Why the Burton translation?
After all, there are other translations out there which are both more
accurate and easier to read. But, as I have said, the Burton translation
is the most complete English translation ever produced. Many of the
stories contained in this work have never appeared in any other English
translation. As such, the work has merit, not only as a repository
of Middle Eastern folklore, but also as a landmark in the history of English
literature.
Much has been made of the unique language used by Burton in this translation.
Indeed, Burton uses many words and phrases which were archaic even in his
own day, and make for slightly difficult reading today. But not nearly
so difficult as some have made it out to be. To put it another way,
if you can read Shakespeare and get the gist of it, you should have no
problem with Burton. In almost all cases, the meaning of unfamiliar
words can be readily discerned from the context in which they appear.
For example, when Burton uses the word "futter," trust me, you'll know
exactly what he means :)
Where's Aladdin? Where's Ali Baba?
These two stories are the most famous of those contained in the Nights
(and were long before Disney got to them). Therefore, it is surprising
that Burton saw fit not to include them in his definitive ten volume translation.
He did include them in his supplemental volumes, which I have just completed!
Is this legal?
It certainly is. Under current U.S. copyright law, copyright
on works created before 1978 endures for 75 years from the date of publication.
This translation was published in 1885-86. Even without doing the
math, it's plain to see that the copyright on this work expired quite a
long time ago. It is therefore in the public domain, and may legally
be distributed, like many of the electronic texts found on sites such as
Project Gutenberg.
Hasn't this already been done? What about this
work?
The file you've found there is, in fact, a partial translation done
by Burton in 1850. Although it seems like a huge file, it actually
contains only a small fraction of the tales in his 1885 translation, the
one available here.
Why PDF files? Why not type out the work in plain text?
Two reasons. The first is time. It takes far longer to
type out an entire book than one might expect. It can take months
for one person to type out a 400 page book (and ten volumes would take
a lifetime), and it could still take years to finish a project of this
size even with an entire team working on it. By contrast, pages can
be scanned far quicker than they can be typed out. It takes about
as much time to scan a page as it does to read it. The second reason
is completeness. In a plain text transcription, including extra text
such as footnotes can be quite cumbersome, and illustrations would of course
be excluded. There is also a huge margin for error (no matter how
carefully proofread, typos will always slip by). By scanning, every
page can be included exactly as it appears in the original text.
Every page, every footnote, every illustration can therefore be included.
There is also no chance for typos to appear (other than the ones which
slipped by the orignal publisher) Thus, by scanning the pages, a
transcription can be produced far more quickly and accurately than can
ever be possible by typing it out. Also, I feel that this format
preserves as closely as possible the feel of reading the original text.
Are the stories printable?
Yes, the pages can be printed out using the "Print" function on your
PDF reader. On my printer, it came out just fine using both color and black
& white. I briefly flirted with the idea of producing a printed set
of volumes, but quickly decided it would be too costly in terms of time
and resources to do so (I shudder to think how many ink cartridges one
would have to go through just to produce one set).
Are the volumes searchable?
Depends what you mean by "searchable." The PDF files include all of
the tables of contents, indices, and appendices for each volume, so the
files are "searchable" in the same sense that a regular book would be.
If what you're asking is whether you can find specific terms in the text
using Acrobat Reader's search function, the answer is, unfortunately, no.
Trouble is, Acrobat Reader does not recognize the pages as text, but rather
as a series of scanned images, and thus will not find any terms when a
"Search" is conducted. I'm not certain if it's possible to find a way around
this while still preserving the same format.