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.