We recently have a short discussion about this translation on a French forum. If you can read French:
http://dnd.ezael.net/viewtopic.php?f=113&t=3713&start=0

Our thoughts was that it was comissionned by "les Relais Descartes" and printed professionnally to be added in Holmes then in Moldway boxed sets before the official French translation in the end of 1982. Perhaps in 80-81. This translation was restricted to Parisian stores.

Yes, the city is Sannois, near Paris.

You're right about Descartes and Relais Descartes. Actually, it exists stores Descartes and stores Relais Descartes. The first ones are stores own by Descartes while the other ones are only distributors of Descartes products (and they sell other publishers as well).

>>  Was Descartes the first game store in France selling D&D?

Perhaps l'Oeuf Cube was. One of the oldest RPG store. I am not parisian, but I can ask if you need the information.

>> Was Jeux Descartes based out of Sannois, or just the printer that printed that translation?

Second answer.

>> Another bit of trivia related to the French translations of Basic D&D was posted on DF recently by paleologos. The French B3 ("Le palais de la Princesse Argenta") has three pieces of artwork by Darlene not found in the U.S. version.

Le_Rahib would be more competent to answer about these pieces of art. IIRC, B2 module and few others have pieces that are not in US version. But I am not sure at all.

Good work. Nice to see that some English-speakers can be interested in French (and even non-English) D&D material

Does the seller know anything about it?

Foul

Screenshots of the newly discovered French translation (which I'm calling Donjons #1) from the scans sent to me by Lurker Below.

Cover:


Clearly a photocopy, but interesting because the cover on the title is changed to "Donjons & Dragons", and it has the TSR logo etc removed from the bottom. I wonder whether they had access to an original image for layout, or simply did some cutting and pasting to remove these and add the "Donjons & Dragons"?

Table of Contents (pg 1 of 2):


First page:


Compare with the first page of the previously discovered version, which I'll call Donjons #2 (the pdf I have of this has no cover):



The translation in each is the same. My feeling is the newly discovered one is the earlier version as it's lacking the layout of the other. #1 is much longer (71 pages, single column) than #2 (32 pages, double column). There are no illustrations in either, except that Donjons #1 has a rough alignment table missing from Donjons #2.

That is very interesting, especially the B1 translation.

I guess that the rules' translation was the "prepub" version, before the final print done by Descartes. Perhaps one of the translator copies.

B1 was never translated so this is the very nice find.
Any information about the translator?

Is it possible to get a full scan? I know it is very long