More Signs Of Spring
Went shopping yesterday and noticed that the supermarket is now selling locally grown strawberries. There have been strawberries occasionally for a few weeks now but here there is not the year-round supply of everything that one finds in UK supermarkets. French supermarkets have to source a high fairly percentage of fresh produce locally and so the produce available tends to be more seasonal. For the past few weeks the strawberries have been from Morocco but now those from Carpentras are appearing, including the “garrigues”, also from Carpentras, smaller and less shapely than their Moroccan counterparts but with much better flavour. Despite the shift towards organic produce, in England as much as in France, I still don't see any acceptance in England of fruit/veg that is discoloured or misshapen even if the flavour is far superior. Also, I saw local asparagus for the first time. The asparagus season here is much earlier than in the UK and goes on for longer; and the asparagus is much cheaper (eventually, if not at first).
Flowers by the wayside and in gardens are much as in the UK at this time. The usual spring bulbs, primroses and violets and forsythia and japonica bushes. Irises aren't showing much bud yet but they won't be far behind and when they do start blooming they appear everywhere in gardens and in the wild. And....... I've turned off the heating other than in the living room and kitchen; that should be it until October.
And So To The Camargue
Friends Steve and Jo and I have been promising ourselves a trip to the coast since Christmas but the prolonged winter delayed the trip. Today we finally went, to Saintes Maries de la Mer, self-styled capital of the Camargue (Arles and Aigues Mortes might have something to say about that). I had assumed that the reality would be different from the romantic image of wild horses dashing through the marshes with manes flying but, even so, the reality was more prosaic than I had thought. There were plenty of white horses and black bulls but the former were corralled into establishments offering horse riding. True, the pink flamingos were there too. But the wild marshes of romance have been pretty much all tamed, probably for a long time.
A visit to the Camargue museum told the story. In the early 19th century the Camargue in France had been viewed very much as Dartmoor in England; far from being a tourist attraction, it was a poor, isolated, bereft and dangerous place to be avoided. Gradually, drainage allowed some of the land to be cultivated for wheat, although it can hardly have been ideal for that, and land was made available for sheep grazing. Some wheat planting is still evident but the sheep seem to have disappeared. A legacy of the sheep rearing is the presence of many long low buildings formerly used to house them in winter that are now put to other purposes. They have a singular style, rounded at the north end to divert the wind, blunt at the southern end and with thatched roofs made from the reeds in the marshes. For some unexplained reason, they normally had nine lateral wooden spars either side to support the roof.
Apparently there was a kind of South Sea Bubble phenomenon at the end of the 19th century when, around 1870, phylloxera killed most French vines. Minimal vine cultivation in the Camargue proved immune to phylloxera, probably because the roots were normally submerged in water and sand. Suddenly, the Camargue became the centre of wine production for France and the land was taken over by vines. However, the area produces only low-alcohol wine which was traditionally cut with wine from north Africa to produce an acceptable table wine. So, when a solution was found to the phylloxera problem, in 1907, the Bubble burst; grape production in the Camargue that year was simply not harvested at all.
A substitute was found in 1942 when some bright spark realised that the area would be suitable for cultivation of rice, which was then in short supply because of the war. Now, Camargue rice commands something of a premium price, although I have to confess I can't discern much difference between it and long grain rice from elsewhere. The area is still marshland, albeit much of it drained, and a haven for birds that thrive in that habitat. So it will be a major attraction for bird enthusiasts.
For myself, I had a great day out in bright warm sunshine with friends and a very enjoyable lunch on a cafe balcony overlooking the sea. I'm glad to have seen something of the Camargue and would like to return, sometime, to see more. But I can't imagine that it will ever be for me an area that I will want to spend any length of time in. It's good to know it's just an hour and a half's drive away so another day trip will be easy.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Monday, 29 March 2010
Village Life
Erratic Jobbing
The boules ground is still not in a playable state although little other than the spreading of some gravel, already on site, needs to be done. The laying of drains under the ground there has been something of a saga, work having been started as early as last October. So it's taken six months (and counting) to lay fewer than 100 metres of drains. Nobody seems surprised, which makes me wonder why.
Extended durations for any kind of building work are very much the norm here and I now understand the reason. My admittedly limited experience of building work in the UK is that a workforce is allotted to the job and basically works at it until the job is finished. Here, a workforce seems always to be allocated multiple jobs at a time and works on one or another for indeterminate periods according to circumstances and convenience. It results in delays often commented on by would-be Peter Mayles writing about their experiences in house renovation in France.
The incredible (to me) time taken to lay the drains under the boules ground has been at least partly explained to me by neighbour Jean-Pierre. What apparently happens is that the builders complete a chunk of the work and then go to the Mairie to ask for payment for the work completed. Getting the payment can take weeks and, while waiting, the workforce moves on to another job. Even if payment is forthcoming within days, they are then engaged elsewhere and stay there until some similar break-off point. Then, if payment has been made, they return to complete another chunk of work. And so on. The typical traditionally British attitude is to assume that the workforce is simply slacking and needs a kick up the jacksie but that, from my observations, is untrue. The workers seem to be hard at it when they are there. The execution time for a job is probably no different from that in the UK, may even be shorter; it is the elapsed time that is far longer.
Boules and Flowers
The recent good weather (typical UK April weather atcually, sunshine and showers) and rise in temperature finally tested the patience of the boules crowd too much and we played for the first time since Christmas, albeit on the “grande terre” next to the Cafe des Sports rather than the usual pitch. I managed to play reasonably well, given that it was my first time out in months. When the new gravel surface is eventually laid on the usual pitch it will be like learning a new ball game, literally. All the slopes, stony areas and “placid” runs we used to know will have changed. Should be fun getting to grips with it.
The good weather has also finally brought into bloom all the bulbs I have in front of the house that have had buds ready to burst for the last two weeks. The terrace is looking good with anemone blanda and scilla siberica showing well in crevices in the terrace wall. I bought a false jasmine to replace the true one that didn't survive the winter so that should be climbing and blooming before long. Like many plants here, I've noticed, it seems to have two flowering periods per year, one in spring/early summer and one in the autumn. The back garden itself is more or less done, apart from a little weeding and the installation of a water feature. Ever since I visited the Alhambra as a student at Madrid University in 1962 I have understood the appeal of running water in a hot environment. Just the sound of running water seems refreshing. The Moors, of course, found that out long before I did.
Anyway, the water feature I brought back with me from the UK after Christmas came without any wall support attachments, despite the wall-mounted illustration in the catalogue that persuaded me to buy it. It sits perfectly adequately on the ground and looks OK there but I really wanted it on the wall; and the prospect of trying to drill holes into the rock terrace walls and the feature itself wasn't inviting. So I asked friends Steve and Jo to come round and give an opinion and they duly did so this evening. As so often seems to happen, extra minds produced a potential solution: a plinth. Why didn't I think of that? I don't know; in retrospect it's a fairly obvious thought but one that my tunneled vision of the moment wouldn't allow. So, in the next few days, it's off to find/build a plinth.
Change In The Village
The Bar du Pont has been changing ownership over the past week and has been closed for stock-taking and renovations, so the normal pizza evening routine was interrupted. Since we couldn't use the Bar, neighbours Jean-Pierre and Monique invited all the usual crowd to get their pizza and come to eat it at their house. Which we duly did. At the Bar, Jacques and Monique (famous for her sense of humour?) are giving way to people I have yet to get to know but who are apparently cousins of Martine Moreau, a neighbour of Steve and Jo. It seems that about a quarter of the population of Mollans have some such slightly indirect relationship to Mme Moreau so that much wasn't surprising and it keeps ownership of the Bar within the village. Incidentally, Martine was bereaved of her husband a few years ago and, as she recounts, got a visit from a local widower the day after her husband's death telling her she needed a man, i.e. him. The former may or may not have been true but the latter wasn't, at least in Martine's opinion. Apparently all available women in the locality get a similar visit but the visitor hasn't had any luck so far so there must be something wrong in his logic. The episode does illustrate though how the French don't muck about in coming to the point in such matters.
During the evening I learned from Anne-Marie that one of the two bakers in town has also changed hands. In this case the new owners are from Merindol, which is at least 10 km from Mollans and therefore foreign territory. Will the foreigners be accepted? Time and the quality of their bread will tell. As Anne-Marie said to me: “Everything is changing in the village”. Well, the new library is opening at the weekend also and the hairdresser is apparently passing over the business to one of her assistants but...............................Maybe only so much change at a time can be properly assimilated in a village such as ours.
The boules ground is still not in a playable state although little other than the spreading of some gravel, already on site, needs to be done. The laying of drains under the ground there has been something of a saga, work having been started as early as last October. So it's taken six months (and counting) to lay fewer than 100 metres of drains. Nobody seems surprised, which makes me wonder why.
Extended durations for any kind of building work are very much the norm here and I now understand the reason. My admittedly limited experience of building work in the UK is that a workforce is allotted to the job and basically works at it until the job is finished. Here, a workforce seems always to be allocated multiple jobs at a time and works on one or another for indeterminate periods according to circumstances and convenience. It results in delays often commented on by would-be Peter Mayles writing about their experiences in house renovation in France.
The incredible (to me) time taken to lay the drains under the boules ground has been at least partly explained to me by neighbour Jean-Pierre. What apparently happens is that the builders complete a chunk of the work and then go to the Mairie to ask for payment for the work completed. Getting the payment can take weeks and, while waiting, the workforce moves on to another job. Even if payment is forthcoming within days, they are then engaged elsewhere and stay there until some similar break-off point. Then, if payment has been made, they return to complete another chunk of work. And so on. The typical traditionally British attitude is to assume that the workforce is simply slacking and needs a kick up the jacksie but that, from my observations, is untrue. The workers seem to be hard at it when they are there. The execution time for a job is probably no different from that in the UK, may even be shorter; it is the elapsed time that is far longer.
Boules and Flowers
The recent good weather (typical UK April weather atcually, sunshine and showers) and rise in temperature finally tested the patience of the boules crowd too much and we played for the first time since Christmas, albeit on the “grande terre” next to the Cafe des Sports rather than the usual pitch. I managed to play reasonably well, given that it was my first time out in months. When the new gravel surface is eventually laid on the usual pitch it will be like learning a new ball game, literally. All the slopes, stony areas and “placid” runs we used to know will have changed. Should be fun getting to grips with it.
The good weather has also finally brought into bloom all the bulbs I have in front of the house that have had buds ready to burst for the last two weeks. The terrace is looking good with anemone blanda and scilla siberica showing well in crevices in the terrace wall. I bought a false jasmine to replace the true one that didn't survive the winter so that should be climbing and blooming before long. Like many plants here, I've noticed, it seems to have two flowering periods per year, one in spring/early summer and one in the autumn. The back garden itself is more or less done, apart from a little weeding and the installation of a water feature. Ever since I visited the Alhambra as a student at Madrid University in 1962 I have understood the appeal of running water in a hot environment. Just the sound of running water seems refreshing. The Moors, of course, found that out long before I did.
Anyway, the water feature I brought back with me from the UK after Christmas came without any wall support attachments, despite the wall-mounted illustration in the catalogue that persuaded me to buy it. It sits perfectly adequately on the ground and looks OK there but I really wanted it on the wall; and the prospect of trying to drill holes into the rock terrace walls and the feature itself wasn't inviting. So I asked friends Steve and Jo to come round and give an opinion and they duly did so this evening. As so often seems to happen, extra minds produced a potential solution: a plinth. Why didn't I think of that? I don't know; in retrospect it's a fairly obvious thought but one that my tunneled vision of the moment wouldn't allow. So, in the next few days, it's off to find/build a plinth.
Change In The Village
The Bar du Pont has been changing ownership over the past week and has been closed for stock-taking and renovations, so the normal pizza evening routine was interrupted. Since we couldn't use the Bar, neighbours Jean-Pierre and Monique invited all the usual crowd to get their pizza and come to eat it at their house. Which we duly did. At the Bar, Jacques and Monique (famous for her sense of humour?) are giving way to people I have yet to get to know but who are apparently cousins of Martine Moreau, a neighbour of Steve and Jo. It seems that about a quarter of the population of Mollans have some such slightly indirect relationship to Mme Moreau so that much wasn't surprising and it keeps ownership of the Bar within the village. Incidentally, Martine was bereaved of her husband a few years ago and, as she recounts, got a visit from a local widower the day after her husband's death telling her she needed a man, i.e. him. The former may or may not have been true but the latter wasn't, at least in Martine's opinion. Apparently all available women in the locality get a similar visit but the visitor hasn't had any luck so far so there must be something wrong in his logic. The episode does illustrate though how the French don't muck about in coming to the point in such matters.
During the evening I learned from Anne-Marie that one of the two bakers in town has also changed hands. In this case the new owners are from Merindol, which is at least 10 km from Mollans and therefore foreign territory. Will the foreigners be accepted? Time and the quality of their bread will tell. As Anne-Marie said to me: “Everything is changing in the village”. Well, the new library is opening at the weekend also and the hairdresser is apparently passing over the business to one of her assistants but...............................Maybe only so much change at a time can be properly assimilated in a village such as ours.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Spring Etc
Spring At Lasr?
After a number of false dawns, perhaps spring is at last arriving. Last weekend was reasonable, Monday too, but with a cold wind to accompany the sunshine; the Mistral, as usual. Today, no mistral, sunshine, a temperature in the sun of around 20 degrees and a deep Wedgwood blue sky to die for. I spent the day clearing the winter debris from the back garden and spreading smelly stuff, which will hopefully result in plenty of much sweeter smells later on. The really good news is that this weather is forecast to last for at least another two days so maybe spring is breaking through.
Those who have lived here many years are saying that this year has been the hardest winter they have known. That statement needs to be put in some perspective vis-a-vis my English experience. Since my return after Christmas, the weather has certainly been colder than I have known and with four separate snowfalls. That is what the locals notice; you normally get a day of snow here or maybe two, but that is all. But.......you start counting winter here from December. Until after the first week in December, the weather here was very pleasant. So, with my English background, a long hard winter that lasts only three months (if that is what happens) is something I can put up with.
That said, I am amazed that there is still snow hanging around in odd places in the village. We are talking not micro-climates but mini-mini micro-climates. The remaining snow is in odd ditches and corners that aren't getting the sun. It's a question of where the sun gets too (how high it is) and the effect of the shadow thrown by surrounding hills. This maybe explains why I am so puzzled by plants that are perennial here that aren't in the milder climes of the UK. Oleanders generally won't survive a UK winter without protection but happily do here. The same goes even for marigolds and, quite often, Californian poppies, verbena and diascias.
Whatever, I am now going to work on the assumption that spring is on the way and start planting seeds. I've already taken ~20 cuttings of my blue pentstemons, which should give me a dozen plants. My true jasmine, which struggled through the last two winters hasn't survived this time so I'll replace it with a false one (trachelospermum jasmoinides) and the same may be true of my plumbago, but I'll give that another couple of weeks to show signs of growth. Seems like it's gardening time again.
Anglo-French (Food) Relations
I invited Daniel to eat tonight to save him having to open his usual tin before going off to England. He hasn't been to England since his student days but a neighbour, Christine, who is married to an Englishman and spends most of her time in Worthing, invited him across and he decided to go. The cross-channel links are further supplemented by friend Michèle, who turns out to have a cousin married to an Englishman and is living in Richmond and Mana, who taught English. Michèle, like Daniel, hadn't been back to England since student days but was recently persuaded to do so by her cousin. Mana has never been back since her schooldays, although she spent a couple of subsequent years in America.
What they all have in common is a terror of English food. Given that their last experience of this was in the 1950s, their terror is understandable. However, their assumption that nothing has changed in the intervening half-century is less so, especially as all have eaten both at my house and Steve and Jo's and declared the meals to be good. Daniel's attitude, given that he doesn't cook for himself but simply opens tins, is even more perplexing. I think that their continued perception of English cooking has more to do with perpetuation of a myth than anything else. Having undergone a ghastly experience in the past, they are reluctant to give up on it.
Translating Shakespeare
It wouldn't be a new entry in this blog without some comments on translation, so here they are. Daniel is a Shakespeare devotee and, in the course of some discussion, he said that his favourite play was Hamlet and I said mine was MacBeth. I love the poetry in MacBeth and started to quote MacBeth saying “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.........”. I know the full speech by heart and, halfway into it, realised that Daniel was lost. So I started to translate. Leave aside the poetry and connotations of the words, what is “creeps” in French? I was stuck, so was Daniel despite my attempts to describe the action. “ A tâtons” only gets part of it. A dictionary finally produced “ramper”. But it's not really the same. “Ramper” is what kids do before they learn to walk. Crawling has some of the connotations of creeping but it's not the same. Anyway, continuing with the attempted translation I decided that the task was impossible (at least for me). Which led me to ask Daniel if he had a French translation of Shakespeare. He has, somewhere, but can't find it for the moment. I think I want to see one and see what the translator has done. God help him/her.
Following on from that, at the last pizza evening Jo asked René if there were any words in French that changed meaning according to their pronunciation, even though the spelling was the same. In English, “close” meaning “shut” and “close” meaning “ near” are spelled the same but mean different things according to how they are pronounced; the same is true of “refuse” meaning “deny/say no to” and “refuse” meaning “rubbish”. None of the assembled French could think of any such equivalent in French. As if English pronunciation wasn't difficult enough in the first place, we have to lumber foreigners with this extra difficulty!
I've always maintained that an English person, with even just a basic grasp of French pronunciation (and the same goes for Spanish and Italian), has a much better chance of getting an explanation of some unknown word than his foreign counterpart trying to get an English word explained. As long as you can say “Que veut dire XXXX?” you have a good chance of pronouncing XXXX sufficiently correctly to get a useful response. Contrast this with, for instance, a foreigner wanting to know what a chough is, confronted by the pronunciation possibilities offered by though, cough, bough, bought, etc, and you can see that the English have a definite advantage.
As a corollary to all this, conversation at the pizza evening turned to English politically correct language. It seems the French don't really have that either (good for them!) apart from words with obviously insulting connotations. Trying to explain why the word handicapped wasn't acceptable (and I don't understand either) proved impossible. As far as they were concerned, if you were “handicappé” you were “handicappé”; there were no sinister implications, it was simply a fact.
After a number of false dawns, perhaps spring is at last arriving. Last weekend was reasonable, Monday too, but with a cold wind to accompany the sunshine; the Mistral, as usual. Today, no mistral, sunshine, a temperature in the sun of around 20 degrees and a deep Wedgwood blue sky to die for. I spent the day clearing the winter debris from the back garden and spreading smelly stuff, which will hopefully result in plenty of much sweeter smells later on. The really good news is that this weather is forecast to last for at least another two days so maybe spring is breaking through.
Those who have lived here many years are saying that this year has been the hardest winter they have known. That statement needs to be put in some perspective vis-a-vis my English experience. Since my return after Christmas, the weather has certainly been colder than I have known and with four separate snowfalls. That is what the locals notice; you normally get a day of snow here or maybe two, but that is all. But.......you start counting winter here from December. Until after the first week in December, the weather here was very pleasant. So, with my English background, a long hard winter that lasts only three months (if that is what happens) is something I can put up with.
That said, I am amazed that there is still snow hanging around in odd places in the village. We are talking not micro-climates but mini-mini micro-climates. The remaining snow is in odd ditches and corners that aren't getting the sun. It's a question of where the sun gets too (how high it is) and the effect of the shadow thrown by surrounding hills. This maybe explains why I am so puzzled by plants that are perennial here that aren't in the milder climes of the UK. Oleanders generally won't survive a UK winter without protection but happily do here. The same goes even for marigolds and, quite often, Californian poppies, verbena and diascias.
Whatever, I am now going to work on the assumption that spring is on the way and start planting seeds. I've already taken ~20 cuttings of my blue pentstemons, which should give me a dozen plants. My true jasmine, which struggled through the last two winters hasn't survived this time so I'll replace it with a false one (trachelospermum jasmoinides) and the same may be true of my plumbago, but I'll give that another couple of weeks to show signs of growth. Seems like it's gardening time again.
Anglo-French (Food) Relations
I invited Daniel to eat tonight to save him having to open his usual tin before going off to England. He hasn't been to England since his student days but a neighbour, Christine, who is married to an Englishman and spends most of her time in Worthing, invited him across and he decided to go. The cross-channel links are further supplemented by friend Michèle, who turns out to have a cousin married to an Englishman and is living in Richmond and Mana, who taught English. Michèle, like Daniel, hadn't been back to England since student days but was recently persuaded to do so by her cousin. Mana has never been back since her schooldays, although she spent a couple of subsequent years in America.
What they all have in common is a terror of English food. Given that their last experience of this was in the 1950s, their terror is understandable. However, their assumption that nothing has changed in the intervening half-century is less so, especially as all have eaten both at my house and Steve and Jo's and declared the meals to be good. Daniel's attitude, given that he doesn't cook for himself but simply opens tins, is even more perplexing. I think that their continued perception of English cooking has more to do with perpetuation of a myth than anything else. Having undergone a ghastly experience in the past, they are reluctant to give up on it.
Translating Shakespeare
It wouldn't be a new entry in this blog without some comments on translation, so here they are. Daniel is a Shakespeare devotee and, in the course of some discussion, he said that his favourite play was Hamlet and I said mine was MacBeth. I love the poetry in MacBeth and started to quote MacBeth saying “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.........”. I know the full speech by heart and, halfway into it, realised that Daniel was lost. So I started to translate. Leave aside the poetry and connotations of the words, what is “creeps” in French? I was stuck, so was Daniel despite my attempts to describe the action. “ A tâtons” only gets part of it. A dictionary finally produced “ramper”. But it's not really the same. “Ramper” is what kids do before they learn to walk. Crawling has some of the connotations of creeping but it's not the same. Anyway, continuing with the attempted translation I decided that the task was impossible (at least for me). Which led me to ask Daniel if he had a French translation of Shakespeare. He has, somewhere, but can't find it for the moment. I think I want to see one and see what the translator has done. God help him/her.
Following on from that, at the last pizza evening Jo asked René if there were any words in French that changed meaning according to their pronunciation, even though the spelling was the same. In English, “close” meaning “shut” and “close” meaning “ near” are spelled the same but mean different things according to how they are pronounced; the same is true of “refuse” meaning “deny/say no to” and “refuse” meaning “rubbish”. None of the assembled French could think of any such equivalent in French. As if English pronunciation wasn't difficult enough in the first place, we have to lumber foreigners with this extra difficulty!
I've always maintained that an English person, with even just a basic grasp of French pronunciation (and the same goes for Spanish and Italian), has a much better chance of getting an explanation of some unknown word than his foreign counterpart trying to get an English word explained. As long as you can say “Que veut dire XXXX?” you have a good chance of pronouncing XXXX sufficiently correctly to get a useful response. Contrast this with, for instance, a foreigner wanting to know what a chough is, confronted by the pronunciation possibilities offered by though, cough, bough, bought, etc, and you can see that the English have a definite advantage.
As a corollary to all this, conversation at the pizza evening turned to English politically correct language. It seems the French don't really have that either (good for them!) apart from words with obviously insulting connotations. Trying to explain why the word handicapped wasn't acceptable (and I don't understand either) proved impossible. As far as they were concerned, if you were “handicappé” you were “handicappé”; there were no sinister implications, it was simply a fact.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Mistranslations
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.
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.
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.
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