Tag: Francophile

  • City by the Book: Death at the Château Bremont

    City by the Book: Death at the Château Bremont

    The final City by the Book from my most recent trip takes us to Aix-en-Provence, a city my travel companion knew well, but that I didn’t know at all. Well, it’s much easier to get to know a city in two days when a) you have a private tour guide and b) you have a book as brilliant as M L Longworth’s Death at the Chateau Bremont. The book is actually the first in a series of provençal murder mysteries, all set in and around Aix-en-Provence. And I don’t mean loosely, I was recognising street names and restaurants all over the place thanks to Longworth’s book.

    I’m not a huge murder mystery reader, but living with my dad means that exposure to it is inevitable, so I’m always pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy them. The series has the usual cryptic detective, Antoine Verlaque, who is clearly not handling some unknown inner turmoil, but refreshingly, he is joined by university professor Marine Bonnet.

    When we first hit cours Mirabeau in the daylight, Aix’s iconic street, my friend felt like something was different — the trees. The street wasn’t how she remembered it, lined with trees so densely that they formed a cover over the street itself. A few hours later, I think we might have been in Parc Jourdan, I read the following passage in Longworth’s book.

    “One hundred years ago double rows of plane trees had been planted on both sides of the street, and by the summer they would shade the sidewalks and the street itself. But the cours had been in a state of construction, or “decontruction,” as Slyvie, Marine’s best friend, a photographer and art historian, liked to say. No sooner was the top of the street completed than the workmen would start jack-hammering the bottom, and then someone at city hall would change his or her mind and the bottom would be hurridedly finished so the construction team could tear up the newly finished work at the top.” — M L Longworth, Death at the Chateau Bremont 

    It’s not a particularly happy anecdote, but isn’t it nice when a novel can fill in the blanks on why a landmark, plastered on every postcard and fridge magnet, looks so completely different?

    Books like Death at the Chateau Bremont are why I like writing the City by the Book blogs — it can transform how you experience a trip. It was also really easy for me to find thanks to the Aix Centric blog, which has a list of books set in Aix — I wish it was as easy for every city! The same blog also has a post about the tree situation, find it here.

    I expect I’ll read some more of the Verlaque and Bonnet series, but I almost want to wait until I can visit Aix again — reading becomes an even more immersive experience when you get to read a book in the city in which it’s set. 

    The last City by the Book looks at Toulouse, Montpellier and Henry James, read it here. 
  • City by the Book: A Little Tour in France

    City by the Book: A Little Tour in France

    As soon as my friend and I planned this summer’s France trip I was excited to get back on it with the City by the Book blogs, and here we are! I thought it’d be easy to find books by authors from the cities we were visiting, or at least set there, but it was much harder than I expected. Especially once I was limited to e-books for the sake baggage allowances.

    And then I came across a non-fiction book by Henry James – A Little Tour in France. Well that was exactly what we were doing, so it sounded like a good fit. I knew it reached Toulouse, which was our first stop, but I hadn’t expected our second and third stops, Montpellier and Aix-en-Provence, to come up too. There wasn’t much Aix coverage, but the book was a great companion for Toulouse and Montpellier.

    Toulouse

    James, it seems, wasn’t overly impressed with Toulouse. I was, but after the rest of the trip, it certainly wasn’t the high point.

    “But the city, it must be confessed, is less pictorial than the word, in spite of Place du Capitole, in spite of quay of the Garonne, in spite of the curious cloister of the old museum.” – Henry James, A Little Tour in France.

    At present, Toulouse is a city under construction. Undoubtedly, it’s very different from how James saw it, but for me, the city is now irrevocably associated with the sound of drills and piles of scaffolding, all, of course, surrounded by ancient churches and convents. I think I’ll have to return to Toulouse in a few years to see how the development has enhanced the city, rather than making it the dustiest and noisiest part of our trip.

    IMG_2330
    Hmm, Toulouse’s most spectacular church was presented a little differently to how James would have seen it…

    Montpellier

    Here’s where James and I agree. For some reason, I had it in my mind that Montpellier was a bit of a British tourist trap — how wrong I was. We could’ve spent all summer there, exploring and eating. We had snails and wandered its little streets — we even became incredibly frustrated when a shop we found one morning disappeared without a trace in the afternoon. It took a treasure hunt before our train left the next morning to find it (it had been hidden down a secret adjacent street the whole time).

    “I spent two days there, mostly in the rain, and even under these circumstances I carried away a kindly impression.” – Henry James, A Little Tour in France. 

    We popped into the museum (Musée Fabre) James loved so much but didn’t explore it with his level of unrestrained detail. It’s a really special city (with excellent seafood) and I don’t doubt I’ll be back for a longer visit at some point in the future.

    A Little Tour of France was published in the nineteenth century, but because history is such a key part of any holiday in France nearly everything James mentioned was still there, there was just more around it. It was fun to read his caricatures of the people he encountered in each city of his tour, which really puts the buildings and landscapes you’re visiting into a unique context.

    Another City by the Book from this trip will be coming soon! 

  • My Favourite Potter en Français Translations PART 3

    My Favourite Potter en Français Translations PART 3

    Coucou! I’m back with another round of Potter translations. Regardless of whether anyone reads them (which some people actually do!) I love writing these blogs so don’t expect them to relent just yet. I’ve now read Order of the Phoenix (ordre du phoenix) and Half-Blood Prince (prince du sang-mêlé), and I am holding off on Deathly Hallows because I DON’T WANT IT TO END. Where I’m at with the series now means that many of the characters and ideas have already been introduced, so the translations featured today are less likely to be exclusive to books five and six.

    Delores, Doloris, Endoloris

    Back when I was reading Goblet of Fire and Mad Eye Moody (Maugrey Fol Œil) introduced the unforgivable curses (les sortilèges Impardonnables) I was struck by the translation of one in particular because I thought it might clash with an upcoming character’s name. “Le sortilège Doloris” is the name given to the cruciatus curse. It makes sense because “douleur” is the French for pain and suffering. Just as the cruciatus curse becomes “crucio” when used, the doloris spell is cast with “endoloris”. When Delores Jane Umbridge arrived in Order of the Phoenix, I wondered whether there was going to be a nod to the similar words or a change to her name. It turns out the name Delores means sorrow anyway, but in the French books Umbridge’s name literally becomes Cruciatus Umbridge. What’s more, her surname is changed. Umbridge is changed to Ombrage, which can translate to anything from “shady” to “offence,” “resentment” to “make s.o feel small.” Delores Umbridge becomes Delores Ombrage, or Cruciatus Shady Belittler, an extra excruciating name for an especially despicable character – I love it!

    BUSE & ASPIC

    I’ve reached the point in the books where academia is becoming more important because of the arrival of wizard GCSEs and A Levels, known in the books as O.W.Ls (Ordinary Wizarding Levels) and N.E.W.Ts (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests). Like with S.P.E.W in my last blog, the translations into French needs to make some kind of sense in terms of being about difficult exams, but they also need to spell out the names of animals frequently mentioned in the wizarding world. The Jean-François Ménard translations call them B.U.S.E and A.S.P.I.C. B.U.S.E stands for Brevet Universel de Sorcellerie Élémentaire (a good magical twist on a French GCSE) but the word “buse” itself is a buzzard or a hawk. Parfait! A.S.P.I.C. stands for Accumulation de Sorcellerie Particulièrement Intensive et Contraignante which is a bit far fetched if you ask me, I’m not sure about the word “accumulation,” BUT it works because “aspic” is a type of viper. Magic!

    L’élu

    Now despite the massive waste that is Dumbledore’s Army’s trip to the Department of Mysteries, we still learn from Dumbledore just bloody well telling Harry the prophecy afterwards (I’m not bitter about it at all), that Harry is in fact The Chosen One. When I started reading Half-Blood Prince in French I kept seeing these four little letter gathering near Harry’s name and I didn’t clock what it meant until I stopped reading and thought, “l’élu? The eleceted? Oooooooh!” It’s such a simple translation that uses the verb “to elect” in a way I’ve never seen outside of politics but it makes more sense than any way I can imagine directly translating “the chosen one”.

    Je suis Voldemort 

    I can’t believe I forgot to mention this when I wrote about Chamber of Secrets because it is just so bizarre. We all know the moment, in the film and book, when creepy teenage Voldemort reveals that his given name was Tom Riddle. He does this by creating an anagram out of his full name “Tom Marvalo Riddle” to spell “I am Lord Voldemort”. Riddle can’t drop an English “I am” into his speech in the French books, so his name had to be altered to find room for a “je suis.” His surname Riddle is also a hint at the fact his name is a riddle in itself so that’s something worth trying to convey in French too.

    And oh my god, how Ménard does it still makes me cry with laughter every time it comes up. I can’t help but wonder whether Rowling had to sign off on it… Imagine you’re reading what is a really intense scene when suddenly Voldemort drops the bombshell that his middle name is ELVIS. His surname becomes Jedusor, which I think is a play on the French phrase for “pun” – “jeu de mots” (game of words), where “words” is replaced with “sort” meaning “spell” – so jedusor might mean “game of spells” – a pun in itself – I could be wrong there though. But anyway, back to the fact HIS MIDDLE NAME IS ELVIS. It does work as an anagram – “Tom Elvis Jedusor” spells out “je suis Voldemort” – but for me the tension was all gone because I was too busy laughing at the fact the Dark Lord’s middle name is Elvis.

    You-Know-Who

    In the same vein of thought, there is another aspect to Voldemort’s name that I’ve failed to mention. If you’ve ever studied French, one of the first things you’re taught is that there are two ways to say “you”. There’s the familiar “tu,” for friends, family, younger people and such, and there’s the more formal “vous” for elders, your superiors etc or a plural group. Remarkably, or perhaps unremarkably, this rule still applies when it comes to saying “You-Know-Who” in French. For example, when Harry first learns about Voldemort from Hagrid, Hagrid says “Tu-Sais-Qui” but when Harry replies he says “Vous-Savez-Qui” – demonstrating the linguistic power balance between Hagrid and Harry, adult and child. The more complicated “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” becomes the mouthful “Celui-Dont-On-Ne-Doit-Pas-Prononcer-Le-Nom” (the one whom we must not say the name of).

    As we’ve established by now, I find these translations fascinating and I hope you do too! If you’ve enjoyed part three be sure to check out parts one and two, and please share them with any Francophiles or Potterphiles you think might be interested. 

    In other news, you might have noticed that a little badge has appeared on the site – Feedspot have ranked Fictitiously Hilary 36 in its Top 50 Freelance Writing Blogs. Thank you all for reading, sharing and making exciting things like this possible, big love!