Mistranslations
Since I've been here I've learnt much that I didn't previously know about nuances, false friends (in language) and outright faux pas. That would probably be true of any other country I visited where I tried to speak the local lingo. I remember being warned years ago never to say in the USA that I really needed a fag. I'd probably get disapproval there either way now but of a different sort. However, I'm living in France and the perceptions are more frequent and often more subtle. All this comes to mind because of my recent spot of translation.
There are the obvious and generally well-known false friends such as that “une journée” has nothing to with a journey. However, there are also many much subtler differences. I wonder how many English tourists here have innocently asked for “la toilette” when what they wanted was “les toilettes”. The former is what women (mostly) do when making themselves ready to go out; the latter is what are also known as loos, even if there is only one of them. Natural language has enough redundancy, and most people enough flexibility, to ensure a correct interpretation in this case and face to face contact (an agonised grimace?) helps enormously.
There are other subtleties which consist not of what is right or wrong but what people say and don't say. I was corrected recently when I stated a time as something like “six heures quinze” meaning quarter past six in the evening. It's perfect French and perfectly understandable but, I was told, the French wouldn't say that. They would say either “six heures et quart” or “dix-huit heures quinze”. Why? Nobody at first could explain but then we worked out that you either had to be general “a quarter past six” or specific “15 minutes past six in the evening” (24-hour clock). In theory, they are pretty much the same; you just don't mix the two in practice.
That reminds me of a joke my friend Steve tells about a French man presented with a practical solution to some problem. He apparently rejected the solution saying: “That may be all very well in practice but it will never work in theory”. Maybe you have to with the French for some time to understand how representative of attitudes that is. But I digress.
Most of the time you can murder the gender of nouns in French and get away with it; even the French themselves sometimes get genders wrong. What I continue to find confusing is when nouns take account of a person's gender and when they don't. In primary schools the gender of the teacher is acknowledged: “instituteurs” and “institutrices”; in secondary schools it's not: there are no “professeuses”. Various people can have the title “maître” but there are no “maîtresses” among them; “maîtresses” are something else.
My classic illustration of the problem of getting gender wrong is if you were to utter the phrase “Ma foi! C'est un scandale”; this can be roughly translated as: Good Heavens! It's a scandal. Switch the genders and you get “Mon foie! C'est une scandale” which translates roughly as: My liver! It's a corset. I'm not sure that any amount of natural language redundancy or eye to eye contact would get you out of that one.
However, it's real-life howlers that I love best. In my latest translation venture, the wretched translator who preceded me had translated the rich red colour of the Chateau wine “couleur de rubis” as rubbish in colour. Not exactly the virtue that the chateau was trying to extol in its wine.
Friend Steve has encountered a similar mistranslation in a restaurant. The word “plat” in French translates as either a dish, in a menu, or as the adjective flat. Unfortunately in this case, the word flat in English has a couple of meanings too. So the restaurant Steve went into proudly proclaimed in it's English translation that it had a flat of the day and even flats to take away. The mind boggles.
mercredi 10 février 2010
vendredi 5 février 2010
Translating Pancakes into Theatre
Translation
I finished the English translation of the Chateau du Cros website over the weekend. It probably took about a day in all. As usual, it was mostly straightforward but raised one or two discussion points. “Terroir” is a word I always find difficult; it really has no English equivalent and can be translated by soil, ground, land or even something like home ground. It's true evocation seems linked to the French tradition of agricultural peasantry which is still very much part of the culture today. So it has connotations of home, where I live and make my life, as well as being plain old soil.
Two other difficulties in this case were “réalité historique” and Guyenne. The former may just be a case of an awkward phrasing in French. I rejected the possibility of historical reality for the former as I couldn't decide what that really meant. It poses the question as to what would be a historical unreality; a myth, presumably. But the term was applied to the chateau. Funnily enough, having rejected the term I later heard it uttered on the TV programme Time Team. I still don't know what it is supposed to mean, in French or in English. In the end I translated it as living history, although a witness to history might be a good alternative.
I had to look up Guyenne. In the Chateau du Cros text it is mentioned in the context of the history of the Chateau and kings Richard the Lion Heart and Edward, who once occupied it. The problem is that Guyenne is a region, approximating to the modern Aquitaine, a region that for a considerable period was ruled by the English, but also a dynasty, the kings who ruled it. Given that it was mentioned in connection with the kings and called the Guyenne Anglaise, I went for dynasty in the translation. However, when I was chatting later with Daniel, he said that the region was still called the Guyenne but that the connotations of an English dynasty of kings had been lost. So maybe Guyenne region would have been better.
These are all points I can review when the Chateau people get back to me.
Pancakes
Crèpes always seemed to be part of holidays in France. The French seemed to do them better than we English. Anyway, I was invited with Daniel, his son Alexis and pizza evening regulars Dominique and Chantal, to go to Michelle's and spend an evening eating crèpes on Shrove Tuesday. And there I learnt the difference. Michelle used the usual eggs, flour and milk to make the dough but added yeast and let the mixture ferment for 3-4 hours before using it. The mixture rose quite considerably and that probably explains why the crèpes are so much lighter than our pancakes.
Early French Theatre
When Daniel came round to eat on Wednesday, our discussion got around to French theatre. My own knowledge of early English theatre is sketchy (minstrel bands, etc) but Daniel's grasp of early French theatre is comprehensive. Two interesting points emerged. The first was that popular French theatre didn't really exist before Marivaux, in the mid-18th century. Until then, theatre had relied on royal patronage. Since the nobles, who had to pleased by the show, were all brought up on the classics, the plays tended to be based on classical tragedies (any form of comedy was considered inferior until Molière came along). You can guess the average French pleb's knowledge of classical tragedy so the plays would have been inaccessible to the populace even if they could have got a ticket. Moreover, theatre in France at the time was considered potentially subversive, which was another reason for excluding the plebs. Contrast that with, for instance, Shakespeare in England. One result was an economic difference. In Paris at the time of Shakespeare there were three theatres, all dependent on royal patronage. In London at the same time there were fourteen, dependent on large audiences to pay their way and hence on accessibility by the plebs.
The other interesting point was that French actors, until the mid 18th century, apparently always declaimed their words facing the audience; they never faced one another away from the audience. That must have put severe limitations on acting but I can imagine how it would work in, for instance, a play by Racine. However, if two actors were supposed to be arguing fiercely with one another it must have seemed a bit strange. Maybe the fact that classical French theatre was much more strictly bound by religiously observed conventions than English theatre (witness the “Bataille d'Hernani”) allowed it to work.
I finished the English translation of the Chateau du Cros website over the weekend. It probably took about a day in all. As usual, it was mostly straightforward but raised one or two discussion points. “Terroir” is a word I always find difficult; it really has no English equivalent and can be translated by soil, ground, land or even something like home ground. It's true evocation seems linked to the French tradition of agricultural peasantry which is still very much part of the culture today. So it has connotations of home, where I live and make my life, as well as being plain old soil.
Two other difficulties in this case were “réalité historique” and Guyenne. The former may just be a case of an awkward phrasing in French. I rejected the possibility of historical reality for the former as I couldn't decide what that really meant. It poses the question as to what would be a historical unreality; a myth, presumably. But the term was applied to the chateau. Funnily enough, having rejected the term I later heard it uttered on the TV programme Time Team. I still don't know what it is supposed to mean, in French or in English. In the end I translated it as living history, although a witness to history might be a good alternative.
I had to look up Guyenne. In the Chateau du Cros text it is mentioned in the context of the history of the Chateau and kings Richard the Lion Heart and Edward, who once occupied it. The problem is that Guyenne is a region, approximating to the modern Aquitaine, a region that for a considerable period was ruled by the English, but also a dynasty, the kings who ruled it. Given that it was mentioned in connection with the kings and called the Guyenne Anglaise, I went for dynasty in the translation. However, when I was chatting later with Daniel, he said that the region was still called the Guyenne but that the connotations of an English dynasty of kings had been lost. So maybe Guyenne region would have been better.
These are all points I can review when the Chateau people get back to me.
Pancakes
Crèpes always seemed to be part of holidays in France. The French seemed to do them better than we English. Anyway, I was invited with Daniel, his son Alexis and pizza evening regulars Dominique and Chantal, to go to Michelle's and spend an evening eating crèpes on Shrove Tuesday. And there I learnt the difference. Michelle used the usual eggs, flour and milk to make the dough but added yeast and let the mixture ferment for 3-4 hours before using it. The mixture rose quite considerably and that probably explains why the crèpes are so much lighter than our pancakes.
Early French Theatre
When Daniel came round to eat on Wednesday, our discussion got around to French theatre. My own knowledge of early English theatre is sketchy (minstrel bands, etc) but Daniel's grasp of early French theatre is comprehensive. Two interesting points emerged. The first was that popular French theatre didn't really exist before Marivaux, in the mid-18th century. Until then, theatre had relied on royal patronage. Since the nobles, who had to pleased by the show, were all brought up on the classics, the plays tended to be based on classical tragedies (any form of comedy was considered inferior until Molière came along). You can guess the average French pleb's knowledge of classical tragedy so the plays would have been inaccessible to the populace even if they could have got a ticket. Moreover, theatre in France at the time was considered potentially subversive, which was another reason for excluding the plebs. Contrast that with, for instance, Shakespeare in England. One result was an economic difference. In Paris at the time of Shakespeare there were three theatres, all dependent on royal patronage. In London at the same time there were fourteen, dependent on large audiences to pay their way and hence on accessibility by the plebs.
The other interesting point was that French actors, until the mid 18th century, apparently always declaimed their words facing the audience; they never faced one another away from the audience. That must have put severe limitations on acting but I can imagine how it would work in, for instance, a play by Racine. However, if two actors were supposed to be arguing fiercely with one another it must have seemed a bit strange. Maybe the fact that classical French theatre was much more strictly bound by religiously observed conventions than English theatre (witness the “Bataille d'Hernani”) allowed it to work.
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