Passion

When I was a junior at NYU, I took my first translation course.  In it, we had an exercise to translate the children's book Madeline from its original English into French -- a good brain-stretching exercise, but not one I would undertake for professional work, as French is not my native language.  My group finished the translation in class, but one particular couplet bugged me -- the rhyme and rhythm weren't great, and the meter was virtually non-existent.  So I spent my next lecture period working on that one couplet.  I have no idea to this day what that psychology lecture was on.

That's what I love about translation -- the puzzles of language and tone, with infinite ways to solve them, and no one set "right" way.  Literature provides the most opportunities for this, with an author's tone, style, word choice, and countless character voices.  This, above all else, is what appeals to me.

So last night, when a friend brought a particular book on classical music by a French filmmaker to my attention and said he really wanted to read it, my first instinct was, "can I translate that?"  Just a thought really.  But there isn't an existing English translation.  No idea if anyone already owns the English sub rights to it.  So what do I do?  I send an email shooting into the ether in the general direction of a renowned film critic who wrote a blog post on this filmmaker for a prominent magazine last year, who had a few English excerpts from the book in his post.

There's no harm in throwing a few crazy fishing lines out into a frothing ocean, is there?

Here we go again!

New adventure: translation.

I took a course in translation as an undergrad at NYU, and immediately was hooked.  I spent a couple psych lectures that semester working on a particularly finicky translation.  (It's not the lecture's fault that it directly followed my translation class!)  Ever since then, I've been translating something, at least once every week or two.  But it's always been on the side.  And I've never gotten paid for a single word.

Now it's career-building time.  Back in Brooklyn, ready to learn a ton and figure this out.  How does one build a freelance translation career, anyway?  I've hit the blogs, the American Translators Association website, the monthly meetings of the New York Circle of Translators.  I've started talking to people who do this for a living.  I took a job as a proofreader (and occasional project manager) at one of the largest translation agencies in the world, to get experience from the other side.

But the biggest "first" step I'm about to take?  I'll be attending the ATA's Annual Conference at the end of the month.  What a learning experience I will have, if I can overcome the learning curve.

My fears (of course they exist, and they are indeed plentiful) for the moment center on the conference.  What if, what if, what if?  What if nobody talks to me?  What if I don't learn a single thing?  What if this is just too hard?  It's like the first day of school all over again.

But any hurdle demands pogo stick, or a horse, or possibly a helicopter.  My current pogo sticks include:

• creating a modest website
• ordering business cards
• sprucing up my resume
• physically writing out a list of questions to ask people while chatting or networking

And my helicopter?  I'll be staying with a good friend of mine from high school who lives in Boston now.  Lifeline: procured.

(To be fair, I was considering staying in the conference hotel, which would have been a better professional option.  At the moment, though, my income is a bit too modest to warrant such extravagance.)

[From the Archives] Le 1er mai

May 1st

May 1st is the only day in the entire year in France where no one works.  Buses don't run, newspapers aren't published, and garbage isn't picked up.  (For some reason, there's still going to be the market in Aubenas on Saturday, but I haven't figured out why.)

I just found out that's there's a tradition in France, for a celebration of spring on May 1st: to give muguet to people.  This is lily of the valley.  Now, there's something important to know about muguet, thanks to our good friend Wikipedia: "All parts, including the berries, of the lily of the valley are highly poisonous."  Thus the conversation between my landlord's wife and I just now, translated for your convenience:

Madame: "Here's some muguet for you, to celebrate May 1st."
Me: "Oh, thank you so much, they're beautiful."
Madame: "Just be careful, because it's toxic."
Me: "Uh...what?"
Madame: "You can put them in water and then maybe dry and press them to remember being here.  Just wash your hands after you touch them."
Me: "...You give toxic flowers to celebrate May 1st?"
Madame: "Yes.  Aren't they pretty?"

Posted without comment.

[From the Archives] Tutoyer

To address someone with the informal "you" One of the most confusing things about conversational French is figuring out whether to address someone with the formal (and/or plural) "vous" or the informal and/or familiar "tu."  Generally speaking, you use "vous" when you don't know someone, or when you're addressing someone older or of higher authority than you, or when you just want to show respect to someone; you use "tu" when you're familiar with someone, or when you're speaking to someone of your age or younger.  Families differ on if kids should tutoient or vouvoient their parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, etc.

That being said, my first day at school was made much more comfortable by the mandate that all teachers and staff members addressed each other as "tu," even if you didn't know the other person that well.  It's like a little family, a team; it made me feel very welcome.  On the flip side, I always address my landlords as "vous," even though they've invited me to their house for multiple meals -- what's nice is that they also address me as "vous."  Business arrangement first and foremost, I guess.

The cool thing is when these forms of addressing people start to shift.  A "vous" to "tu" shift (it never happens the other way around) means friendship, or at the very least, familiarity.  I've gotten permission to tutoie Bernard, who runs the bookstore, who I've spent a lot of time with.  Just today, the boulanger (bread man) who comes around to our neighborhood said that I could of course tutoie him.  I'm pretty sure I'm a few weeks away from permission from the sausage man at market and the madame who runs the grocery store to tutoie them.  I may not be able to fit in seamlessly to French life, but I'm becoming accepted by those who live and own that life.

On a side note: incidentally, I'm apparently not only becoming accepted by, but attractive to the French, as well.  At least the males of the species.  My CE2s (3rd graders) made a big deal about two of the boys in the class having crushes on me.  Fortunately, they're 3rd grade crushes.  I think I can handle that.  What I wasn't prepared to handle were the advances of a couple boys my age, maybe a bit younger, maybe a bit older (I can never tell with the French), outside a bar at the edge of town.  They're young, immature, they didn't quite know what they were truly attempting.  I rebuffed their advances not only in French, but like the French do, with a certain aloofness and gentle snide comments (which may not make sense until you hear some native speakers go at it).  My French must be getting pretty good...

[From the Archives] Today, they deal in marbles; tomorrow, they take over the world

I have a simple game that I play with my CP kids (1st graders) to help them learn their numbers.  I set out cards with the numbers 1-10 on a table, split them into 2 teams, call them up two at a time, say a number in English, and the first one to hit the number wins a point.  We've taken to calling it "Taper les numéros" (literally, Hit the numbers).  They've been getting pretty good at it, at least when they actually count and don't just hit numbers randomly, hoping they'll eventually get to the right one. Yesterday, my last class was the CP group who normally acts pretty well.  Two girls were sick, though, so we had a team of 3 -- M & S, two girls, and G, a boy -- against a team of 2 -- A, a girl, and H, a boy.  Normally, A and H are pretty good at this game, but they were just slow today, so it got to 6-2, then 9-4, playing to 10.  They got nervous, until A said "If you don't let us win, I'm never going to give you any marbles again."

Wait, what?

Let me explain something: marbles are THE game to play at recess for these kids.  All ages play marbles.  They trade them, they win them, they lose them, and apparently, A thought it was time to start bartering with them.

I laughed, thinking there was no way this would work.  M and S exchanged glances and kinda giggled, but G was up next, and he deliberately lost the point.  9-5.  Then:
A: "If you let us win, I'll give you two marbles each."
H: "Yeah, and I'll give you one more besides."
A: "Let us win, we'll give you all three marbles!"

And M, S, and G all started deliberately losing.

At 9-9, I want to see if I can change their minds at all.
Me: "Y'know, three marbles isn't a lot for this type of game.  I would think that winning this game would be worth at least seven or eight."
G: "Nope, three is plenty for me!"
M & S nod, agreeing.

And they let A & H win -- being very careful to explain to me, of course, that they did let them win.

As we lined up to go back to class, M & S & G asked after their marbles.
A: "Well, I don't have any marbles I can give you today."
H: "I don't actually have marbles that I want to give to you."
*general protestation*
A: "Ask me tomorrow.  I might have marbles that I'm okay with giving you."

Two 1st graders just screwed their classmates out of marbles for an English class game.  All I could do was laugh and be extremely impressed by their ingenuity, however backhanded it might be.