jeudi 28 janvier 2010

Words, Words, Words

Finding The Words
In conversations with other English people out here one of the subjects that sometimes crops up is deciding what is important in expressing yourself in French and when you can just wing it. The French, if they are patient, can cope with all sorts of contortions of grammar and still understand you; vocabulary (and pronunciation) is another matter. Anyway, I've decided that the two most important words for any native English person to know are “truc machin”. I reckon my French is pretty competent now generally but I use “truc machin” constantly.

It's a problem of vocabulary. “Truc machin” approximates pretty closely to “thingamejig”. The reason I use the term constantly is that I am perennially engaged in small jobs around the house that require a widget of some sort: a special type of screw, an implement of some arcane sort or whatever. Not only do I not know the word for the object in French, very often I don't know it in English either. So I go into the ironmongers/DIY shop in Vaison and ask. I need a “truc machin” and describe what it is for. I've done this so often now that the guy who serves in the shop knows what's coming when I go in. I can see him brace himself, hands on hips, knowing he's in for a vocabulary test. It's a “truc machin” for joining two pieces of wood of a particular type in a particular way or a piece of metal that...........He sighs, takes me to a likely set of shelves and asks me if I can see it; or, sometimes, a light bulb comes on in his eyes and he says: “this is what you need”. Either way, I couldn't get by without “truc machin”.

Perfect Recall?
Friends Dave and Hazel were visiting Steve and Jo this week and all came round for a meal last weekend. During the evening I mentioned a CD that I had bought myself for Christmas of popular song hits of the 1950s: a pure nostalgia trip. We started singing along together and it was surprising what we could remember. I found, to my subsequent horror, that I could sing along to the song “Diana”. The words as follows;
I'm so young and you're so old, this my darling I've been told.
I don't care just what they say, for my darling I will pray
You and I will be free, as the birds up in the tree.
Oh please, stay by me, Diana.

This must be about the most trite, banal and juvenile lyric ever penned. Yet, unknown to me, they have been cluttering up my brain cells for the last 50 years. So what was I doing in that period of my youth that my little brain cells should have perfectly recalled these words after some fifty years without (I swear) any intervening stimulus? Why not a bit of Shakespeare, Baudelaire or Prévert, significant influences at the time? Didn't my brain at some time think: “why am I cluttering up my memory bank with this rubbish; let's send it to the waste bin and use the space for something better?” What's up with you, brain? There really must have been something more important that I was hearing or doing at the time. But it seems I'm stuck with Diana.

Funny thing, memory. Selective, of course, but who the hell is doing the selection? It's certainly not me. Or (horrible thought) is it?

lundi 18 janvier 2010

Christmas And After

The Festive Period
It wasn't so very festive this year. My mother had a heart attack just before Christmas, which blew all planned arrangements out of the window and extended my stay in England to a few days into the new year. Then, on returning to France, I crashed my car after hitting black ice on leaving the motorway at Bollène at the end of my journey. I have to hope that the new year has something better than that to offer me.

My mood wasn't helped by the weather, which two days after my return decided to snow and did so solidly for 3-4 days and nights and then produced leaden skies which totally failed to remove the snow. So, not so different to the England I had left. But that is unusual for here; there is usually a day or two of snow but that generally is it for the winter and the snow disappears as quickly as it arrives, in the village. All around, the hills are often covered in snow for weeks or months, but not at the level of the village. Anyway, my gloomy mood was lifted today when the sun came out and I was able to put out the pots (blue of course) that I had brought back with and plant them with blue pansies. I have now ransacked the shops in the area for blue pansies and there are now no more to be had. I also planted a climbing rose I had brought back (White Cloud) in the pot in the front that contains the plumbago so it should start to climb amongst the honeysuckle and the Dublin Bay rose already established.

Inspiration for that, if any were needed, was supplied in the post after my return. It was a certificate nominating my house for special mention in the “balconies and terraces” category in the Fleurir La Drôme competition, effectively a county-wide competition for the best shows of flowers. As nobody in the villages and towns around got anything similar, I took that as a compliment. It was only seventh prize in the category but still much better than a kick in the pants. Neighbours Jean-Pierre and Monique were kind enough to say that it was “bien mérité”. The certificate arrived in the post because I hadn't gone to be presented with it at Valence, the county town, in November. I vaguely remember the invitation to attend the awards ceremony. However, as Valence is a good 90 minutes drive away, I don't think I would have gone even if I had known they were going to present me with a certificate; maybe next year, if I feel I can achieve something better.

Translation (Again)
Daniel wants some more stuff translated, a piece he's written for this year's festival of the Rue des Granges and some extracts from the play La Partie de Pétanque n'aura pas Lieu. Our conversation over dinner at his house threw up another word difficult to translate: apprentissage. The obvious translation, apprenticeship, can serve in some situations but the French use of the word is much more general than that English equivalent. “A period of learning” gets the sense in most cases but is a bit clumsy and doesn't really have the flavour of the French word. So, for the moment, that's one to mull over.

After dinner at Daniel's, incidentally, we watched a film on French television (on the Arte channel, the only one really worth having) entitled Les Choristes. It was good. I had immediately thought of the English title the choirboys and was expecting something about the Mafia but in fact it was a fairly close equivalent to the English film The Dead Poets' Society. So, if you liked the latter look out for the former. The English title for the English film was translated into French as Le Cercle des Poètes Disparus. OK, “cercle” is a good translation of “society” in that context but why “disparus”? Did the poets suddenly all vanish? Then I thought that if you take the view that poets live on through their work, which in a way was intrinsic to the film, then “disparus” was in fact a very good and subtle translation. It's difficult, this translation business.