In another posting below, there was a comment that someone was seeking out bad translations!

I found one! In public domain, so it's FREE for anyone to read- long out of copyright! C'mon... I DARE YOU!

Read this and weep!

https://archive.org/details/lesmiserables0000unse_r8z3/mode/2up

What's wrong with it? Ohhh, let me count the ways!

Les Miserables. 530 pages, (editor unknown). 1910?, pub. Ward Lock and Co Ltd. (UK). Word count: Approx 259,000.

• Keeps the place-name censorship
• Language style is old-fashioned (Wraxall)
• VHRQ: present

This is simply awful. It's based on the Wraxall translation, and edited down to only 530 pages, but damn, each page is a chore! Not only do readers have to deal with antiquated English, but antiquated British English and even British slang, which has a very different vocabulary and style. I never thought I'd say this, but suddenly the Wilbour translation sounds far more appealing and understandable.

Translation quirks, some Wraxall, some not (and worse):

• Pervy AF: The Thenn's daughters playing on an improvised swing, right outside the inn. In public! "Their innocent faces had a look of surprise; [...] and the younger displayed her nudity with the chaste indecency of childhood." (⮜This is straight from Wraxall and adds a layer of sick pedo sh*t.)
• More uncomfortably questionable wording in this book re: Mayor Madeleine's attempts to find a volunteer to help old Fauchelevent stuck under a cart: "Is there anyone here who has strong loins?" (⮜koff, koff. Hoping to find a manly man who wants to boast of his...virility?) Wilbour: "Is there nobody here who has strength and courage?"
• Eponine demonstrates her writing skills: "Here are the slops." (⮜does she mean farm animal feed? Food for humans that's barely edible? A chamber pot?) Wilbour: "The cognes are here" with cognes usually explained as "the police".
• Gavroche, after hearing that 2 lost boys can't find their parents: "You didn't ought to turn grown-up people out to grass in that way." (⮜what? Not Wraxall.) Wilbour: "It's stupid to get lost like that for people of any age."
• And then people hail one another with "Hilloh", which seems to be some form of "Hey!" or "Hello".

This book also has excessively LONG chapters. Too many different chapters from the original, with entirely different characters and plot threads were jammed together to make super-sized chapters. Example: Waterloo (one long paragraph), The Battlefield at Night, the ship Orion, Boulatruelle snooping around looking for buried treasure, and the Thenns sending Cosette to get water in a scary dark forest... is all ONE CHAPTER! And, there's just way too much untranslated French. Would be nice to know what Gavroche is singing about. And Valjean's gravestone epitaph is present, but in French only. We should be deeply moved, if only we knew what it said!😡

Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (Yes) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)

The Verdict: Not recommended. The reason to read an abridged Les Miserables is to speed things up and enjoy the story, without all of the side-details and "digressions". This book is hard-going. Common questions while reading, "How's that again? What the heck did that mean?" (looks up a different translation) "Ohhh..." It's very difficult to read to the point of being torturous, and you WILL need a dictionary.

Adaptation Deviation Score: None. It's based on an old, British translation that's not fully comprehensible to a modern audience not born or raised in the UK.

(this review is written by me)