I was wondering if anybody knows where I could possibly buy the French version of Atlas Shrugged? Or even The Fountainhead?
All I have been able to find is Virtue of Selfishness.
I suspect Atlas exists in French, because the title is listed on the Wikipedia entry.
Anyone know where I could buy it?
From the Ayn Rand Institute’s website:
French
La Vertu D’Egoisme (collection of essays)
Editions Belles Lettres
Available on French Amazon.com
Nous Les Vivants (We the Living)
Rive Droite
58 Avenue De Wagram
75017 Paris
France
Available on French Amazon.com
La Source Vive (The Fountainhead)
Librarie Plon
Available on French Amazon.com
MERDE! No Atlas, eh? But thanks a lot, Laszlo! I have been looking for those titles, too!
You found that on ARI? I didn’t even think to look there. Thanks again.
And if anyone can find Atlas in French, let me know!
Oh wait, nobody is going to find it:
Atlas Shrugged, au contraire d’autres romans d’Aynd Rand, n’a jamais été traduit en Français.
Nobody ever translated it, apparently.
Je n’ai pas pu le trouver non plus! C’est domage, car j’aimerais l’offrir à des amis.
MERDE! No Atlas, eh? But thanks a lot, Laszlo! I have been looking for those titles, too!
You found that on ARI? I didn’t even think to look there. Thanks again.
And if anyone can find Atlas in French, let me know!
Oh wait, nobody is going to find it:
Atlas Shrugged, au contraire d’autres romans d’Aynd Rand, n’a jamais été traduit en Français.
Nobody ever translated it, apparently.
Nobody ever translated it, apparently.
c’est pas vrai… if you look at the wiki.fr, it will inform you that the first 2 books of AS were translated, but to very bad reviews.
ouiiii… SoftwareNerd a dit:
Titre La révolte d’Atlas : Roman / Trad. de l’anglais par H[enri] Daussy. Place/Date: Paris ; Genève : Jeheber, 1958-.
1: Les requins. - 1958 – 2: Les exploités. - 1959.
Titre original: Atlas shrugged BN.
Mais où est-ce que je peux le trouver?
Where can I order this book? I ordered The Fountainhead in French (La Source vive) and it cost me a fortune…
Je ne sais pas, but I bet ARI would be able to tell you all about French translations of Atlas and where to find them if you e-mailed them.
Je ne sais pas, but I bet ARI would be able to tell you all about French translations of Atlas and where to find them if you e-mailed them.
Actually if you read this on the ARI website, they say:
We cannot independently evaluate any of the following editions and therefore do not recommend any particular book. 2. We are unable to offer advice on locating any of the titles listed below.
They only say that the French translation (of TF, Anthem, and I think VoS) is available on French Amazon.com.
Yeah, I had actually contacted ARI a while ago about this same thing and they could only refer me to The Fountainhead. I’ll have to keep searchin’.
“La Source Vive” ist a very bad translation of TF. I don’t think that a French translation of AS would be any better. The German translations are also disputable.
Hi,
to those who are looking for French translations of the Ayn Rand works, it just happens that there is a French who is announcing that he published (in French at this time) a novel he claims as “what could be Atlas Shrugged if Ayn Rand wrote it in 2010.”
So, for wants of a French version of Atlas Shrugged, French readers can still make a try with this book (it looks like it is as thick as Atlas Shrugged) of 776 pages in 9 x 6 inches written in small characters. A Kindle version of Grandoria is available on Amazon.com already, and paper version is to be released before June 10 2010.
There is a website of it with a well done promotional video and a Facebook account
See
Looks like French get interested into objectivism… 
Hello and welcome.
The first question that comes into my mind, all due respect, is… why would someone holding Objectivist values want to redo something that has already been done quite perfectly by someone else?
Hello and welcome.
The first question that comes into my mind, all due respect, is… why would someone holding Objectivist values want to redo something that has already been done quite perfectly by someone else?
Hello,
my answer to this is because the world has changed since 1957: it brought progress, new technologies and knowledge to collectivists too. Also, the author of Grandoria explains that he doesn’t explain and describe selfishness and capitalism from a philosophical standpoint, but under a medically explainable plane.
Let me provide you with an example taken among a long explanation the author wrote in Grandoria:
The human brain includes, from a physical standpoint, a particular area called “reward nexus”. The “reward nexus” works chemically with substances known as “dopamine” and “serotonin”. This area exists from birth in our brain, and its purpose is to be stimulated so as to provide us with a feeling we call pride. And this pride has a byproduct we call pleasure. We get a particular form of pleasure which comes from a sense of accomplishment and pride. In turn, this stimulation compels us to do our best to renew this pleasurable feeling, thus making the whole human species “going forward”, that is to say to make progress and to improve the well being the human species as a whole.
In a collectivist realm, opportunities to stimulate our reward nexus are scarce indeed. This fact makes collectivism an idea against nature, first, and an idea that leads the whole mankind toward its doom through regression.
For if we consistently fail to stimulate our reward nexus, then we get depressive and we lose the need to go forward, and so to take care of our life, of our future, and of our children and of the future of our children; thus we suicide, not only as an individual, but also as a species.
So, as introduced thus way, the argument against collectivism and enlightened despotism is not an idea, or a philosophy - which some can always challenge with counter arguments such as existentialism, for example - but a scientific fact proven by the physical existence of an area of the brain. This is indiputable and unchalangeable, period.
Science in 1957 was not advanced enough to demonstrate with certainty what the reward nexus is and how it works. Since the discovery of new medical facts and of what we call Nuclear magnetic resonance, we are able to show in real time how the reward nexus works and what it is done for.
I’ll be glad to provide more examples showing why collectivism is against nature from a medical standpoint, as excerpts of what the author, Dominique Raymond Poirier, explains and describe in Grandoria.
Bonjour.
I am the rights holder for the French translation of Atlas Shrugged and although the published version does not yet exist, the the translation is now complete and I am reviewing and participating in its final stages of editing. This book long deserved to be published in French, but no one undertook the enormous work involved until I commenced the project a few years ago. We are almost finished and it will be printed and published within the coming months. I will be certain to make sure it is available in the US for Francophones or Francophiles who would like to read it. I have been faithful to the words and intent of Ayn Rand throughout and it is every bit as remarkable a work in French as it is in English.
A bientot. AML
Bonjour.
I am the rights holder for the French translation of Atlas Shrugged and although the published version does not yet exist, the the translation is now complete and I am reviewing and participating in its final stages of editing. This book long deserved to be published in French, but no one undertook the enormous work involved until I commenced the project a few years ago. We are almost finished and it will be printed and published within the coming months. I will be certain to make sure it is available in the US for Francophones or Francophiles who would like to read it. I have been faithful to the words and intent of Ayn Rand throughout and it is every bit as remarkable a work in French as it is in English.
A bientot. AML
Hello, AML,
You are doing a good job as the French lefties did – and still do – everything they can to prevent the publishing of a French translation of Atlas Shrugged since half a century.
I’m pretty sure that you will succeed at publishing a French version of Atlas Shrugged in the United States, but your efforts could meet certain resistance on the French soil, I am afraid.
The first hard step will be to find a French publishing house that is okay with it. Then you’ll have to cope with the trade unions of the French publishing industry and with the French book stores chains, and also with the central purchasing departments of the chains of supermarkets where a good deal of books is sold in France. They are all committed to the left and make good profit of their loyalty.
I know what I’m talking about as I have had a consistent experience with dealing with the publishing industry in France.
Then come the problem of promotion. Who is going to talk about a French version of Atlas Shrugged in the French media? Not many, in my opinion, or very late at night or early the morning in the best of cases.
Moreover, the risk you could face is to see your publishing house saying something someday such as “Oh, we are sorry, but this book does not make good sales, as you can see, and that’s why we are going to let it go out of print.” In the end, you’ll find some copies of your book for sale for more than a $100 apiece on the used book category of Amazon (as is happens today with the first incomplete and badly translated printings of 1957, which are put for sale for more than $500 apiece !). As a matter of fact, another alternative to sabotage the publishing of this book could be expensive retail price.
So, my advice, should you be interested in, will be to take care of who you are dealing with before signing anything. For if ever you sign any exclusivity of a sort, this will constitute a good trick to make sure Atlas Shrugged cannot be published in French as is has been the case for half a century.
One last thing: when doing the promotion of this book, beware of a bunch of would-be French objectivists and libertarians who are consistently watching the web so as to prevent the spread of Randian ideas. But they are easy to spot at least as they manage to occupy the most visible places so as to act as a bait. They will look for trouble with you everywhere you’ll go on the web when trying to promote your book. They will publish critics saying that it is “badly translated” or else, all this while claiming they are “pure Randians and objectivists” eager to “make sure the ideas of Ayn Rand are scrupulously respected.”
That’s how censorship works in France. It is sad to say it, but you would have much less hard time publishing and selling Mein Kampf in France than Atlas Shrugged (Mein Kampf is not hard to find in the so leftists FNAC stores, as a matter of fact…).
Here is a good example of French resistance against objectivism and capitalism. Three years ago I attempted to order an English version of Atlas Shrugged in a store of the French book retailer chain Cultura, and I was told that it was impossible to order this book as neither the title nor the ISBN exist in their database. The saleswoman I was dealing with did not understand how this could happen as she discovered on her computer that Atlas Shrugged is largely available on Amazon – the poor woman never heard of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged before I ask for it. I’m not kidding you.
Pretty sure that Grandoria, recently published in French, a novel of the same kind of Atlas Shrugged, is going to meet with the same troubles.
I hope it helps.
Richard P.
While checking when a French translation of Atlas Shrugged will be available today (oooooold story)I was taken aback on my chair when I found this:
The Internet Archive - Community Books
Am I dremaing? Is it true? Are we supposed to understand that it has an official existence? Does ARI gave its approval to it?
Any idea, anyone, please?
Hello,
my answer to this is because the world has changed since 1957: it brought progress, new technologies and knowledge to collectivists too. Also, the author of Grandoria explains that he doesn’t explain and describe selfishness and capitalism from a philosophical standpoint, but under a medically explainable plane.
Jake Ellison has an idea. Let’s at least make this act hilarious: when referring to yourself in the third person, just call yourself “the dude”. Like this:
That’s all right, Jake. I apologize to you and to everyone for the third person thing. I guess I explained why I acted that way, and you know it.
Now, the news on my previous post is quite something. A lot of folks are interested in it.
Dom… ooops, sorry, I mean, The Dude.
While checking when a French translation of Atlas Shrugged will be available today (oooooold story)I was taken aback on my chair when I found this:
The Internet Archive - Community Books
Am I dremaing? Is it true? Are we supposed to understand that it has an official existence? Does ARI gave its approval to it?
Any idea, anyone, please?
It certainly appears to be a published book, and in the previous year by someone other than the previously stated A bientot… haven’t finished reading it, but is so far a very good translation… would indeed like getting a hard copy of it, but as yet, Amazon not carry it…