and is) not seen as a serious author by English readers (eg: your own comment dismisses Verne as merely "entertaining literature.") His works were frequently abridged and marketed as juvenile fiction. After a while, nobody bothered to translate his works because, the copyrights of the original translations were in the public domain, and they were "good enough."
This is slowly being corrected by some fine new translations (the 20,000 Leagues translation mentioned elsewhere is important in that regard.)
This was actually a very big problem with Russian Literature. Constance Garnett was a prolific translator of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekov. Apparently her speed of translating the massive works made her popular with publishers of the day.
Today her works are still being published, despite their clear inferiority to newer translations that are not yet in the public domain.
Some translators just didn't bother to get the science right (this is evident in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth.") They would mis-translate units of measurement (using feet instead of meters) and just simply eliminate the "boring geology" that they didn't understand.
Verne was also a Frenchman and the English translators were mostly British. So any anti-British or liberal tendencies were removed so as not to offend Victorian sensibilities. This sometimes included racist stereotypes that Verne never intended.
Finally, Verne was (and is) not seen as a serious author by English readers (eg: your own comment dismisses Verne as merely "entertaining literature.") His works were frequently abridged and marketed as juvenile fiction. After a while, nobody bothered to translate his works because, the copyrights of the original translations were in the public domain, and they were "good enough."
This is slowly being corrected by some fine new translations (the 20,000 Leagues translation mentioned elsewhere is important in that regard.)
This was actually a very big problem with Russian Literature. Constance Garnett was a prolific translator of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekov. Apparently her speed of translating the massive works made her popular with publishers of the day.
Today her works are still being published, despite their clear inferiority to newer translations that are not yet in the public domain.