les changements même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie

09:06 May 17, 2017 

Yes, fair enough!

09:04 May 17, 2017 

As Anatole France didn't write the English version, I think "According to Anatole France ..." might be better than "In the words of Anatole France ...". Perhaps Anatole France is all the rage, or at least on school curriculums in Congo?

08:57 May 17, 2017 

I wouldn't quote it with "must", not because it's not "authentic", but because it seems to me an infelicitous and unnecessary addition.

08:55 May 17, 2017 

I agree with you about "Even", and about "melancholy" (a word used many times in France's novel, by the way). I seem to have given the impression that I think verbatim quotation of the published version, without additions, is the only valid option, but I don't think that at all. I see no reason why one shouldn't tinker with the published version and add "Even" on the front, and for that matter you could add "side" on the end if you felt like it: "Even the most wished-for changes have their melancholy side." Indeed, you might do that if you were doing a new translation of the novel (and by the way, I don't find it very surprising nobody seems to have done so; there's not much of a market for AF nowadays). Or you could do something else entirely, such as "are tinged with melancholy/regret/sadness", or any number of other variants.

I also take Barbara's point, though for that matter I wonder how much resonance the quotation and its source have for French readers nowadays. There is, perhaps, something to be said for rendering it in a way that sounds like a quotation. Or you could even flag it as such: "In the words of Anatole France,...", "As someone once wrote,..." or whatever

08:32 May 17, 2017 

Unfortunately, the Asker hasn't really told us the purpose of the document to be translated. We are just told "it is all about company agents asking for changes that the sentence is intended for as a warning" and that the field is "Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / literature". However, these two bits of information could be contradictory. Is the French source a non-literary, business text that uses a literary quotation? In that case, it might be best to drop any reference to Anatole France and the translation by Hearn, because the quotation and its source would not have any resonance with the target readership. If that is the case, then the translation should relate to the intended readership and the writer's intended message.

08:12 May 17, 2017 

I agree that if there is an existing EN translation of a citation, then the argument is strong to follow that line. A citation is meant to be recognised. Those wwho have read Anatole France in English may be like the Jumblies, far and few between. This particular citation, following the published EN version or another version, will probably not strike home the way it might to a native French speaker.
There is a strong argument for using the published version specifically to enable the citation to be tracked down. However, in this particular instance, another version would probably be fine.
I'd probably go with the published version, but with regret. I don't think it reads anything like as well as a phrase starting with "Even the most..."

However, I'm rooting for the use of "melancholy" for being literary and a better choice for register.

07:20 May 17, 2017 

Whatever...

07:17 May 17, 2017 

I didn't say one must quote that version nor that one must translate it that way; I said that it must be regarded as standard, and that seems to me self-evidently true (and not OTT), since apart from the fact that it is accurate it is the only available published version, online or otherwise, and therefore the only source of the text for those who don't know enough French to go back to AF's original and do their own translation.

The version with "must" is plainly derived from Hearn; it is identical to his text in all other respects. Somebody added "must" and some others copied that. Online quotations mostly have online sources and hardly ever go back to primary sources. If one prefers it with "must" added, for whatever reason, it's perfectly legitimate to quote it like that. But it's not the standard version (and there is nothing in the French to justify "must").

07:04 May 17, 2017 

It may be a good idea or a valid option but 'must' is a bit OTT. I don't have time to delve into this further but as I said, I wouldn't categorically dismiss the 'must' version. The entire quote must be taken into consideration. This is only the first sentence.

07:01 May 17, 2017 

As writeaway has shown, this is a quotation from Anatole France. It occurs in his first novel, Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), near the end. Apart from a version by Arabella Ward (New York, [1897]), to which I have found a reference, the only published English translation of this work that I have been able to find is the one by Lafcadio Hearn, first published in 1890 and reprinted many times, most recently (I think) in 2007. So Hearn's rendering of this quotation, "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy", must be regarded as the standard version in English.