Translations and Orchards

A Busy Weekend
Daniel's son Kevyn descended on him on Saturday together with a half-dozen friends. I had invited Daniel to eat with me that evening but, in view of Kevyn and friends' arrival, Daniel reversed the invitation. So, the boules square was fully used and afterwards the gang of students set about cooking a leg of lamb and veggies. The following day was a celebration of the birthday of one of the friends, Laure, and Daniel had already invited me to meet Jean-François Collonat (of whom more later) for aperos at midday. So I stayed on for the barbecue and birthday celebration (Happy Birthday To You.... seems to be international and was duly sung in several languages). And on to boules again...............

Guided Tour Translation
Jean-François Collonat does a guided tour of the village, relating its history along the way, every weekend in July and August and on special occasions in between. The tour lasts about an hour and a half. Over the past 18 months Daniel has been busy videoing J-F doing his stuff and subsequently has drawn up a commentary, based on what J-F recounts, to go with the video. The video will be converted to DVD and I offered to do an English commentary to go as an alternative to the French on the DVD. So, I am busy doing a translation of the commentary text. I had the idea of producing the text as a brochure, in the two languages, and both Daniel and J-F have accepted this. With a few photos and maybe a map or two added, it should make for a good 16-page brochure. And a budget is available to print it.

A brief perusal of the French text made me think that the translation would be straightforward. In the main it is, apart from some obscure terms relating to times past. However, there are a couple of things that have caused me to stop and think carefully. Firstly, some words/terms simply don't translate; for instance: Mairie. “Town Hall” doesn't get it; you don't have them in villages and anyway that's more of a “Hotel de Ville”. “Village Hall” doesn't get it either; it's a different thing, a salle de fêtes or similar. “Mayor's Offices” won't do the trick either as that is a town hall and, anyway, small English villages don't have mayors. In the end I decided a Mairie was a Mairie and left it at that. Notaire is similar; we don't really have an equivalent; “notary” is probably the best translation but how often do you encounter that word in English? The other problem has been that the French use very long sentences. Three or four subordinate clauses is the norm and 6-7 are frequent. You simply can't do that in English without creating incredibly complex (and opaque) sentences. So, to hell with faithfulness to the original in that respect, I've chopped the French up into much more manageable English sentences. At the moment, it's working out at about two hours per page, which seems to be reasonable progress.

Vaison Market
I hadn't been to Vaison market for a while so I went to check it out. At this time of year it's just moderately crowded, not heaving as it is in summer. Asparagus is now in full flood, white, green, thick or thin. I personally prefer the thin green stems. And the prices are beginning to fall and will fall further, even though they are half the price of asparagus in England already. I also caught sight of the first strawberries from nearby Carpentras, reputed to be the best in France. The really good ones are known as garrigues and tend to be small and misshapen, not what you would find in UK supermarkets (which is their loss).

Inevitably I also bought some plants, including a clematis I think may be a Gypsy Queen, like the one I brought back from England. It looks very similar from the label and is the same flowering period but had no name on it and the stall owner didn't know its name. It will go outside the front door.

Orchards
Fruit-growing being a principal occupation around here, the area is full of orchards. At the moment the almond trees are full of bloom and the peach trees are also starting. Before long the cherry trees will join in and there will be whole panoramas of blossom. Not to be outdone, the local roadsides are displaying irises (mostly various shades from light blue to mauve), coronilla and the wild wallflower, merysimum. Broom and valerian are just beginning to show but will be in abundance in a couple of weeks or so.