Saturn seat belt/Ceinture Saturn

A request arrived to translate a customer recall bulletin warning  Saturn vehicle owners that their seatbelt contained a hidden tag.  In case of an impact in an accident, the belt would stretch (as it should) and reveal a small tag saying: “In case of accident, replace belt”. There were some 300 000 Saturn owners who were going to receive this bulletin.

Une demande nous arrive de traduire un bulletin de rappel destiné aux propriétaires de voitures Saturn au sujet d’une étiquette cachée. En cas d’impact pendant un accident, la ceinture s’allonge (légèrement, comme prévu) et fait sortir une petite étiquette qui dit en anglais  « In case of accident, replace belt ».

Malheureusement, la version française est tout autre. A French version accompanied the English one. Unfortunately, the French read:

 “En cas d’accident, replacer la ceinture”,

which literally meant « put the belt back (where it was) ». This is obviously different from taking the old seatbelt and replacing it with a new one.  Qui veut dire remettre la ceinture à sa place.

The French should have been “En cas d’accident, remplacer la ceinture”. C’est bien du verbe remplacer qu’il s’agissait.

For the lack of one letter, the whole situation became quite embarrassing and quite expensive. Une erreur d’une lettre a provoqué une situation embarrassante et chère à réparer.

Apparently, somebody at the plant had looked up “replace” in the dictionary and taken the first meaning shown, not understanding that an exchange was supposed to take place, not a put back in place action.

Il semblerait que quelqu’un à l’usine américaine s’était servi d’un dictionnaire bilingue et avait pris le premier mot suggéré, ne s’étant pas rendu compte du fait qu’il s’agissait non pas d’une remise en place mais d’un remplacement.

Eastern Daylight time/heure avancée de l’est

This is the time of the year when we switch to the Eastern Daylight time; this led me to ponder how this is expressed in French and the possible reasons.  First of all, I should note  that in Canada, the “Daylight” expression is not rendered in French in the same way – we say Eastern advanced hour. The two settings are Daylight time and Standard time, rendered in French as heure avancée and  heure normale, literally advanced time and normal time. Ensoleillement is the French word for “daylight”.

A play on words in English is often used to remember when to move clocks ahead and when to move them back. It is “Spring forward and Fall back”. It is an amazingly clever play on words where Spring the season, becomes spring the verb – i.e. jump forward. In the same way, the season Fall, becomes fall the verb meaning to drop or move in a specified direction.

A search of French literature on this subject shows that in Canada, newspaper writers say “reculer les montres”  i.e. set back watches, where it is actually the time shown on them that is set back. In a French Swiss article, I found “les montres ont reculé d’une heure” (clocks moved back one hour). Other sources, primarily from France, appear to favor the verb “retarder”. One would therefore say avancer les montres ou horloges et retarder les montres ou horloges.

I remember reading in several translation manuals that English typically appears to favor a concrete approach to express many things: move back the hands of the clock whereas French would say avancer une montre d’une heure ou retarder une montre de 15 minutes.

I would almost think that “reculer les montres” is an error described as “anglicisme de structure” i.e. a sentence using French words but with an English sentence structure.  An online Internet dictionary provided the following German: “eine Uhr zurűckwerfen”, when it refers to time, which sounds like “throw back a clock”. What do you think?

Olympics – Sporting success – Cultural failure/JO – Victoire sportive – défaite culturelle

Two comments from the Letters to the Editor to two papers. Deux commentaires addressés au rédacteur en chef.

NH - Richmond, B.C. — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010 12:00AM EST Last updated on Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010 3:11AM EST

Sorry, but it has to be said. Everything that came after the official closing declaration - the giant beavers and Mounties, the dancing canoes and floating moose - was totally inappropriate to a global audience. What a shame that, after such a beautiful recovery from a shaky start and the crowning touch of the gold-medal hockey game, it all had to end on such a lame note. The message we left the world is that we are, after all, frontier hicks with no cultural depth and no taste.

PD – Le Devoir, samedi 13 février 2010 11h42

Vancouver 2010, pays hôte = Western Canada! (et non le Canada)
La cérémonie d'ouverture était bien belle, magnifique, mais m'a profondément déçue sur le plan des symboles et de l'image du Canada projetée au monde. Nous sommes très très loin de l'image d'un Canada rassembleur et fier de sa dualité linguistique... De tout le spectacle, aucun artiste québécois ou francophone, sauf Garou à la toute fin et pour si peu, et aucun athlète québécois pour porter la flamme dans les derniers moments avant l'allumage avec Gretzky! Il n'y avait que des athlètes anglophones. La cérémonie d'ouverture est censée présenter une image juste du pays hôte! Or, on l'a vu, le pays hôte, c'est la Colombie-Britannique ou l'Ouest canadien, pas le Canada! Un échec lamentable pour le COVAN (qui n'a vraiment aucune sensibilité pour la composante identitaire francophone du Canada et qui a pourtant reçu tant d'argent du gouvernement fédéral). Je suis vraiment extrêmement déçu.

Wanted: Translator with ESP and X-Ray vision/Recherché : traducteur à la perception ultra-sensorielle et doté de rayons X.

You attend a convention. The program is varied and contains presentations, handouts, and fliers. These have been prepared over time and work with each other. Different departments contributed to the effort and when time came to have the material translated, one translation company could not do everything. What do you do – send the translation to several companies, right?

Vous assistez à un congrès. Le programme est varié et comprend des présentations, des dépliants et des papillons. Cette documentation avait été préparée pendant un bon bout de temps et forme un tout. Plusieurs services ont collaboré et au moment de la traduction de la documentation, un cabinet de traduction n’a pas suffi. Que faire – envoyer les textes à traduire à plusieurs cabinets, voilà!

Wrong!  Shortly after the convention, the head manager for the project stomped into my office and asked that I fire the translators. The printers that had been requested to print the English and French material did a cursory check of the French and discovered that there was no consistency between the various components of the convention. Things called “A” here, were called differently elsewhere. Where one concept was explained one way, it was explained in a different way elsewhere.

Mauvaise idée !  Un peu de temps après la fin du congrès, le gestionnaire en charge arrive chez moi en coup de vent et exige que l’on congédie les traducteurs impliqués. L’imprimeur qui avait été chargé d’imprimer le français et l’anglais y avait jeté un coup d’œil rapide et avait découvert que les différentes parties de la documentation ne se tenaient pas. Un programme appelé « A », avait ailleurs été baptisé par un autre nom. Un concept avait été expliqué d’une façon ici et d’une autre façon ailleurs.

The Manager could not understand how these things could have happened when all of these translator companies had been approved and were receiving the same background information from the client.  I asked: did anyone tell company A that it was sharing work with company B?  Did anyone ask that the final output be coordinated?  Did anyone review the finished material? I guess the printer did it, but not because he had been asked to do so.

Le gestionnaire n’arrivait pas à comprendre comment ces choses se sont produites alors qu’il s’était adressé uniquement à des cabinets agréés par l’entreprise et que toutes recevaient de la documentation de notre part. Je lui demandais alors si le cabinet A avait été informé que le travail serait partagé avec le cabinet B ? Si on avait demandé à quelqu’un de coordonner le produit final ? Est-ce qu’une révision du travail fini avait été effectuée ? Seul l’imprimeur avait fait preuve de professionnalisme, mais uniquement de sa propre initiative.

What do you think the French participants thought when they saw the many discrepancies?  Did it make them feel good and proud of their employer?

Que pensez-vous des participants qui se sont retrouvés avec de la documentation si mal préparée ? Est-ce que vous pensez que l’expérience leur a laissé un sentiment de fierté et de satisfaction ?

XXI Olympics Podium – it belongs to the winner, not the wannabe/Le podium appartient aux gagnants et non pas aux Elvis en herbe.

Au désarroi d’un nombre de Canadiens, les organismes du VANOC et la presse s’étaient embarqués dans l’histoire du Own the Podium. En voici l’histoire.

To the embarrassment of some people, Canadian Sporting organisations had joined the Own the podium « technical program » back in 2005. Our lack of medals at the Vancouver games is drawing criticisms from the US, the UK and others. (see the links below).

C’est bien de se faire concurrence et c’est bien de gagner, mais s’affubler d’un slogan de ce genre me semble contraire à l’esprit de fair play que possédait le Canada auparavant.

La presse américaine et d’outremer vient de réagir. Ainsi le Chronicle de San Francisco suggère “ Own the Podium? Right phrase, wrong country ".

La presse anglaise (BBC) avait également trouvé à redire sur l’approche qu’avait adoptée le Canada.

Le Devoir explique les origines du programme; the Montreal Le Devoir provides an explanation.

Le Monde constate que vouloir n’est pas pouvoir. The French Le Monde takes a wait and see attitude.

Est-ce tellement difficile d’une part d’assurer une réception parfaite de tous les participants aux JO et d’encourager nos propres athlètes à atteindre de nouveaux sommets d’autre part?

Il me semble que nous avons presque saboté certains de nos concurrents en leur interdisant de s’entraîner sur le site des JO.

Is it really that hard to on one hand to provide the best facilities possible to all the Games participants while at the same time encourage our own athletes to do their best?

It appears as though we have almost sabotaged some of our competitors in not allowing them to train at the Games facilities. 

Vancouver XXI Olympics – XXI Jeux Olympiques de Vancouver

La presse a fait écho des problèmes de traduction vers le français – discours d’inauguration parsemés de mots français, etc. Ce n’est pas un problème inusité, surtout à Vancouver.

French translation problems during the opening ceremonies were brought out in the press. The speeches by the VANOC people contained token French words instead of having actual paragraphs or sentences in French.

I was visiting the web and found a very good cartoon which says it all:

 

Le dessins ci-dessus illustre bien la façon dont ce manque de français a été accueilli.

Dragon – Writing an article on the dictaphone! Création d’un article au Dictaphone

I have recently been asked to write a short  article for a professional publication.  I knew what I wanted to say so it was just a matter of putting it down on paper. That done, I wanted to hear it read and remembered that my Dragon Voice Recognition software has a text-to-speech feature.  So I opened the appropriate boxes and found the option for that function.  Cut & paste and I was listening to my article being read in English by an artificial voice!

L’article que je viens de composer pour une publication professionnelle était en anglais et je voulais voir quelle impression il donnait. Je me suis souvenu que le logiciel Dragon a également une fonction de synthèse vocale. Il suffit de copier-coller le texte dans une case appropriée et la machine vous donne la lecture de l’article par une voix artificielle.

Encouragé par ce succès, j’ai décidé de dicter une version française du même article. J’ai tout simplement modifié la langue dans Dragon (il y a un grand choix de langues dans chaque logiciel ) et j’ai commencé à dicter en français. Formidable, le français s’affiche à mesure que je dicte. J’ai dû revenir à quelques reprises pour faire des petites corrections, mais c’est surtout parce que je ne maîtrise pas encore la dictée à 100 pour cent.

Emboldened by the English results, I decided to create a translation of the same article but in French this time. In the same Dragon software, I selected French this time and just “talked” the translation through.  It was amazingly easy and only a few corrections were required because I am not quite used to the software yet. I can also select the text-to-speech feature and have the computer read the article back to me in French.

As with any tool, practice makes perfect and I intend to use dictation more often, both in English and in French. Comme pour tout nouvel outil, il suffit de s’en servir suffisamment pour l’apprivoiser.

It’s open on Mondays! Ils sont ouverts le lundi!

The beginning of the week in the last two months of the year can be a bit depressing, with the darkness starting earlier and most restaurants being closed.  A ray of sunshine: Simple Bistro is open on Mondays now. What a treat!

Avec le crépuscule arrivant plus tôt et la majorité des restaurants fermés le lundi soir, les deux derniers mois de l’année peuvent être déprimants. Heureusement, Simple Bistro vient de décider de rester ouvert les lundis soirs – quelle aubaine !

Nous avons dégusté tout d’abord des rillettes de saumon très aromatiques servies en petites rondelles (comme du saucisson) parfumé d’une légère mousseline.  Pour le poisson, nous avons choisi du thazard atlantique (appelé Spanish Mackerel aux Barbades)  au beurre aux câpres, des pommes de terre nouvelles et des tomates miniatures au four. Le Riesling que l’on nous avait proposé nous avait semblé très bien assorti par sa fraîcheur et son pétillant. Comme dessert, un gâteau au chocolat exquis, agrémenté de crème fraîche et de framboises, suivi d’un bon cappuccino et d’un petit verre de Riesling plus doux.

The appetizer – salmon rillettes were surprising light and yet the texture was definitely that of rillettes. I cheated and peeked at some Internet recipes: the recipe uses both fresh and smoked salmon, that is why. They were served in small rounds, on top of a light mousseline sauce. The mains, Spanish mackerel in caper butter, new potatoes and mini tomatoes, was delicate and a fine balance of the different flavours. The suggested Riesling had a nice edge and complemented both the rillettes and the mackerel. 

 The gâteau au chocolat dessert came with a light crème Chantilly and fresh raspberries. Coffee and liqueur completed the meal. Not bad for a Monday!

Mondays do not need to be dull any more! Adieu les lundis ennuyeux!

Wrong définition - Définition érronée

Advertising copy is a challenge to translate, especially when one realizes that the writer has been blindsided by his perception of a meaning, not the customary meaning.

A recent example was an automotive ½ page ad purporting to extol the merits of one brand of car versus another. The text said:

"By Definition, An Accord is A Compromise"

Upon reading this heading , my immediate reaction was to ascertain that the word accord had indeed this meaning. Here is what I found:

From the WordWeb:
1. Harmony of people’s opinion or actions or characters
2. Concurrenc of opinion
3. A written agreement between two states or sovereigns
4. Sympathetic compatibility

Dictionary.reference.com
noun
5. proper relationship or proportion; harmony.
6. a harmonious union of sounds, colors, etc.
7. consent or concurrence of opinions or wills; agreement.
8. an international agreement; settlement of questions outstanding among nations.

Merriam-Webster
Main Entry: 2accord
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French acord, from acorder
Date: 14th century
1 a : agreement, conformity b : a formal reaching of agreement : compact, treaty
2 : balanced interrelationship : harmony
3 obsolete : assent
4 : voluntary or spontaneous impulse to act

Dictionary Babylon
accord
________________________________________
Noun
1. harmony of people's opinions or actions or characters; "the two parties were in agreement"
(synonym) agreement
(hypernym) harmony, concord, concordance
(hyponym) community, community of interests
2. concurrence of opinion; "we are in accord with your proposal"
(synonym) conformity, accordance
(hypernym) agreement
3. a written agreement between two states or sovereigns
(synonym) treaty, pact
(hypernym) written agreement
(hyponym) alliance
4. sympathetic compatibility
(synonym) rapport
(hypernym) compatibility
The Wordnetweb from Princeton University gives:
• agreement: harmony of people's opinions or actions or characters; "the two parties were in agreement"
• concurrence of opinion; "we are in accord with your proposal"
• harmonize: go together; "The colors don't harmonize"; "Their ideas concorded"
• treaty: a written agreement between two states or sovereigns
• allow to have; "grant a privilege"
• sympathetic compatibility

In Answers.com :

1. Agreement; harmony: act in accord with university policies.
2. A settlement or compromise of conflicting opinions.
3. A settlement of points at issue between nations.
4. Spontaneous or voluntary desire to take a certain action: The children returned on their own accord. He confessed of his own accord.

This appears to be the source of the meaning that the advertiser used in the ad.
On the French side, where the word Accord exists as well, we find:

1. État resultant d’une manière commune de sentir, de penser, d’agir, entre plusieurs personnes.
2. État résultat de la convenance qui existe entre plusieurs choses.

Dictionnaire Myriade – ProLexis.

Encyclopédie Linternaute :
accord, nom masculin
Sens 1 Entente entre personnes résultant de leur conformité de sentiments. Synonyme accommodement Anglais agreement

Sens 2 Acceptation, permission. Ex Le supérieur a donné son accord. Synonyme acceptation Anglais consent

Sens 3 Convention, arrangement formalisé entre personnes ou entités. Ex Un accord économique. Synonyme pacte Anglais agreement

Sens 4 Harmonie, concordance entre des choses. Synonyme adéquation Anglais agreement
Interestingly enough, this last source provides an English equivalent – agreement.


We appear to be very far from the word compromise. What do you think?

By the way, is criticizing your opponent the best way to emphasize your product?
Dénigrer le produit du concurrent ne donne pas nécessairement un avantage.

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.

Head Light – Lumière à tête (??)

Picked up a nifty little portable light at a sale the other day, but not because I was impressed by the French translation. In fact it is awful. I thought I would point out just a few of the bloopers.

On side A - the generic name of the product 1 Watt LED Head Light was transformed in a Light with a head. In addition, LED does have a French equivalent = DEL (diode électroluminescente).

Dans le sous-titre on trouve Bande de tête élastique ajustable – que doivent donc faire les gens qui ont la tête dure? Le fait que l’appareil est hydrofuge ne semble pas avoir mérité une traduction. La note sur la longueur du fonctionnement est de syntaxe anglaise.

On side B, adjectives qualifying nouns do not have proper endings.
Ampoules lumineuse (s?)
Ampoules blanche(s) several bulbs but the adjective is in singular form.
Bouton de pression control 4 modes de lumière – could not translate this word? - No problem, just leave it in English, customers will understand!
Flashing signal (press ON button for 2 sec) - Signal clignotant (appuyez SUR bouton pour 2 sec.)
There is no button with the marking SUR on the device– it is the on/off button! French could have said “appuyez sur l’interrupteur pendant 2 sec”.

A French-speaking customer who absolutely needs the light will buy it, but someone undecided will definitely be put off by the mistakes and the sloppy rendering. Who will be blamed – the importer, China?

World Famous Sales (Concord, Ont). who is looking after your packaging translations?