Signs Of Spring And Miscellany

 

Signs Of Spring

The first signs of spring are around. Intermittent days of warm sunshine are becoming more frequent, japonica bushes are in bloom as are some fruit trees, almond or wild cherry, and I have four daffodils in bloom in front of my house. The rosemary bushes are in flower too, a light shade of blue. It’s just a beginning but turns my thoughts to gardening and the prospect of asparagus and strawberries before long.

In the front there are a couple of score more daffodils and narcissi still to bloom. The irises I cut down and replanted last year have regrown robustly so I am expecting a good show from them in about a month’s time. Everything on the balcony has survived the winter and I have decided not to continue with flowers in troughs there this year, to cut down on watering later, so there is little to do there or elsewhere in the front until may. I need to lightly prune the vine that grows over the balcony but that is about all for the moment as regards the house. After friend Gérard pruned the vine heavily last year I had a bumper crop of grapes and can hope for the same this year.

I’ve been over to the allotment just to put sleeves on the leeks to increase the portion that is white and do a little weeding. Nothing much seems to have moved over the winter, probably because of the inclement weather so the leeks won’t be worth pulling for at least another month. I noticed that some cress (lamb’s lettuce) has self-seeded so I’ll have a crop of that this year. The thornless blackberry has produced some new branches so I should have a good crop of blackberries too, as last year. I’ve bought two sacks of chicken shit fertiliser ready for when I start planting, a box of seed potatoes to start sprouting and a pack of spring onion seeds which I’ve sown in a trough on my balcony. So I just need to wait about a month now, maybe doing some weeding in the meanwhile.

Miscellany

The French seem to me to have an excessive regard for intellectuals. I have a university degree and therefore am classed as an intellectual. Nothing seems to be expected of intellectuals other than lofty thoughts and just about everything is excused. “Well, he’s an intellectual; what do you expect?” just about sums it up. Nothing practical s expected, certainly no DIY, and my gardening and boules playing, the latter particularly, are a bit suspect, eccentric.

I can live with that.

Harder to live with is the taste a lot of my friends have for bland food; not badly prepared or badly cooked food but food that to my taste lacks oomph. Or maybe it is just my predilection for herbs and spices, which I rarely cook without. There is a Vietnamese restaurant in Vaison, a woman who makes Thai dishes and one and one who does creole dishes in the village. But the Thai dishes are nothing like those I ate in Thailand and the others I find rather bland. In all cases it’s the spices that are missing, either in quantity or altogether. Well it’s said that there is no accounting for taste. Nonetheless I am cooking a fish curry for friends this week and it will have noticeable chilli, ginger and cloves in it; I’ll probably have to go easy on the chilli though.

The English conversation classes are still going well and are attracting new followers, which is just as well as some of the regulars have recently dropped out for heath reasons. Last week I taught the class to play the Black Widow card game, which I thought appropriate as the rules are simple, any number can play and there is quite a bit of new vocabulary in it. However one member couldn’t get their head around the idea that you need to avoid winning tricks with hearts or the black widow in them. Anyway that puts card games on the agenda for the future. Maybe I’ll get them to teach me some French games.

Translation And Immigration

 

Lost In Translation

Lost in translation is the title of one of my favourite films but this is not about films, it’s about translation; specifically, why do the French not get translations into English checked by an English native-language speaker? I and English friends have encountered many examples of mistranslations, from the gor blimey to the hilarious to the potentially dangerous. Here are some examples.

A friend visited a restaurant that had its menu translated into English. The menu listed the usual entrées, plats, desserts and the problem was with plat, flat or dish in English. Flat in English means on the same level or apartment. So the translator had some choices to make. He or she got it wrong. The result was a flat of the day and flats to take away. Hilarious but not too difficult to fix.

Some years ago I used Avignon airport frequently to visit England. Inscribed on a very large plate glass wall in the waiting area are the words Bienvenu en Avignon, le coeur de Provence. The English translation beneath it reads Welcome in (sic) Avignon, the hearth of Provence. Avignon residents might be surprised to know they are living in a cheminée. No harm done but very expensive to fix.

The other airport local to Mollans is at Nimes. On the wall inside the airport building is a large security notice, in French and English, with the English translation garbled. OK, it’s a security notice so much of the content can be inferred but the potential for misunderstandings is large. Isn’t airport security important enough to ensure an accurate translation?

Finally I sometimes visit wine websites to look at their English translations. One such was the Chateau Du Clos, in the Bordeaux area. It claimed that one of its wines was the colour of rubies, translated as “rubish”. I emailed the owners to point out that this was suspiciously close to rubbish and asked if they really wanted to claim their wine was that colour. The result was a good bottle of wine for me and a return email stating that the owners were thinking of suing the company that had created the site and the translation. Could be expensive for someone.

In all these cases what would it have cost to ensure an accurate translation from a native English speaker? Now whenever I encounter a mistranslation into English I offer the correction as a gift.

But before we English start smugly smiling it works the other way too. When the French new wave films hit Britain in the late 1950s one of the star films was Truffaut’s Quatre Cents Coups. The English translation was literal: The 400 Blows. But the film has nothing t do with 400 blows; faire les Quatre cents coups means to make mischief. So making mischief would have been a correct if not the sexiest of titles. I’ve no idea what the distributors paid for the right to distribute the film but it will certainly have dwarfed the cost of an accurate translation.

Immigration

I got an insight into the immigration issue in a dinner party at my house the other day with friends who are not racist or particularly politically active. It was to do with the safety net. The insight was that to defuse the issue countries need to ensure that they offer their existing citizens at least as much as they do to asylum seekers and would-be immigrants. This particularly concerns housing. Asylum seekers and would be immigrants are confined, which isn’t great for them, but they are housed. In the outside world (too) many people are sleeping on the streets. Finland has avoided this discrepancy by ensuring housing for all but I know of no other country that has done this. I haven’t yet had time to think this point through but intend to do so in the coming weeks.

It's A Waiting Game

 

It’s A Waiting Game

The Mairie always provides a new year lunch for free for the old folks in the village sometime in January and, for me, that is usually the only event of significance before March. It was, as usual, a good meal with a prawn, smoked salmon, ham and salad starter followed by roast pork in a mushroom sauce, cheese, dessert and wine “à volonté”. Hats off to the Mairie and members of the village council who served it. After that………..what, until March? I’m waiting for potatoes to appear in the garden shops so that I can buy some for my allotment; they’ll need a month for sprouting before I can plant them. At the same time onions should be available for planting. So basically nothing happens until I can start work on the allotment. I could do some clearing of debris there in the interim but that depends on the weather. So passing the time reduces to reading, listening to music or watching TV. It feels like an age but really that’s not so bad, is it?

(Don’t) Contact Us

I don’t know how many people have tried to contact the organisation behind a website and found it a frustrating experience but I certainly have many times. Contact Us can generally be taken to mean Please Don’t. Forging relationships with customers? Well, if you are buying, otherwise…...(who needs customers?). It’s all part of removing staff (and cost) from the process. Customer service? That’s a term that applies only to the sales staff. I’ve tried to interest relevant magazines in the issue, particularly from the point of view of old and limited fogies like, with no success. Isn’ t there a helpline phone number? Of course there is, if you can find it, but how long can you hang on the ine before you die? And if you have a specific problem there is probably a menu that will include all options except the one you want. So, an ELSE clause, an “other” option? Dream on.

I have had a bee in my bonnet about user testing for as long as I can remember until I recently found out that UX specialists are employed (sometimes). UX specialists are trained to examine the user experience on a website. That’s great, even if they don’t measure up to my benchmark of a 90 year-old granny living in Kazakhstan who has just been given a PC for her 90^th birthday and wants to buy a present on-line for her grandchild in England. But what is the remit of these UX specialists? Are they allowed to investigate and test beyond sales? There seems little if any evidence that that is the case. So do we just have to suffer and get on with it? Well, it seems to me that there is a gap in the market there; and if there is a gap in the market there could be an opportunity for someone to exploit it. Nationwide has only recently woken up to how to exploit its position as a mutual, doing so in a manner that no other bank in the UK can copy. So there is hope, even if it is tenuous. In the meantime I’m waiting, waiting for some organisation to meet my Kazakhstan granny test.