In October, I can’t help thinking of a short story by Grace Paley, a story I have read in its French translation. In that story, there is a man sitting on a bench, in a park (Central Park, maybe). His existence is an absolute failure. He is lost in depressing thoughts. Suddenly his eyes are drawn by “le plaisant désarroi des glands”. Such a sight produces in his mind a salutary feeling of being part of the world; now he knows he is still able to perceive the beauty of the universe, he knows life is worth living.
Well, “le plaisant désarroi des glands“ is a complete nonsense sentence in French… It means something like “the pleasant dismay of acorns”/”the pleasant anxiety of acorns”… You visualise frightened acorns squealing and trying to escape like a group of panicky mice.
I imagine the original English phrase could be “the pleasant disarray of acorns”. Disarray is an old French word borrowed by English via Anglo-Norman. But, Monsieur le traducteur, “désarroi” in modern French is only used in a psychological sense. I often wonder how editors can sell books containing such blunders.
One of my favourite finds of that kind is “le général Strike”. Have you ever heard of that valiant warrior? “A l’époque du général Strike”, I found it in a French version of a book by Ian Rankin. A French reader will think it is the name of a famous British general. He knows of Wellington, of Marlborough, but….William Strike or is it Luke -dubbed Lucky- Strike?.If you understand that Inspector Rebus is remembering how difficult life was in a Scottish coal-mining district in the 1920’s, you suppose that the translator had “un moment d’égarement” not thinking of the 1926 general strike in the UK…
6 commentaires:
were those by chance your feet dancing on them?
I wonder if it was 'disorder', which has a psychological as well as a concrete sense, and would seem to fit.
However, mistakes like that do make us think about things, and make them stick in our minds, don't they?
I've been reading Poulin's translations of Rilke's French poems into English, in parallel translation, which is interesting. Rilke was writing in a second language, albeit one he was quite at home in, but then Poulin, who had previously translated Rilke from German to English, was, according to the introduction anyway, a French first language speaker. I feel some of the translations are very weak and clumsy, but then I'm reading them as an English speaker, so it's a very layered and often confused experience. As I say, interesting, however.
The one that comes to mind is that he translates
'pendant que mûrissent les prunes'
as
'during the ripening of prunes'
'Prunes' as a word in English is so redolent of unpleasant school dinners and synonymous with dried wrinkly things, that it just sounds ridiculous, especially in conjunction with 'ripening' which is effectively an impossibility with dried fruit!
I do like acorns underfoot, all mixed up with leaves and the little cups they come in. I like to think of the root connection with the word 'emblem' when I see them like that.
Lucy:
I like “During the ripening of prunes”. I can’t imagine without laughing a reverse translation from English: “Pendant que mûrissent les pruneaux”! I do like nonsense jokes and that's a good one! A bit "monty-pythonesque".
A few years ago, I went to Falmouth with a group of Breton civil servants interested by environmental issues. There, a nice Cornish lady who translated to French the speeches of Cornwall County Council representatives introduced us as “officiers planeurs”. In English she meant “planning officers”, of course, but in her French it could have meant we were “flying officers pertaining to the Glider Squadron”… During our stay in Truro, the Cornish and the Breton environment “officiers planeurs” had quite a few opportunities to burst out laughing together because of humorous gems due to mistranslations. Among my favourites: a young Breton lady engaged in a conversation about wildlife rendered “a nightjar” by “un pot de chambre” (un vase de nuit…) ;-)
PS: I really enjoyed the coastal views you took during your flight over the N Brittany coast. Beautiful sets! And I am glad to see that “green tides” haven’t spoilt every cove of our shore yet.
Rio:
Yes, those are my very comfortable walking boots. Companions for many a mile.
Thanks for those gems, Setu, I could talk about this stuff all day. Your own linguistic background intrigues me but I don't like to ask and anyway it all contributes to your air of omniscient mystery!
So glad you enjoyed the aerial photos, I certainly enjoyed taking them. The main work of pilot who took us was flying professional photographers to police the scallop fishing and also to monitor the progress of the green tides. He said that though the Bay of St Brieuc was in fact slightly better this year, overall they were advancing into areas previously unaffected, and could only get worse.
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