More On Translation, etc

More On Translation
It's always words with Daniel. He got me to proof read his series of parodies of La Flèche's speech to Frosine about Harpagon in Molière's play L'Avare. He's written them for the “Lire En Mai” book festival in Nyons in the first week of June, of which he is one of the organisers. It's certainly true that it's always better to have someone else proof read whatever you have written. He wants to publish these himself and also asked me for some help with formatting.

So I duly went to lunch with him today and I had a task for him. I find it difficult to sort out which lines of activity change the word in French according to the gender of the activist and which don't. For instance, a primary teacher, an “instituteur” becomes an “institutrice” if the teacher is a female but a secondary school teacher is always a “professeur”, masculine or feminine. I had a whole list for him to go through and advise me on. Contrary to my expectations, most of the words do change according to the gender of the activist. I didn't know (or expect) that you could have a “bouchère”. Most of the list I was uncertain about; for instance, “électricienne” and “vigneronne”. They turn out to be OK. “Plombier”, it seems, doesn't change but we couldn't think of many others that didn't. One surprise was “chauffeuse” which my trusted dictionary allows as a female chauffeur but Daniel insisted was always and not just also a piece of furniture.

This reminded me of previous scribblings about true/false friends in language and humbling mistakes waiting to be made. Friend Steve had commented at the time that I'd omitted the obvious example, which was “baiser”. I had and it was surprising because I had had a real-life example of this. “Un baiser” is a kiss but the verb “baiser” is rather more. Back in the 1970s I was invited to give a talk at Rennes University by John Laski (brother of Marghanita, another wordsmith), who happened to be teaching there at the time. John's grasp of French was nowhere near as good as his grasp of computing. The computing department at Rennes University had acquired a very pretty new secretary whom John wanted to introduce me to and he did so in his melodramatic manner taking her hand, kissing it and saying: “Comme elle est belle; je veux la baiser”. This was quite possibly what he actually wanted to do but it wasn't what he actually intended to say. The girl fortunately understood the mistake and shrugged off the intended compliment, laughing. “Bises”, even “grosses bises” or bisous” are much safer words in polite company.

Etc
I've been pinching bits of the road again but this time only a few centimetres. There's a kind of concrete box to the side of my front door which has been partly broken by a lilac tree growing though it. I've been looking at a small hole with cracked concrete around for some time, wondering whether I can get a honeysuckle plant in there, So today I removed a piece of the cracked concrete and found the hole is not quite big enough; there's too much lilac tree in it. However, moving the cracked concrete out into the road by just a few centimetres allowed me to get a honeysuckle plant in. So now I have a cementing job for tomorrow to get the concrete pieces reset around the somewhat larger hole. I don't think anyone will notice and, more importantly, I don't think they will care. They'll just enjoy the honeysuckle when it blooms. It will climb up the lilac tree along with a clematis I planted last year and which is already established.

The weather here continues to be mixed, mostly sun (around 20 degrees) with small storms in the late afternoon. The storms dictate when the boules sessions end and I'm not doing so badly now; five straight wins today. It seems the people who put the drains underneath the boules pitch are coming back to fill in a rather large depression under which the drains lie. That should rectify some of the more difficult places to play.

It's back to England next week for my mother's birthday. Spring was always my favourite season in England and I shall go the rounds of the garden centres to get some colour into my mother's garden.