The Little PrinceLe Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Translated by Benjamin Speakmon, 1995 My Little Prince translation has aroused a great deal of interest on the Web, far more than I ever imagined. There have been numerous requests for a translation of the remainder. Some of you may not be aware that Saint-Exupéry was fluent in English and that he wrote the English version now in common use.
My translation is then not much more than a personal intellectual exercise, which was all it ever tried to be.
The site below is generally considered the best Little Prince site on the Web.
Links to the full text in English and French may be found there.
http://www.inteligente.com/b612/ As always, comments are welcome. A mail link follows at the bottom.
Book I One time, when I was six years old, I saw a neat drawing in a book on the Virgin Forest called "Real Life Stories."
A Boa constrictor in Belize
jiboia jovem - boa constrictor
The Little PrinceIt showed a boa constrictor that was swallowing a rodent. This is what the drawing looked like.
It said in the book: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. Afterwards they can no longer move and so they sleep during the six months it takes for digestion." So I thought a lot about jungle adventures, and by some trick I succeeded, with a colored pencil, in drawing my first picture. My number-one picture. It was like this: I showed my masterpiece to some grownups and asked them if my picture scared them. They replied, "Why would a hat scare somebody?" My picture did not look like a hat. It looked like a boa constrictor that was digesting an elephant. So I drew the inside of the boa constrictor in order that the grownups could understand. They always...