Lost In (French) Translation…
A couple of oarstrokes behind us, there was a post titled Before You Croak… which I had been honing, off and on for a month or more. For some strange reason I wanted to name it Before You Die…, or more accurately, the French translation of those words, in the context of a list of things to do before you die.
First stop was the Google translator, which gave me several variations depending on how I phrased the thought. My command of French has more to do with fries and pastries than with the nuances of the strange language of France. So I happily chose the one that looked and sounded best to my untrained ears. A couple of other internet based translators yielded totally different results. I bounced it off Roomie, a college English major with a minor in French. She studied the several results I had and said that her French was rusty, but none of them really looked correct.
OK, so I check it out with a woman now working for one of my customers. She tired of teaching high-school level French and decided to go to work in business for better pay and benefits. She asked the context and then gave me a string of French words that could have been curses on my next of kin for all I knew.
So, who do I know that lives it? Aha! My blog friend, the old Loose Poodle hisownself, Peter (the other) recently chronicled his acquisition, remodeling, and decorating of an apartment in Paris. France, that is. An email to Peter brought his reply sent from Montreal and he did not have his English-French dictionary with him. His best effort produced something different from all the other attempts.
When all else fails, go to the source. To the epicenter. So I did what I should have done to start — contacted Madame Levy of La Vache Qui Lit fame. Leslie reported back after double-checking with a couple of the natives, and gave me yet another string of words that I had not seen before, and which almost certainly translates to blow in my ear through a soda straw and use Uncle Buford’s cat to wash the car that hit you. And then Madame Levy said the most amazing thing: “before you die” … simply wouldn’t be said in French.
That declaration, underpinned by the proliferation of translations cluttering my screen, convinced me to abandon the whole idea and just write about the experience. How do the damn French ever communicate anything clearly? Maybe they don’t…
Thank to Roomie, unnamed ex-school teacher, Peter, and Leslie. Merci beaucoup.
3 Comments so far
Hey Winston! As we discussed in the email Les Choses à faire avant de mourir seems to be the best choice to convey Things to do before you die in English most accurately, though, according to my husband (who is somewhat of a French language purist) it would not, should not be said.
After reading your post I took a little look around google.fr and realised, that like yankee hats and FBI t-shirts, Les Choses à faire avant de mourir seems to have come into common French usage (at least internets-wise).
One of the “new French” phrases that Really annoys him is amuses-bouche, something you see on menus in North America and food blogs especially. He thinks it’s a pretentious made up word invented to please Americans. He prefers amuses-gueule, a phrase more likely to be heard in a Balzac novel.
Often when I feel like annoying him I will say: But we’ll all be speaking English soon anyway and French will go the way of Latin obviously. French is fun, I am slow, but there are a million ways to be really vulgar while remaining polite. No mean feat.
That was interesting and amazing at the same time. Who would know… except we do now
I knew I liked that French man. Damn straight (now how would that translate?), French language seems to hold the rules of French, bourgoise civilization, which (even if it is a hypocritical veneer) could be used a bit more of in some parts of these here U-Nighted F’in States!
(but I’m not opinionated)