I'm back

 How time flies.... and I haven't been keeping up to date, not, alas, because of a lack of suitable material. A colleague has prompted me to start writing again by sending me a photo she took in the laundry room of a campsite in the south of France this summer.

How terribly unfortunate that the French word "lessive" is used to mean both the laundry you wash and the washing powder that you use to do so, and obviously the translator (whether a machine or a person) picked the wrong one.

This would appear to be a good place to post the laundry instruction label from a garment made in China, which has so many mistakes that I'd be here all night explaining, so I'll put a glossary underneath it.

cold (adj): froid    a cold (noun): un rhume

tumble dry - sécher en machine; tumble - tomber

low (adj) - bas; at a  low temperature: à bas temperature.

bleach (noun) - eau de javel; to bleach - décolorer

non-chlorine - sans chlore

iron (noun) - le fer; to iron - repasser

a design - un motif; ∅design - la conception

to dry - sécher; to clean - nettoyer; clean (adj) - propre; to dry clean - nettoyer à sec

Language Drill

The powers that be in France have recently introduced a reform of the language which is supposed to simplify spelling by doing away with some of those pesky accents that we foreigners struggle so hard to remember - and replacing the "ph" in words like nénuphar (water-lilly) with an "f" . However, it would appear that it's not just non native speakers who don't know when they should use the circumflex ^ - which is a pity, because sometimes the meaning of the word changes completely depending on whether it has an accent or not. Which brings me to the drill of the title: the word un foret means a drill bit. Une forêt, on the other hand is a transparent word for English speakers thanks in part to the circumflex accent which reminds us that there used to be an "s" after the letter "e".  Google translate knows the difference. Unfortunately for him, the pupil who thought he'd take a short cut to doing his English homework by writing it in French and then using Google to translate it, didn't. Garbage in, garbage out: "They are standing on the edge of a drill."

He obviously couldn't see the wood for the trees.

Now I lay me down to sleep.....

Grammar 101: to lie is an intransitive verb - i.e. it doesn't take a direct object - "lay" is the past of this verb.
To lay is a transitive verb which means it requires a direct object: its past and past participle are both "laid".
What brought this on, do you ask? The sight of a printed notice which failed to differentiate between the two: unfortunately I didn't have a black marker pen to hand, so I took a photo instead.

Exhibit A

and Exhibit B: what is actually being forbidden, if you take the sign literally.

 

 Added Sept. 2020

Reassure me, surely the irregular past form of "to lie" hasn't been changed and I didn't get the memo?

This caption accompanied a photo taken at the funeral of H.W. Bush on the BBC website.

"In the past few days, however, old wounds seem to have been mended. Mr Trump welcomed the family to the Blair House, across the street from the White House, and paid his respects as the elder Bush laid in state at the US Capitol."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46449637

 

Instructions: clear as mud

I had a new dress for Christmas: I ordered it online at it came by post. When I unpacked it there was a little note saying that it would need to be pressed before I wore it. There was also a helpful (not) translation of this information into French - which told me that it would have "besoin pressant" before being worn....... this is a French expression which means an urgent need for the toilet. Woops!
Moving along swiftly, Santa brought me a cute novelty salt and pepper set. The pieces had to be taken apart to be filled and then pushed firmly back together before use - to avoid getting the entire contents dumped on your turkey. Unfortunately the instructions had been translated from Chinese (or similar) and  in fact said the very opposite: "hardly push" as opposed to "push hard". I know that hardly looks as if it should be the adverb formed from the adjective hard, but of course it isn't. In French hardly is à peine.

Wishing you a very Dictionary Christmas

My pupils have been hard at work on Christmas traditions from around the world: amongst the many gems we have learned about calendars and candles "of the front": this is an epic fail caused by a spelling mistake in the original French - Advent is "l'Avent" NOT "l'Avant"!
Apparently every house in  Germany  has "stares" (rather than stars) as Christmas decorations and  in Canada they have Christmas "day nurseries" : nativity cribs - in French it's the same word: "une crèche".  Swedes, I am reliably informed, send "maps" to family and friends - rather than the more traditional Christams cards.
However, the most suprising discovery was that Americans decorate the outside of their houses with garlands and bollocks. I wonder whose?

Why and how have the murderous barbarians responsible for so many deaths become "DAESH", and what does it mean?

If you like to understand the meaning before you use a new word, here is an excellent explanation of the meaning and significance of this word by an Arab language expert called Alice Guthrie.

https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/


Thank you Alice - I will be taking every opportunity to use it.

An unhealthy start to the school year

Just received by email  from the pupils at the local catering college which is called Les Grippeaux, a message informing us that the restaurant is now open and
 "You can view the days of opening and menus on the influenza school site."
Presumably  the message has been through a machine translator which has translated the "grippe" of the name ... don't these pupils ever re-read anything and think before pressing "send"?

Exam candidates fail to cope!

The exam season is upon us and this year's would-be bacheliers have taken their English paper, based on an extract from the novel Atonement. One of the questions asked how the character "was coping" with the situation and this has caused howls of protest from candidates indignant that they should be expected to know this word. I actually agree with them on this point: the paper is supposed to be testing their comprehension of the text, not of the questions being asked, and I really think it would have been wise to phrase the question differently.
What, however, appalls me, is that one of the many candidates who has taken to Twitter to complain has posted a screen shot from an online dictionary.

Well no wonder he doesn't understand!
A "chaperon" is (amongst other things) a term used in building as in a"coping stone".
After 13 years of schooling (including English lessons for at least half of that time) this chap still hasn't learned the precautions necessary when looking a word up in the dictionary - such as knowing whether you are looking for a noun or a verb!

Nazi weight loss

The poor lad was actually there when I read his work - I have a feeling that the expression on my face when I realised what he'd done will remind him to double check his meanings in the future:
 "In the film The Great Dictator" Chaplin mocks the Nazi diet."

This one is interesting as Larousse gives nine different definitions  (and consequent possible translations) for the word "regime".... some of which were new even to me. However, of course the irony is that in this particular context we just use the same word as, of course, we borrowed it from the French in the first place.

New year, new classes, same old problem

So the summer holidays are a dim and distant memory, the new school year has started and I've got to know several new classes. Today I collected their first written homework. It appears that this bunch are no better at using the dictionary than last year's..... The very first paper I picked up has the following superb example of both how not to use the dictionary and the need to be able to spell in one's own language:
"She burned herself while she leathered her chips."

to cook: cuire
leather: cuir

Pupils

One last post before the summer holidays: I'll be back in September when I'm sure my pupils will continue to provide us with plenty of entertainement.
From the paragraph of translation just before the previous example.
The original English: "When he opens his eyes, I look into them. They are glassy. Even in the shadow of the station his pupils are pinpricks."
One examinee managed to translate "They are glassy" as "Il avait des lunettes": He had glasses (oops).
Two, however, failed to take into account the context - we are talking about eyes and "pupil" sounds the same as the French word pupille even if there's a slight difference in spelling. I suspect in the second example the candidate also read "glassy" as "class" .....

"Derrière les fenêtres de la gare ses élèves sont malades"
Behind the station windows his pupils are ill.

and

"Dans les étages de sa classe ces [sic] élèves sont brillants" :
In the floors of his class(room) these pupils are brilliant.

Well these pupils definitely aren't!  I suppose it keeps me in work......

Rule One: A translation must make sense

Alas, many pupils and students neglect the basic principle that if their translation doesn't make sense in French (their native language) than the chances are that they've made a mistake... at their level we don't give them Ulysses or Bardolino to translate.
My colleague Mel is also marking exam scripts this week and she thought we might like to share the following.
The candidates had to translate a short paragraph of dialogue from English to French. Part of the English read
"I was told you were dead"

Pupils' translations: Je t'avais dit que j'étais mort: "I told you I was dead",
Je t'avais dit que tu étais morte: "I told you you were dead"
Je voulais te parler quand je suis mort:."I wanted to talk to you when I was dead"

All in a good cause

Earlier in the week I was prevailed upon to buy a programme for a charity event run by a British club here in France. The programme is "bilingual" and is generally comprehensible despite several inaccuracies in the French, but it was when I came to the item "Croquis à thème britanniques" that I let out a howl and demanded to know who was responsible for the translation. "The computer" I was told... well yes, obviously... the poor machine doesn't know the difference between the kind of sketch which is a drawing and the sketch which is a short scene.... and just as Murphy's Law dictates that your bread will always fall buttered-side down, there must be a linguistic equivalent which dictates that a machine will always pick the wrong translation where  two or more are possible.

I may not be able to update the blog in the coming week... I'm marking exam papers. For this exam the pupils do not have acces to a dictionary, so there probably won't be to much material for me to share with you.... but I'll make a note of any gems.

Making a monkey out of the tour guide

Some years ago I was part of a group of tourists on a coach tour of Rome. The specialist "city guide" had been told it was a German group with a few English speakers. Unfortunately for her, it was precisely the opposite and she was left struggling in a language in which she didn't feel at ease. So we toured St Peter's and on several occasions she referred to the "apes" on carvings or bronzes which she told us  were the symbol of the Medici family. Well I looked long and hard, but I really couldn't see anything remotely resembling an ape. What  did notice, after a while, was a large number of bees.....
Not quite the same symbol.

caught napping

The ability of certain students to put their faith in a machine translation, even when it flies in the face of all reason, never fails to amaze me.
This example is from a paper written by a lad who had been studying English at school for at least six years:

"We nap"

It made no sense in the context in which he'd written it, so I had to work backwards. "a nap" - a short sleep -  can be translated into French as "un somme"  (not to be confused with une somme: a sum of money, for example).

Nous sommes : we are, but the student obviously typed "nous somme" and that is precisely what the software translated : garbage in, garbage out.

Out of office reply

You may have seen this before, but having started on the theme of "what happens when you trust a machine" I remembered reading this in the Daily Telegraph a couple of years ago.
Since the mid 1960s roadsigns in Wales have been in both English and Welsh. In this case the text was sent by e-mail  in English to the in-house translation team for Swansea Council. What came back in Welsh was printed on the sign. However, it actually means
 "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."
 


Funny, but not life-threatening......  unlike the bilingual pedestrian sign spotted in Cardiff in 2006 which told pedestrians to "look right" in English, and "edrychwch i'r chwith" ("look left") in Welsh.

Tinkering with Tolstoy

Oh dear, oh dear... apparently the people who make the Nook - a rival to the Kindle, felt the need to remove all reference to the competition from their electronic versions of certain classics and appear to have used an automated "find and replace" function which produced the following when applied to War and Peace:

WAR AND PEACE: THE NOOKED VERSION

• 'When the flame of the sulphur splinters Nookd by the timber burned up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle...'
• 'Captain Tushin, having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the soldiers had nookd on the road.
• 'Believe me,' said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, 'it is nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to nook fires and make a noise to deceive us.'
• 'Fly to a brother's aid whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth, never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and courteous. Nook in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that bliss.'
• 'It was as if a light had been nookd in a carved and painted lantern and the intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking beauty.'

Recycling

It really is alarming just how many "professionals" have an unprofessional approach to translation: many thanks to Ian for this gobledegook from  a "compatible" printer cartridge carton:

"DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR EMPTY CARTRIDGES - Give evidence in a border planned for that purpose".

The original language is French: answer in the coment below (for when you give up trying to work it out: go on, you can do it.....).

She is tipsy

A mistake in translation is not always immediately apparent - out of context "she is tipsy" is perfectly acceptable English. However, when you know that the "she" in question is a ten year old girl who has drowned in a swimming accident at a lake and the words are spoken by the mother of one of her young friends then it becomes clear that there is a problem. I had to use the dictionary myself to solve this one as I didn't know that in French "être parti" means to be "well away" after consuming alcohol. Instead of looking for the verb "partir" and then conjugating it in the correct tense, the pupil in question obviously found "tipsy" given as a translation for "être parti" and just copied it into their work: "she's tipsy" instead of "she's gone".

a corny translation

Just to prove that translation bloopers are not restricted to language learners but can also be committed by those who translate for a living when they pay insufficient attention and guess at the meaning of a word rather than asking a native speaker to confirm their understanding. Brits will know the name James Herriot - he published a series of autobiographical books about his experiences as a vet ( veterinarian for transAtlantic readers) in the Yorkshire Dales. I purchased them in French translation as a gift for my French sister in law and so it was that I stumbled across the passage in the first book in which James goes to be interviewed by his future boss, Siegfried Farnon, who is out when he arrives. When James falls asleep in the garden whilst waiting for him, he has a nightmare in which he is confronted by a Siegfried who speaks with a "corny German accent". The translator decided that "corny" must mean the same as "Cornish" (despite the lack of an initial capital) and thus translated the sentence as "avec un accent allemand de cornouailles" i.e. with a German accent from Cornwall - whatever that might be: especially nonsensical as the scene is set in Yorkshire. Elementary principle: the translated text must make sense in the target language. If it doesn't make sense you need to check your understanding of the original.