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.