Wikipedia cuts to the chase:
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The translations of One Thousand and One Nights have been made into virtually every major language of the world. They began with the French translation by Antoine Galland (titled Les mille et une nuits, finished in 1717). Galland's translation was essentially an adapted Arabic manuscript of Syrian origins and oral tales recorded by him in Paris from a Maronite Arab from Aleppo named Youhenna Diab or Hanna Diab.
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The first English translation appeared in 1706 and was made from Galland's version; being anonymous, it is known as the Grub Street edition. It exists in two known copies kept in the Bodleian Library and in the Princeton University Library. Since then several English reissues appeared simultaneously in 1708. As early as the end of the 18th century the English translation based on Galland was brought to Halifax, Montreal, Philadelphia, New York and Sydney.
Galland-based English translations were superseded by that made by Edward William Lane in 1839–41. In the 1880s an unexpurgated and complete English translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, was made by Richard Francis Burton.
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The original scattered Arabic texts were collected in four corpuses: the so-called Calcutta I or the Shirwanee Edition (1814–18, 2 volumes), Bulaq or the Cairo Edition (1835, 2 volumes), Breslau Edition (1825–38, 8 volumes) and Calcutta II or the W.H. Macnaghten Edition (1839–42, 4 volumes). Some translations starting from Galland were censored due to lewd content.
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French translations
Galland
Main article: Les mille et une nuits
Galland based his translation on a three- or four-volume manuscript from the 14th or 15th century.[5] Three volumes of that manuscript were placed in the National Library of France.[5] Galland's translation altered the style, tone and content of the Arabic text. Designed to appeal, it omitted sophisticated or dark elements while enhancing exotic and magical elements and became the basis of most children's versions of One Thousand and One Nights.[6]
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Mardrus
In 1926–1932 a lavishly decorated 12-volume edition of J. C. Mardrus' translation, titled Le livre des mille nuits et une nuit, appeared. Soviet and Russian scholar Isaak Filshtinsky, however, considered Mardrus' translation inferior to others due to presence of chunks of text, which Mardrus conceived himself to satisfy the tastes of his time.[7] According to Robert Irwin, "Mardrus took elements which were there in the original Arabic and worked them up, exaggerating and inventing, reshaping the Nights in such a manner that the stories appear at times to have been written by Oscar Wilde or Stéphane Mallarmé".[8] In response to criticism of his translation by academic Arabists, Mardrus promised to produce a tome of learned commentary and justificatory pieces which he, however, failed to do.[9]
English translations
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Unlike the Grub Street version, Jonathan Scott made the first literal translation of Galland. Titled The Arabian Nights Entertainments, it appeared in 1811. Then Henry Torrens translated the first fifty nights from Calcutta II, which were published in 1838. Having heard that Edward William Lane began his own translation, Torrens abandoned his work.[10] Lane translated from the Bulaq corpus.[10] He declared that "Galland has excessively perverted the work".[11] According to Lane, Galland's "acquaintance with Arab manners and customs was insufficient to preserve him always from errors of the grossest description".[11] Working with the Bulaq corpus, Lane occasionally cross-checked against Calcutta I and Breslau corpus.[12] His translation, however, became incomplete.[12] In 1923 a translation by Edward Powys Mathers based on the French translation by J. C. Mardrus appeared.
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Another translation attempt was made by John Payne (The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, 1882–84). He, however, printed just 500 copies for private circulation and ceded the work to Richard Francis Burton. Burton's translation (The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 1885–88) enjoyed a huge public success, but at the same time was criticized for its reportedly archaic language and excessive erotic details.[13] As of 2004, Burton's translation remains the most complete version of One Thousand and One Nights in English.[13] It is also generally considered as one of the finest unexpurgated translations from Calcutta II.[14] It stood as the only complete translation of the Macnaghten or Calcutta II edition (Egyptian recension) until the Malcolm C. and Ursula Lyons translation in 2008.
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