Page "Don Quixote" Paragraph 53

Near the end of the 17th century, John Phillips, a nephew of poet John Milton, published what is considered by Putnam the worst English translated version.

The translation, as literary critics claim, was not based on Cervantes ' text but mostly upon a French work by Filleau de Saint-Martin and upon notes which Thomas Shelton had written previously.

Around 1700, a version by Pierre Antoine Motteux appeared.

Ormsby considered this version " worse than worthless ".

What future translator Samuel Putnam called " the prevailing slapstick quality of this work, especially where Sancho Panza is involved, the obtrusion of the obscene where it is found in the original, and the slurring of difficulties through omissions or expanding upon the text " all made the Motteux version irresponsible.

In 1742, the Charles Jervas translation appeared, posthumously.

Through a printer's error, it came to be known, and is still known, as " the Jarvis translation ".

The most scholarly and accurate English translation of the novel up to that time, it has been criticized by some as being too stiff.

Nevertheless, it became the most frequently reprinted translation of the novel until about 1885.

Another 18th century translation into English was that of Tobias Smollett, himself a novelist.

Like the Jarvis translation, it continues to be reprinted today.