linguistic:voice_change, structural:reformatting, information:highlighting, stylistic:tone
English translations

Translation of Verne into English began in 1852, when Verne's short story A Voyage in a Balloon (1851) was published in the American journal Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art in a translation by Anne T. Wilbur. Translation of his novels began in 1869 with William Lackland's translation of Five Weeks in a Balloon (originally published in 1863), and continued steadily throughout Verne's lifetime, with publishers and hired translators often working in great haste to rush his most lucrative titles into English-language print. Unlike Hetzel, who targeted all ages with his publishing strategies for the Voyages extraordinaires, the British and American publishers of Verne chose to market his books almost exclusively to young audiences; this business move had a long-lasting effect on Verne's reputation in English-speaking countries, implying that Verne could be treated purely as a children's author.

These early English-language translations have been widely criticized for their extensive textual omissions, errors, and alterations, and are not considered adequate representations of Verne's actual novels. In an essay for The Guardian, British writer Adam Roberts commented:

I'd always liked reading Jules Verne and I've read most of his novels; but it wasn't until recently that I really understood I hadn't been reading Jules Verne at all... It's a bizarre situation for a world-famous writer to be in. Indeed, I can't think of a major writer who has been so poorly served by translation.

Similarly, the American novelist Michael Crichton observed:

Verne's prose is lean and fast-moving in a peculiarly modern way... Verne has been particularly ill-served by his English translators. At best they have provided us with clunky, choppy, tone-deaf prose. At worst – as in the notorious 1872 "translation" published by Griffith & Farran – they have blithely altered the text, giving Verne's characters new names, and adding whole pages of their own invention, thus effectively obliterating the meaning and tone of Verne's original.

Since 1965, a considerable number of more accurate English translations of Verne have appeared. However, the older, deficient translations continue to be republished due to their public domain status, and in many cases their easy availability in online sources.