I think that Matthew Ward's translation of the book has the most literary value because I feel that it mirrors the story closer to Camus' original story. In the other book, the author clearly adapted the book to have more of an American feel to it, doing things like changing the metric system to the standard system. While this may help American readers connect to the story, I think that changing the story to fit a group of readers (no matter how small the changes are) defeats the purpose of writing a book like this. The readers should change their own views in order to connect to the story. Having originated in another place and language, I think that this book is a particularly good challenge for readers.
A good translation for the title is "unconnected". This is because throughout the book, Mersault keeps himself distanced from anything emotional (maybe he does this because he cannot handle the emotional strain of being involved in significant events). He does this in many ways, one of which is word choice towards emotional events. When he is talking about his late mother being taken out of the home, he talks about "the casket coming through the gate" (Camus 14) as opposed to using words that suggests a strong connection with his mother; he makes her a material object.
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