August 14, 1890] 



NATURE 



365 



SADI CARNOTS ESS A V. 

 Reflexions on tJie Motive Power of Heat, &^c. From the 

 original French of N.-L.-S. Carnot. Edited by R. H. 

 Thurston, M.A., LL.D., Dr. Eng^-, Director of Sibley 

 College, Cornell University ; " Officier de V Instruction 

 Publique de France"; etc., etc., etc. (London: Mac- 

 millan and Co., 1890.) 



AJE soyons Pas exigeants : la perfection est si rare ! 

 This is one of the rules laid down by Sadi Carnot 

 for his own guidance : — and we will endeavour, as far as 

 possible, to give his present Editor and Translator the 

 benefit of it. They need it sadly. 



There is no Press-mark on the book before us, but it 

 bears internal evidence of having been printed in the 

 United States. Surely there are few, if any, British 

 printers who, at the end of a line, would divide words 

 into such startling fragments as knowl-edge, quan-tity, 

 uncer-tainties, transfor-mation, mecha-nism, hypothe-sis, 

 mo-tive, &c., &c. ! 



The book is (described as) a " Translation of the famous 

 work of Carnot." It is made from the Reprint of 1878, 

 to which Carnot's surviving brother had added a slight 

 but very interesting biographical sketch of the Author, as 

 well as some extremely important excerpts from his un- 

 published MS. These additions are translated also. An 

 exceedingly inconvenient arrangement, the separation of 

 the longer foot-notes from the text of Carnot's Essay and 

 their collection at the end of the book, is explained as 

 '•' simply a matter of convenience in book-making." We 

 presume, though if is not stated, that the quite un- 

 necessary reprinting of Sir W. Thomson's paper, on 

 Carnot's Theory, is also a simple matter of book-making ! 



The book is prefaced by a Publisher's Note, a Note by 

 the Editor, and an Essay (also by the Editor) on The 

 Work of Sadi Carnot. We forbear to comment on the 

 first two of these. On the third we would make two 

 remarks : — 



(i) It is somewhat difficult for us who have lost so 

 recently (and from our little island alone) men like 

 Faraday, Joule, and Clerk-Maxwell, to feel the full justice 

 of the statement that Sadi Carnot was perhaps '■^ the 

 greatest genius, in the departfnent of physical science at 

 least, that this century has produced." Exaggeration like 

 this leads the reader to doubt the judicial competence 

 of the man who employs it. We yield to none in our 

 estimation of the value and originality of Carnot's 

 work : — but such feelings must not blind us to the 

 relative merits of others. 



(2) Our opinion of the competence of the Editor is not 

 enhanced by his informing us that at eighteen Hamilton 

 "conceived" Quaternions (he means, presumably, the 

 Characteristic Function, a totally different thing) ; nor 

 by his even more striking novelties in scientific 

 history. 



As to the Translation itself, two questions arise. Was 

 it necessary, and is it satisfactorily carried out .^ We have 

 much doubt as to the propriety of translating any 

 scientific work from French, German, Italian, or Latin, 

 ■into English. If a man cannot read it in the original, his 

 ignorance (all but criminal) should be punished. But if 

 the propriety of translating at all is doubtful, the possi- 

 bility of procuring a really adequate translation is much 

 NO. 1085, VOL. 42] 



more doubtful. It may be confidently laid down, as an 

 axiom, that no adequate translation of a really scientific 

 work can be made except by a man whose knowledge of 

 the subject is at least nearly on a par with that of the 

 Author. Such men are always scarce, and can usually 

 employ their time more profitably than in reproducing, in 

 a different idiom, the thoughts of another. 



But if a translation must be made, accuracy is essential. 

 Change of idiom is inevitable, change of meaning (how- 

 ever slight) intolerable. Let us see how the present 

 Translator stands in this respect. The task before him 

 was a difficult one, for Carnot's reasoning is in several 

 places somewhat delicate ; and in one or two places a little 

 obscure. Failure was therefore Ic priori more probable 

 than success ; and, while even complete success was not 

 likely to be of much use to any one, failure was certain to 

 make the result misleading : — i.e. a great deal worse than 

 useless. 



One of the first passages which we chanced to read, on 

 opening the book (p. 21), runs thus : — 



" Scarcely a year had passed when the proscription, 

 which included the Director, obliged him to give up his 

 life, or at least his liberty, to the conspirators of fructidor. 

 . . . (Our mother) fled to St. Omer, with her family, 

 while her husband was exiled to Switzerland, then to 

 Germany." 



Compare the words we have italicised with the corre- 

 sponding ones in the original (given below) : — and then 

 judge of the fitness of the perpetrator for the translation 

 of a work of real difficulty and of particular nicety of 

 reasoning. 



" Une annde k peine s'dtait dcoulde quand la proscrip- 

 tion ^'/«/ yra//i?r le Directeur, oblige de derober sa vie, 

 tout au moins sa liberty, aux conspirateurs de fructidor. 

 . . . . (Notre m^re) se rSfugia k Saint-Omer, dans sa 

 famille, tandis que son mari s'exilait en Suisse, puis en 

 Allemagne." 



There is more than one first-class blunder for every 

 single line in the passage translated ! 

 On p. 26 we read : — 



" .... for his name .... was henceforth the cause 

 of his advancement [sic) being long delayed." 



Who, attempting to put this bad English back again 

 into French, could possibly hope to reproduce the 

 original ? It runs thus : — 



" .... car son nom .... devait suffire pour que 

 ddsormais il n'attendit son avancement que de la longeur 

 du temps," 



The word "Anvers," which occurs more than once, is 

 not translated at all ; while for " plusieurs places fortes " 

 we find (p. 26) the extraordinary substitute (we cannot 

 call it an equivalent) " many trying places " ! 



After these experiences we might have dispensed with 

 any further examination of the book. But we felt bound 

 to examine at least a part of the translation of the Essay. 

 We selected as a first test a well-known passage, in which 

 Carnot elegantly meets a supposed objection to his 

 reasoning. The original is as follows : — 



" . . . la quantity de chaleur ndcessaire pour reporter le 

 liquide h, sa temperature premiere sera aussi infiniment 

 petite et n^gligeable relativement k celle qui est n^ces- 



