The French version of Les Mille et Une Nuits has changed a lot over the past three centuries. It started with Antoine Galland’s early 18th-century translation, which introduced many European readers to the tales. More recently, scholars like Jamel Eddine Bencheikh and André Miquel have worked to restore the original Arabic text in its full, unpolished, and poetic form, as seen in the Pléiade edition. Between these two extremes, translators such as Joseph-Charles Mardrus and René R. Khawam each created their own versions, balancing between exaggerated exoticism and a search for authenticity. The stories in Les Mille et Une Nuits began as an oral tradition in India, then traveled to Persia, where they were expanded, and eventually written down in the Arab world by the 10th century. Early scholars like Mas‘ûdî and Ibn al-Nadîm mentioned a book called Alf layla wa-layla (Mille Nuits et Une Nuit), which was an Arabic translation of a Persian collection known as Hazâr Afsân (Mille Contes). This text is not fixed; it has evolved over time, shaped by different cultures and periods. Because there is no single original version, translating it is both a necessary and challenging task. Antoine Galland, a French scholar who knew Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, began translating Les Mille et Une Nuits in the early 18th century. He first translated the story of Sindbâd the Sailor from a manuscript he owned and published it in 1701. Later, he received three manuscript volumes from Aleppo, now held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. These manuscripts, dating from the 14th or 15th century, are incomplete, with one volume missing and the text ending mid-story. Galland’s translation, published in twelve volumes between 1704 and 1717, included stories like Aladdin and Ali Baba, which were not in earlier Arabic manuscripts and became central to European ideas about the East. Joseph-Charles Mardrus, a doctor and poet, published a new translation between 1899 and 1904, which he claimed was a "literal and complete" version of the Arabic text. His translation focused on exoticism and eroticism, reflecting the tastes of the Belle Époque era. In contrast, René R. Khawam, a lawyer and translator, based his version on pre-printing manuscripts, omitting stories like Aladdin and Ali Baba that were not found in those sources. He aimed to restore what he saw as a purer version of the text. In the early 21st century, Jamel Eddine Bencheikh and André Miquel produced a new translation for the Pléiade collection. Their work, based on the Bûlâq edition printed in Cairo in 1835, aimed to provide a complete text with strong scholarly support. Published in three volumes between 2005 and 2006, their translation combined deep knowledge with attention to style, aiming to let the Arabic language be heard in French through its unique expressions, direct addresses to the reader, included poems, and changes in tone. This version preserved the roughness, diversity, and strange beauty of the original, avoiding both public taste and exaggerated exoticism.