MEEF 1 & 2 translations : thème etc.
METHOD : This semester particularly, we will be working a bit online and hopefully more in class so here is my method for the thème classes. I would like to carry on a method which has worked well in the past and I think can still work at a distance : a kind of ‘workshop’ atmosphere, or ‘flip’ classes where students participate actively in the organisation of the translation, setting it up, working on it, constructively critiquing it with me acting as a chair person rather than a class led from the front, i.e; by me alone. L3 and Master’s students have liked this in the past, so I thought we might try and carry on with it. It goes like this :
Step One : I put up a text per week via my Google Drive to avoid copyright issues in a format which the whole group can see. You will need to establish a personal Gmail address for access to this. The whole group translates the text individually at home. I don’t want to post it up here on my site because it will take up too much room, and will get me into copyright difficulties…
Step Two : I designate in advance a couple of people as volunteers, the Alpha dogs, to lead the translation work. They post up their “work in progress” translation on the Google Drive folder complete with mistakes, different versions, suggestions, questions etc at the end of the week. This will be the canvas for the rest of the class to work upon. Over to you! The other members of the class do the same, posting their translations up for all to see.
Step Three : I will invite you to share your comments in class on the text as it appears from the Alpha couple, who will lead the class from the front, and ask the rest of the class members for comments, suggestions, modifications, ideas, questions, alterations in the spirit of putting together a ‘Master’ text which fulfils the highest number of criteria. All constructive ideas are welcome, in British or American or Australian or South African…. English to help the translation along to its ‘final’ version which is only ever an attempt…..
Step Four : This is where I step in more forcefully, checking the grammar, assessing the syntax and vocabulary and hopefully justifying why certain choices are acceptable, some are less appropriate, others are overblown or underdone. I then put up on the Google Drive the ‘Masterised’ text to all the group, including my translation, your good suggestions (and deleting the not so good ones) so that everyone will possess a ‘Master’ version of the translation in the end.
Step Five : You compare your personal translation after the class with the Master translation, put together by the group, working on that canvas provided by the Alpha dogs and amended by all other dogs in the pack and see where your version differs. Did you have better ideas? Other ideas? Did you confront them with the group’s ideas? That’s how you test them. That’s how you progress. What are your strengths? your weaknesses? You need to do this personal analysis and that’s how you improve.
DANGER : don’t think that you can get away with not translating the text (even if it’s not your turn..). You will then learn nothing from this class. Go and play ping pong! You will have a nice collection of pretty translations but they will not be your work, your effort, and your progress. They will be somebody else’s. Don’t let yourself stand on the edge of the class. I want you to be in the middle. Right in the middle. You will then end up having worked on 6 or so texts per semester, let’s say, either leading the group, or using the group translation to compare with yours. But if you have no personal translation to compare with the others, you will not know what you are doing correctly or incorrectly or how to improve.
It takes courage to do this. I think you are very brave ( which means being scared and doing something anyway …) to post up your work for the class to see. But you will get out of this class much more than that which you put in, if everyone plays the game.
TIPS : The analysis of the text is incontrovertible, a must, in other words.
WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW…
WHO : who are the main characters in the text, male or female? Young or old? This will help you avoid a Boris who becomes Doris…who is narrating the text? Where are the other characters compared to the narrator’s position? Are they moving towards him or away from him? ‘Coming through the door’ or ‘Going through the door?? It matters.
WHAT : what is the subject here? Childhood? Nostalgic text? Description, factual? Oniric, fantastic? This will help with the style you choose, tenses, aspects etc. We might expect a bit of would, used to, etc. in a nostalgic text…
WHERE : where are we? France? Europe? GB? Can we leave the words in French? so you will choose the right words to fit with the right culture. Un Ricard sinon rien? (The Brits don’t know about Ricard, they think the French drink Pernod); ‘Autant emporte le vent’ began life as ‘Gone With The Wind’…etc.
WHEN : when does the text date from? When does the action happen? This will help you avoid ultra modern vocabulary if your text dates from the 50’s…no voice mail in the 50’s, for example. Watch out for archaic use of French: is ‘une serviette’ only a towel? Or something else? The publication date doesn’t necessarily help you here…Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985 about a story that unfolds in 2020-30….Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948-9…
HOW : how is the text organised? Dialogue? Monologue? Description? Action? this will help you choose the punctuation, style, register. Is it literary? Familiar? Chatty? Vulgar? You will choose your vocabulary accordingly. You can usually get away with much more natural English in dialogue than in prose.
IMPROVEMENT : how do you measure your progress? By comparison with the Master version from the whole group, myself included. Analyse your mistakes; have you got problems with your tenses or aspects, or modals? Go back to your grammar books and check them. Problems with vocabulary? Read more in French and in English. Understanding the ideas expressed in the source text? Perhaps re-reading the text carefully several times might help. You might be jumping in too fast.
Just Do It : Translating is a matter of doing, “c’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron..” so the more you do, the better you will get, but only if you analyse your mistakes and can improve on them. This class is destined to help you do just that. Remember, there is never a perfect translation of a given text, “traduire, c’est trahir..” So it’s always imperfect. The only one who owns the text is the author. Voilà. That lets us all off the hook.
Here is a bit of fun from our friend and colleague Sämi Ludwig :
Portuguese/English dictionary or English as she is spoke.. (I can remember my grandparents quoting this…)
List of texts and Alpha dogs see below :…please sign up! The logic is first come, first served….the earlier you sign, the more choice you have. Alpha Dogs are those who traditionally lead the pack in a hunt and are replaced if injured or hurt by other contenders/pretenders…so they lead and others follow on….that’s your role.
This is our ‘Alpha Dog’ in a photo taken by my eldest son, Julian, a few summers ago on a dog walk. Her name is Giulietta (Jules for short) and she is a Belgian shepherd/German shepherd dog cross, commonly called an Alsatian in English! So be careful how you introduce yourselves!!…..She came to us as a very small puppy, almost 14 years ago, on Christmas Eve. She is a rescue dog, but not from the RSPCA : a friend’s dog had given birth to 8 puppies and could not feed them all. So he resolved to give 4 away. She was so small, she could fit into Tony’s shoe…..we had to feed her warm milk every 2 hours because she was only just weaned from her mother…. ‘dogoffee’ we used to call it. She is our watchdog and house alarm, herds all of us, as a sheepdog should, and is a territorial little… madam, barking at cats, birds or people who walk across her sky. But we love her to bits. And she does us. Our velvet-eared dog…. She is our black darling, dashes past to the door to save us from the bandits who roam the streets of Brunstatt (!!) and shepherds us all in and out of the house, because that is her job, and those of you who have a similar dog know very well that you must let them do their job. It’s like having a Collie; if you don’t give it a job, it becomes self employed….
So there it is. So now you know where the idea comes from! Bless my Jules!