French Translation At Its Best

Well here we are on a beautiful sunny summer’s day and I’ve decided it’s time to reclaim this blog and to try and get into the habit of posting on it more regularly. I haven’t been too busy working on this site as I’ve been studying for a tax qualification whilst working as a tax assistant for my Dad. Since taking the exams, though, I have realised I’m missing French, having studied it for so long, annd would like to try and find a way to integrate it into my everyday life and/or job. As a result of this I’ve applied all over the place for jobs using French, the most promising of which was for an international video games producer checking the French versions of their merchandise. Alas, it was not to be when I discovered that the ‘permanent’ status they had assigned their vacancy was actually only a contracted 2 months. Still, never mind! There are several other opportunities out there that look and sound promising! In the mean time I’m thinking about translating a book and, of course, getting this blog up and running once again.

Now for a nice a simple demonstration showing why electronic online translators are not always the best solution (although bad use of a dictionary is not always the best either!). I will take the paragraph above and translate it into French and back into English again using a leading search engine’s translation page. See what you think of the quality…

Eh bien voici que nous sommes sur une journée d’été ensoleillée et belle, j’ai décidé qu’il était temps de reprendre ce blog et d’essayer de prendre l’habitude de poster sur le plus régulièrement. Je n’ai pas été trop occupés à travailler sur ce site comme je l’ai étudié pour une qualification tout impôt travaille comme assistant d’impôt pour mon papa. Depuis qu’il a pris les examens, bien, je me rends compte qu’il me manque le français, avoir étudié pendant si longtemps, ANND voudrais essayer de trouver une façon de l’intégrer dans ma vie quotidienne et / ou d’emploi. En conséquence de ce que j’ai appliqué partout pour les emplois d’utiliser le français, le plus prometteur de ce qui a été pour un producteur de jeux vidéo de vérifier les versions françaises de leurs international de marchandises. Hélas, il ne devait pas être quand j’ai découvert que le “permanent” le statut qu’ils avaient cédé leurs postes vacants a été fait seulement 2 contracté mois. Pourtant, jamais l’esprit! Il existe plusieurs autres possibilités là-bas qui ont l’air et le son prometteur! Pendant ce temps, je pense à la traduction d’un livre et, bien sûr, ce blog se opérationnel une fois de plus.

And back into English again:

Well here we are on a summer day sunny and beautiful, I decided it was time to resume this blog and trying to get used to posting more regularly. I was not too busy working on this site as I have studied for a qualification while working as an assistant tax tax for my dad. Since taking the exams, though, I realize that I miss the French, having studied for so long, annd would try to find a way to integrate it into my daily life and / or employment . As a result of what I applied for jobs everywhere to use French, the most promising of which was for a video game producer to verify the French versions of their international freight. Alas, it should not be when I discovered that the “permanent” status they had assigned their vacancies has been contracted only 2 months. But never mind! There are many other opportunities out there that look and sound promising! Meanwhile, I think the translation of a book and, of course, this blog is operational again.

What I find incredible is that certain parts of this almost sound correct! Others, sadly, become completely nonsensical, like “an assistant tax tax”. The problem is that computers cannot, presently, detect the context of words within a text and translate appropriately. Neither are they able to take a step back and read their text aloud to themselves in a very Flaubertian manner to see if they flow naturally or if they sound stunted and awkward. Perhaps one day computers will be able to take over translation but for now fleshy human translators are definitely still the order of the day!

As I draw this ‘comeback’ blog to a close I would like to say that this is just the first part of a series I intend to write over the coming weeks about common mistakes that occur in translation with some pertinent examples drawn from all walks of life. I am also looking into the schooling system to see what common mistakes children and young people make when learning French or English.

That’s all for now!

~ Chris

Sometimes the advice offered to tourists by the numerous and well-intentioned posters placed around hotels can vary from amusing to incomprehensible. Whilst living in France I was luck enough to embark on a road trip down from Rouen to Grenoble and back. On the way we stopped in Dijon, which is a delightful town with lots of cultural heritage (not to mention the mustard!) and plenty to see and do. Yet the most interesting thing I found there was a poster on the hotel room door. It kindly asks guests to “Be careful with the smokes: Toxicity”. It was not made clear that this was only in the event of a fire, so am I to believe that there is likely to be toxic smoke drifting through the hotel corridors? Then in the lift I am greeted with a sign that reads “Do not use lift in case of fire.” Is it simply by virtue of using the lift that there might be a fire or are guests being advised that the best way to ensure that they won’t be stuck in the lift in a fire is to avoid it completely? If so why bother installing one at all?

My personal favourite error from this particular establishment was to be found on the general advice poster in our room; “Let switched off the electrical items Which are without control” Having studied translations and worked with a number of French speakers who have enough of a grasp on English to see that this sentence is evidently utter nonesense, I am left wondering how the translator – presumably a Frenchman as I can see ‘laissez’ being translated as ‘let’ rather than ‘leave’ – could have decided that this was a perfectly acceptable translation. The mind boggles. Thankfully the images surrounding this piece of information provide a solid basis of meaning; to one side there are several plugs all going in to one socket and to the other there are two people standing either side of what can only be described as a firework display.

So remember, if you ever stay in this establishment, or one similar, that there aren’t toxic clouds of smoke roaming the corridors, the lift won’t catch fire if you use it and the hotel staff won’t hold a firework display in your room if you plug everything you own in one socket. The management are simply trying to remind you of things you probably wouldn’t normally do anyway. So take care and be careful with the smokes.

~ Chris

Ayant enfin reçu mes resultats d’Oxford (2.1) et étant bien reposé après mes vacances en Bretagne je me suis mis à travailler pour mon père, comptable indépendant. Par rapport à ce que je faisais avant, à Oxford, c’est très différent! A Oxford je lisais des romans, des pièces de théâtre, des revues linguistiques. Bref, je m’occupais des lettres. Pendant quatre années. Et maintenant, changer de cela à utiliser les chiffres toute la journée me fait mal au cerveau! Cependant, j’espère que cela ne durera pas, après tout c’est de l’expérience que je cherche dans la vie professionelle (mais en plus je veux bien gagner de l’argent pour payer mes dettes!). J’ai donc entrepris de traduire (ou plutôt retraduire) un site français en anglais. Ce qu’ils avaient avant sur le côté anglais de leur site était abominable pour les yeux d’un anglais; c’est impressionnant d’avoir fait l’effort, mais que vaut-il si la traduction ne sert à rien pour ceux à qui elle est destinée?

Pour moi la chose la plus frustrante et énervante est une traduction mal faite. Une faute, peut-être même deux ou trois, sont pardonnables, mais faire autant de fautes qu’un anglais n’arrive pas à bien comprendre le sens de ce qui est écrit… Mais comment arrivent-ils à ce point? Pourquoi payer quelqu’un pour traduire quelque chose (que ce soit un site à l’internet ou les tableaux d’un aquarium) si le travail restera moitié fait? C’est pour cela que moi je veux m’établir en tant que traducteur/correcteur.

On peut éviter l’embarras d’une traduction mal faite. Vous n’avez que m’envoyer un email.

~ Chris

When I spent a year working in France as an assistant English teacher I was often complimented on my spoken ability. When I first arrived everyone seemed surprised that someone had actually taken the time to develop a French accent in the first place and that there was an assistant who could actually speak French properly, who was willing to take part in school activities and who was willing to make the effort to get to know some French people. As if this wasn’t surprising enough, once I started to get to know them we talked more seriously about my spoken French and isolated a few areas where there were problems.

When I left France at the end of that year I was flattered by all my friends and colleagues telling me that not only had I become significantly more capable of speaking the language but that I now sounded like I was born and bred in France; I sounded like a native speaker. This is (or should be) every French student’s dream and yet I still found myself doubting – they’re my friends, they might be saying it to be nice! So imagine my surprise when last week, whilst on holiday in Brittany, I went into one of the many Irish shops and found myself having a stimulating conversation with a member of staff. This in itself is perhaps not that exciting, but she suddenly seemed to realise that I was an Englishman (probably something to do with everyone else in my family talking English next to us!) and immediately started telling me how impressive it is to hear an English person talking French as if he were French himself. From a friend a compliment like that is fantastic, but from a complete stranger in a shop it took on a whole new meaning and left me believing that I deserved every bit of my Oxford degree, and it wasn’t a bad confidence booster either!

So there you go, I might be English, but I could very easily pass myself off as French. In fact one time I did. I struck up a conversation with a delightful young lady in a bar in Rouen. In French. It took her nearly half an hour to work out that I am not French. Sadly her American accent gave her away rather sooner, but it’s much heavier than my Leicestershire accent, so we’ll let her off for that. Besides, I was enjoying speaking French.

~ Chris

Last week I was on holiday in France, Brittany to be specific. We were staying in a beautifully secluded house halfway up a cliff that could only be reached by a dirt track only just (I can’t emphasise just HOW MUCH I mean only just!) wide enough for our car. The interesting thing that happened while I was there is we went to an aquarium not to far from Saint Malo. Now my only previous experience of French aquariums is one much further round close in Normandy on the coast. Now I won’t name any names but the translations thoughtfully provided for their English-speaking visitors were mediocre at best, meaning I left with a bad impression of the place and a feeling of astonishment at how unprofessional they were allowing themselves to appear to people who had come from such a long way away.

The aquarium close to Saint Malo, then, was the complete opposite of this. The translations were almost impeccable and left me feeling more than satisfied that they care about their customers enough to make sure the image they present is professional and carefully thought out. It is such a shame that there are places, very popular tourist destinations in fact, that don’t seem to worry about their English-speaking guests. What baffles me is the sort of mistakes being made, things that even a child can see is wrong. So I think the main difference is that the badly done translations have been done by a French person and then not proof-read by a native English speaker. By saying this I do not mean to insult the ability of French-speakers, but as my grammar tutor at Oxford always says, it is hard for a non-native speaker to truly capture the nuance and tone of the language when he/she is translating out of their mother tongue. This is why translators are recommended only to translated into their native language. Just think of the money companies could save by employing someone like me to go through and check their translations (if not do them from scratch in the first place).

Now that aquarium on the Normandy coast may or may not be aware of the problems with its translations, but I am certain that should they wish to change them it will be a costly undertaking. If only they’d called me!

~ Chris

After taking my French exams at Oxford over a period of two weeks at the end of May I finally received my results after a long wait. As it is a humanities subject everything gets marked twice to make sure that there is no bias, which means that the release schedule for the results is much slower than for science subjects. Because of this I got my results long after most of my friends, but I have to say I was not disappointed! I got a 2:1 with my strongest papers being my 1500 word dissertation in French and my Modern Period Paper (specialising in Surrealism, Theatre of the Absurd and The 19th Century Short Story.) My translation papers, including my Special Paper on translation where I worked on two French texts (Le Balcon by Genet and René by Chateaubriand), were also high 2:1s, which left me feeling very pleased with my performance; some of them were very challenging but I succeeded thanks to the hard work and dedication I approach my work with.

That’s all for now.

~ Chris

Welcome to my new French translation website.  If you are having difficulty dealing with customers or suppliers in France and have reached the limits of your school french ability, let me take the strain of dealing with these issues on your behalf.

I step in as a representative of your business and your customers/suppliers will never learn I am not an integral part of your organization.  All your difficult language problems will evaporate and your business posture will sky rocket across the channel.  It is a fact that people in France truly appreciate your attention to detail if you have me on your team as a liason.  Read the full article