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A reader wishes to know the translation of "Great Blistering Barnacles" in French in the original book. Can anyone help, please.

‘Blistering barnacles!’ and ‘thundering typhoons!’ do not have a literal equivalent in the French series.

The original French versions have the Captain using a combination of two curses; ‘mille sabords!’, which roughly translates as ‘a thousand port holes!’ - ‘sabords’ is apparently a nautical term for the openings in the sides of ships where the cannons were housed - and ‘Tonnere de Brest!’ - literally ‘Thunder of Brest’ - which is said to refer to the sound of the gun which heralded the opening and closing of the doors to the Château de Brest at the northern port in France.

See also this post by jock123.

I don’t believe the Captain ever said ‘Great Blistering Barnacles’, at least not in the books, but if you were to translate the phrase literally you might get something ridiculous like ‘Grandes bernaches de formation de soufflures!!’ - but somebody could probably improve on that! ;-)

Mille millions de mille sabords!