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.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Friday, 5 February 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.
Thursday, 28 January 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?
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?
Monday, 18 January 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.
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.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Charity, Translation and Global Warming
Téléthon
It's been said that the French don't do as much charity work as the English and it appears to be true. It probably isn't true that the French do less volunteering though; lots of local activities are made possible only with the help of many volunteers.
However, once a year the nation succumbs to a positive orgy of charity giving: the Téléthon weekend at the beginning of December. It works much like Children in Need bonanzas on English television except that it isn't directed at a single charity but at each and every one. In the village it kicks off with a knees up and a meal on the Friday evening. Then there are various parades, demonstrations and tournaments on the Saturday, plus an all-day fruit and vegetable market; there was a moules/frites lunch on offer and more music and food in the evening. And a bit more of the same on the Sunday.
I decided to take part in the boules tournament, “à la melée”, meaning pairs to make teams were drawn out of a hat. With a good partner, anything would be possible. As it happens, I drew someone of about my standard and we won one match before being eliminated. Organisation of the tournament was something that could only happen here though. The tournament was due to start at 14.00 so I went along just before then. At about 14.10 someone appeared with a piece of paper and two or three of us put our names down; then a hiatus. Finally the announcer called for more participants and repeated that several times over the next 20 minutes or so. Realising I was in for a wait I looked to see what else was on and saw there was to be a demonstration of shooting (at boules) also scheduled for 14.00; so I asked about that. It turned out that the person taking the names was to give the shooting demonstration, so was otherwise occupied. I then asked where we were playing, as the centre of the Téléthon organisation was in the St Marcel room, on the other side of the village to the boules pistes. “Don't know”, was the helpful answer. Eventually 16 participants were found and we scratched around for somewhere to play, the only viable space being around a cake-stall tent with people wandering around it all the time. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, although the demonstration of shooting seemed to be forgotten.
Next year, if I can intercede in time, I'll suggest having the shooting demonstration 30 minutes before the tournament starts. That will attract all the potential boules players to one spot without the need for multiple announcements. And I'll suggest having both organised from the Cafe des Sports, right hext to the boules pistes. Only in Provence............................................
Translation
I've found a solution to one of the translation difficulties I mentioned in my last posting: the double-entendre in the word “feu” (fire and deceased). It came to me while I was sitting on the loo, of course. “Allumer un feu”, with the double meaning, can be translated by “light a pyre”. I think it's going to take a few more visits to the loo to sort out the other translation problem but burns in place of blisters may come to my rescue. And in the meantime........another double entendre has emerged: “au courant”, meaning “in the know” but containing the word “courant” which can imply electricity. Ah well, it was only something of a game anyway.
Global Warming
I went with Daniel to collect some wine from his favourite cooperative in St Cécile Les Vignes and to visit a friends of his, Jean-Claude, who grows some of the grapes the cooperative uses. Over aperitifs and lots of genial chat, two points emerged. One is that global warming (temporary, lasting, due to carbon dioxide or not) is having an effect on the local agriculture. Jean-Claude (more or less my age) said that the grape harvest was always on the 25th of September, give or take a day or two. This year and last it has been the 5th of September. And, for the olive harvest, orchard owners put out nets to catch the olives when they start falling, which until very recently was always at the end of November or early December. Now the nets are out at the end of October.
It's been said that the French don't do as much charity work as the English and it appears to be true. It probably isn't true that the French do less volunteering though; lots of local activities are made possible only with the help of many volunteers.
However, once a year the nation succumbs to a positive orgy of charity giving: the Téléthon weekend at the beginning of December. It works much like Children in Need bonanzas on English television except that it isn't directed at a single charity but at each and every one. In the village it kicks off with a knees up and a meal on the Friday evening. Then there are various parades, demonstrations and tournaments on the Saturday, plus an all-day fruit and vegetable market; there was a moules/frites lunch on offer and more music and food in the evening. And a bit more of the same on the Sunday.
I decided to take part in the boules tournament, “à la melée”, meaning pairs to make teams were drawn out of a hat. With a good partner, anything would be possible. As it happens, I drew someone of about my standard and we won one match before being eliminated. Organisation of the tournament was something that could only happen here though. The tournament was due to start at 14.00 so I went along just before then. At about 14.10 someone appeared with a piece of paper and two or three of us put our names down; then a hiatus. Finally the announcer called for more participants and repeated that several times over the next 20 minutes or so. Realising I was in for a wait I looked to see what else was on and saw there was to be a demonstration of shooting (at boules) also scheduled for 14.00; so I asked about that. It turned out that the person taking the names was to give the shooting demonstration, so was otherwise occupied. I then asked where we were playing, as the centre of the Téléthon organisation was in the St Marcel room, on the other side of the village to the boules pistes. “Don't know”, was the helpful answer. Eventually 16 participants were found and we scratched around for somewhere to play, the only viable space being around a cake-stall tent with people wandering around it all the time. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, although the demonstration of shooting seemed to be forgotten.
Next year, if I can intercede in time, I'll suggest having the shooting demonstration 30 minutes before the tournament starts. That will attract all the potential boules players to one spot without the need for multiple announcements. And I'll suggest having both organised from the Cafe des Sports, right hext to the boules pistes. Only in Provence............................................
Translation
I've found a solution to one of the translation difficulties I mentioned in my last posting: the double-entendre in the word “feu” (fire and deceased). It came to me while I was sitting on the loo, of course. “Allumer un feu”, with the double meaning, can be translated by “light a pyre”. I think it's going to take a few more visits to the loo to sort out the other translation problem but burns in place of blisters may come to my rescue. And in the meantime........another double entendre has emerged: “au courant”, meaning “in the know” but containing the word “courant” which can imply electricity. Ah well, it was only something of a game anyway.
Global Warming
I went with Daniel to collect some wine from his favourite cooperative in St Cécile Les Vignes and to visit a friends of his, Jean-Claude, who grows some of the grapes the cooperative uses. Over aperitifs and lots of genial chat, two points emerged. One is that global warming (temporary, lasting, due to carbon dioxide or not) is having an effect on the local agriculture. Jean-Claude (more or less my age) said that the grape harvest was always on the 25th of September, give or take a day or two. This year and last it has been the 5th of September. And, for the olive harvest, orchard owners put out nets to catch the olives when they start falling, which until very recently was always at the end of November or early December. Now the nets are out at the end of October.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Joke Translation and Carols
Joke Translation
One of the things we do to entertain ourselves on the pizza evenings is to tell one another jokes. However, I am increasingly finding that many English jokes are untranslatable into French. This is not because the French lack a particular style of humour that is peculiarly British. Indeed many class ironic humour as English and enjoy it. The reason is always to do with language and sometimes the problem is not very obvious.
Perhaps the simplest problem is where there is a play on words. An example is the joke where two doctors discussing a new nurse say she is hopeless because she gets things the wrong way round. One says he ordered a patient to be given two aspirin ten hours and she gave him 10 aspirin every two hours and nearly killed him. The other says he ordered an enema for a patient every 24 hours and he nearly exploded under the 24 enemas. So far, no problem (except for the patients!). The doctors suddenly hear an agonised scream coming from a ward, and here comes the translation problem. One doctor says: “Oh my God! I asked that nurse to prick a patient's boil”. I defy anyone to translate that punchline so that the joke stands.
Here is a much more subtle example. It's one of a series about blonds who, stereotypically, have no brains. Someone says to a blond: “Look at that dog with one eye”. So the blond covers one eye with her hand and says:”Where?” The translation problem lies with the preposition “with”. You can't really translate the first “with” by “avec” and so the joke loses it's point. Conceivably, adding “seulement” after the first “with” might do it but it's doubtful if the French would express themselves that way. They would most likely use “borgne” or “qui n'a qu'un seul oeil”; either way, the joke loses its point. I think prepositions are often the most difficult words in translations between languages.
More Translation Difficulties
Daniel has written a sketch for the Rue des Granges festival next summer and wants it translated into English. The theme of the festival is light. However, he warned me this evening that there are many plays on words in the script.
One such is on the word “ampoule”, which means both a light bulb and a blister in French. A similar double-entendre in English is not going to be easy to find. Another is the word “feu”, meaning fire or deceased, Again I can see real difficulties in translating that. It may be possible to find an analogy in English that would work but one that has to do with light...........? We shall see.
Christmas Carols
Friend Jo had the idea of singing Christmas carols, in English, French and Provencal, outside the Bar du Pont, the local old people's home and maybe one or two places more. It seemed like a good idea with people from the pizza evening and other friends and acquaintances all joining in. It has since become clear though that this an English, or certainly not a French, thing to do. One by one the French contingent have all excused themselves; they are happy to come along but not to sing. It never occurred to Jo (or to me) that singing carols in the street at Christmas might be an English peculiarity. Anyway, we have decided not to push against the tide and so have postponed the idea for a year or maybe forever. The reaction of the French surprised me because it was not so long ago that we all happily crooned away to French songs of the 1950s/60s in the Bar du Pont on one of our pizza evenings, as I described in a previous post. However, there seems to be a distinction between doing that inside the Bar and, more publicly, outside the Bar. Strange but true.
One of the things we do to entertain ourselves on the pizza evenings is to tell one another jokes. However, I am increasingly finding that many English jokes are untranslatable into French. This is not because the French lack a particular style of humour that is peculiarly British. Indeed many class ironic humour as English and enjoy it. The reason is always to do with language and sometimes the problem is not very obvious.
Perhaps the simplest problem is where there is a play on words. An example is the joke where two doctors discussing a new nurse say she is hopeless because she gets things the wrong way round. One says he ordered a patient to be given two aspirin ten hours and she gave him 10 aspirin every two hours and nearly killed him. The other says he ordered an enema for a patient every 24 hours and he nearly exploded under the 24 enemas. So far, no problem (except for the patients!). The doctors suddenly hear an agonised scream coming from a ward, and here comes the translation problem. One doctor says: “Oh my God! I asked that nurse to prick a patient's boil”. I defy anyone to translate that punchline so that the joke stands.
Here is a much more subtle example. It's one of a series about blonds who, stereotypically, have no brains. Someone says to a blond: “Look at that dog with one eye”. So the blond covers one eye with her hand and says:”Where?” The translation problem lies with the preposition “with”. You can't really translate the first “with” by “avec” and so the joke loses it's point. Conceivably, adding “seulement” after the first “with” might do it but it's doubtful if the French would express themselves that way. They would most likely use “borgne” or “qui n'a qu'un seul oeil”; either way, the joke loses its point. I think prepositions are often the most difficult words in translations between languages.
More Translation Difficulties
Daniel has written a sketch for the Rue des Granges festival next summer and wants it translated into English. The theme of the festival is light. However, he warned me this evening that there are many plays on words in the script.
One such is on the word “ampoule”, which means both a light bulb and a blister in French. A similar double-entendre in English is not going to be easy to find. Another is the word “feu”, meaning fire or deceased, Again I can see real difficulties in translating that. It may be possible to find an analogy in English that would work but one that has to do with light...........? We shall see.
Christmas Carols
Friend Jo had the idea of singing Christmas carols, in English, French and Provencal, outside the Bar du Pont, the local old people's home and maybe one or two places more. It seemed like a good idea with people from the pizza evening and other friends and acquaintances all joining in. It has since become clear though that this an English, or certainly not a French, thing to do. One by one the French contingent have all excused themselves; they are happy to come along but not to sing. It never occurred to Jo (or to me) that singing carols in the street at Christmas might be an English peculiarity. Anyway, we have decided not to push against the tide and so have postponed the idea for a year or maybe forever. The reaction of the French surprised me because it was not so long ago that we all happily crooned away to French songs of the 1950s/60s in the Bar du Pont on one of our pizza evenings, as I described in a previous post. However, there seems to be a distinction between doing that inside the Bar and, more publicly, outside the Bar. Strange but true.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Winter Life
Winter
Winter is now here and Christmas is coming. The evenings have been gradually getting colder, although nothing like to the extent they can if they put their minds to it, and the weather has become more mixed. Today was fine again, with the temperature this evening only slightly below zero. The two previous days however were overcast and yesterday brought a lot of rain and high winds. The ground needed the rain so it was not unwelcome. Driving down the Ouvèze valley to Buis this morning, however, I noticed that most of the colour has gone from the hills, not surprisingly as the hills behind Buis were blanketed with snow down to about 1000ft. And the high wind has stripped most of the remaining leaves from the trees and vines. There were also layers of cloud down to not much more than 500ft. Even so, the scenery in that clothing still has a great deal of charm; it certainly beats the view from my former house in Reading.
Christmas is coming because the Christmas lights have been put up in the village. This involves a day in which one street after another becomes blocked off (and each time blocks off access to half the village) because a big chair-lift truck is needed to put them up. However, the village has the good taste to put up lights in Chelsea blue and white colours, which proves I was right to come here.
Life In General
The winter routine has taken on its habitual form. I've been to eat with Daniel and Steve and Jo, they and Mana have been to eat with me. I've been to see two films, one very good and one definitely missable. The Ruban Blanc (a German film whose German title I don't know) was a kind of social study of the repressive social scene in an extremely puritan Germany before the first world war and was very much worth seeing. The other, a Japanese film with the title Une Jeune Fille à La Derive, was supposed to be a landmark in Japanese cinema and may be but didn't seem worth the time. An Iranian film, A Propos d'Elly, promises to be good and I shall see it later this week or early next week. With the variety of films on offer I usually have little idea from the cinema programmes, which have promotional descriptions of course, as to whether a film is worth seeing (or to my taste) or not so I use the imdb.com database to check the films out before deciding whether to go or not.
I've commented previously on French acceptance of sub-titles allowing a far wider range of films to be shown than is the case in the UK. Another factor is that French cinemas are subsidised (at the moment). UK towns similar to Buis, Nyons and even Vaison with its “massive” 6000 population would never be able to support a cinema and the same would be true here without subsidy. To have three within easy driving distance is, in a sense, a luxury, but is an enormous boon in the winter. For as long as that lasts.......The universally derided Sarkozy has removed the wealth tax on companies that helped pay for such luxuries and already the cinema in Buis is asking for volunteers of all sorts (even projectionists) to help the cinema stay afloat. You can argue whether companies should have such an imposition placed on them but you can also ask what has been done in the UK to help keep village communities alive.
The printers have produced the proof of the village guided tour brochure I did the translation for and it looks good, running to some 40 A5 pages. Daniel showed it to me briefly this evening at the pizza get-together and I immediately spotted one mistake I made. Hopefully there won't be too many more; the problem is that as my French becomes more fluent so my English becomes less so. I'll have to practise over Christmas! A new library, now fancily called a “mediatech” (but do you know of any in English villages?), is being opened in the village in January and the brochure is destined to be unveiled at the same time so we should be ready. I shall be interested to be able to get my hands on the village archives, which have been difficult to access previously but will be freely available in the new mediatech. That will give me the incentive to really lobby for a good website for the village in place of the feeble excuse for one which we now have.
Winter is now here and Christmas is coming. The evenings have been gradually getting colder, although nothing like to the extent they can if they put their minds to it, and the weather has become more mixed. Today was fine again, with the temperature this evening only slightly below zero. The two previous days however were overcast and yesterday brought a lot of rain and high winds. The ground needed the rain so it was not unwelcome. Driving down the Ouvèze valley to Buis this morning, however, I noticed that most of the colour has gone from the hills, not surprisingly as the hills behind Buis were blanketed with snow down to about 1000ft. And the high wind has stripped most of the remaining leaves from the trees and vines. There were also layers of cloud down to not much more than 500ft. Even so, the scenery in that clothing still has a great deal of charm; it certainly beats the view from my former house in Reading.
Christmas is coming because the Christmas lights have been put up in the village. This involves a day in which one street after another becomes blocked off (and each time blocks off access to half the village) because a big chair-lift truck is needed to put them up. However, the village has the good taste to put up lights in Chelsea blue and white colours, which proves I was right to come here.
Life In General
The winter routine has taken on its habitual form. I've been to eat with Daniel and Steve and Jo, they and Mana have been to eat with me. I've been to see two films, one very good and one definitely missable. The Ruban Blanc (a German film whose German title I don't know) was a kind of social study of the repressive social scene in an extremely puritan Germany before the first world war and was very much worth seeing. The other, a Japanese film with the title Une Jeune Fille à La Derive, was supposed to be a landmark in Japanese cinema and may be but didn't seem worth the time. An Iranian film, A Propos d'Elly, promises to be good and I shall see it later this week or early next week. With the variety of films on offer I usually have little idea from the cinema programmes, which have promotional descriptions of course, as to whether a film is worth seeing (or to my taste) or not so I use the imdb.com database to check the films out before deciding whether to go or not.
I've commented previously on French acceptance of sub-titles allowing a far wider range of films to be shown than is the case in the UK. Another factor is that French cinemas are subsidised (at the moment). UK towns similar to Buis, Nyons and even Vaison with its “massive” 6000 population would never be able to support a cinema and the same would be true here without subsidy. To have three within easy driving distance is, in a sense, a luxury, but is an enormous boon in the winter. For as long as that lasts.......The universally derided Sarkozy has removed the wealth tax on companies that helped pay for such luxuries and already the cinema in Buis is asking for volunteers of all sorts (even projectionists) to help the cinema stay afloat. You can argue whether companies should have such an imposition placed on them but you can also ask what has been done in the UK to help keep village communities alive.
The printers have produced the proof of the village guided tour brochure I did the translation for and it looks good, running to some 40 A5 pages. Daniel showed it to me briefly this evening at the pizza get-together and I immediately spotted one mistake I made. Hopefully there won't be too many more; the problem is that as my French becomes more fluent so my English becomes less so. I'll have to practise over Christmas! A new library, now fancily called a “mediatech” (but do you know of any in English villages?), is being opened in the village in January and the brochure is destined to be unveiled at the same time so we should be ready. I shall be interested to be able to get my hands on the village archives, which have been difficult to access previously but will be freely available in the new mediatech. That will give me the incentive to really lobby for a good website for the village in place of the feeble excuse for one which we now have.
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