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Most certainly because Diana's books are difficult to label, which is very difficult for publishing houses, themselves closely linked to booksellers who like more than anything to store each of their books for sale in a small box recognizable, the first volumes of the Outlander saga were literally massacred during the French translation.
Since they had classified the saga in the category 'romance', then they were going to make sure that the translation transforms the saga into romance. Without any complex, they removed entire sections of Diana's work, reshaping their sauce, adding, replacing, cutting, reshaping ...
It took the special attention of fans able to read the work in both languages ​​for this massacre to be updated and arrives at the author's ears when volume 4 was already on the stalls.
Diana terminated her contract, demanding respect for her writings during future translations. However, nothing has been done to restore the first 4 volumes in their entirety and, despite the many requests and petitions, they have been republished many times in their truncated version.
But that was without taking into account the passion of the French fans who gathered on social networks!
On the facebook group: Outlander - Diana Gabaldon’s books, bilingual fans have offered to reinstate the original work by correcting badly translated or cut passages.
It is this work that I suggest you share here with the agreement of the translators and proofreaders.


This work is therefore, by the fact, visible only on the French part of this site, English speakers having this privilege to read Diana Gabaldon in the original language.

 

 

And what about copyright?

For those who wonder if we have the right to publicly publish entire sections of Diana’s work, know that we have thought about this with Marie and Lucie for a long time.
We tried to reach Diana Gabaldon to ask for permission, but our email went unanswered. I imagine that Diana is overwhelmed by emails and that ours has gone through the drops. We then wondered if it would not be appropriate to ask for this authorization from the publishers… and it was there that we realized that, in truth, nobody owned the rights, in French, for this part of the work from Diana.
Indeed, extracts from books that have not been translated into French are currently (and, a priori, for a long time) in editorial limbo.
It all started when the first French publishing house interested in Outlander bought the rights to publish in French. They had at their disposal the manuscripts in original version which they had translated by Philippe Safavi. Before publishing them, they took the liberty of cutting and reshaping their sauce without Diana being informed.
When the latter learned of the massacre, she intervened to have her work respected, but the damage was done to the first 4 volumes of the saga.
The new publishing house in charge of the following volumes has bought the rights to the first French editions that it reproduces and markets as is! She does not have the rights to the original version, therefore, cannot translate it (While, however, she kept the same translator).
The deception goes even further since this new editor allows you to display 'full text' on new editions, to signal that each book corresponds to a whole volume (unlike the old editions which published the volumes in 2, 3, even 4 parts), which may suggest to French readers who have heard of the cuts in the translation, that by purchasing the new version they will finally have the pleasure of reading the full. No!
To summarize: the old publishers have the English texts but not the right to publish - the new ones have the right to publish but do not have the English texts.

This is where the fans come in and offer what would otherwise be lost forever.

Correction of the French translation