Mixing SIU and Imperial (i.e. English) units /Mélange du système métrique et du système dit Anglo-Saxon Impérial

Noticed two instances where the author of written piece mixes the two systems. In an article on the BBC Internet in English, a correspondent in California talking about the diminishing size of European glaciers expressed the area as being XX sq km. I am familiar with square miles, and km² but I have never seen it written as sq km.

J’ai remarqué récemment deux cas ou deux textes avaient mélangé les deux systèmes. Dans un article en anglais sur le site Internet de la BBC, le journaliste écrivait de Californie que les glaciers d’Europe disparaissaient et exprima leur superficie en km ca. Je connais l’abréviation po.ca. et milles ca. mais jamais km carrés.

Later on, in a totally different context, in a Big Box hardware store, I saw the price of ceiling tiles being expressed in ft².  Again, sq. ft. is common, but I had never seen the expression ft squared.

Plus tard, dans un contexte différent, dans une quincaillerie grande surface, j’ai trouvé une étiquette de panneaux de plafond dont le prix était exprimé en pi.².  J’ai vu très souvent pi.ca., mais jamais pi. à la puissance deux.

Is this ignorance or neglect?  Est-ce un signe d’ignorance ou de je m’enfoutisme?

Semantic shift - Glissement sémantique

The written press in Quebec has covered the worrysome problems of school drop-outs and what society can do about this. Articles speak of the phenomenon of “décrochage”. The verb “décrocher” is used to express the idea of disengagement, of breaking off the action (like studies for example). In the physical world, décorcher may be used when meaning to take down (décrocher les rideaux, uncoupling (a car train). In the telecommunication parlance, décrochage means to switchover. In the financial world, le décorchage du franc par rapport au mark means the unpegging of the Franc from the Mark.

Dernièrement, j’ai remarqué dans plusieurs articles sur les abandons scolaires au Québec que les journalistes parlent des efforts d’encourager les jeunes à retourner à l’école, à reprendre leurs études. C’est là qu’apparaît le terme « raccrochage », utilisé comme antonyme (contraire) de décrochage. Ce qui est, dans mon esprit, un choix surprenant.

Is the use of raccrochage brought about by the influence of the English language? The closest English word for décrochage is “disconnect”, whereas raccrochage is reconnect. So in the context of drop-outs, instead of the idea of abandoning, or letting go (in French), the English uses the idea of leaving the scene.

The problem with raccrocher is that its usual meanings are to hang up (the phone), to retire (as from a sport), to put down (the telephone receiver), or to solicit or accost a customer (by a prostitute). It also means to reconnect or tie together (train cars, facts) or to rescue – a business deal, for example). Not an iota of an idea of resuming one’s studies in school.

The problem that I see with this situation is that if French-speaking Quebeckers continue to use raccrocher to mean resume studies, they will completely confuse the situation and the verbs accrocher, décrocher and raccrocher would have taken meanings which they did not originally have.

Translators have to be constantly aware of changing speech patterns and find solutions to problems that the unilingual users have not even considered.