Tag: French Literature

  • My 5 Favourite Potter en Français Translations PART 1

    My 5 Favourite Potter en Français Translations PART 1

    As promised in my mid-year resolution that I made in September, I have been reading Harry Potter in French for the first time lately. This afternoon, as I picked up Le Prisonnier d’Azkaban, I was excited, not just because it has been a pleasure to return to the wizarding world, but because some of the translations for names and places have been half of the entertainment. So far I’ve found it spooky how even though I’m reading these books for the first time in years and in a different language, seeing the chapter titles is enough to fill me with the same excited glee as ever. Gilderoy Lockhart, is still just as arrogantly and ironically maddening as he is in English.

    Apologies to anyone who doesn’t like Harry Potter but honestly, what is wrong with you? For those who don’t speak French I’ll do my best to explain why I’m tickled. Without further ado, here are my favourite French translations from Harry Potter 1 and 2 – L’école des Sorciers and La Chambre des Secrets.

    Le Choixpeau Magique

    Now of course any new student at Hogwarts (or Poudlard, I should say) must be sorted into the correct house. I’ll touch upon the title of the houses in a moment, but let’s talk about the sorting process first, shall we? The infamous Sorting Hat is translated to le Choixpeau Magique, which honestly brings me an absurd amount of joy. “Choix” meaning choice, and “chapeau” meaning hat, it is an excellent squashing together of words that I fully support. It makes “Sorting Hat” suddenly seeming extraordinarily dull, for a talking hat, that is.

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    Touffu

    Now what’s better than Hagrid having named his giant three-headed dog Fluffy? The fact that in the French version, he names it Touffu. While it pretty much just a literal translation (it sort of means “dense-y”), I think it’s extra amusing for English readers of the French version (confused yet?) because it becomes a sickly sweet name, as well as just being totally mad.

    Deauclaire, Dubois, Chouvrage & Quasi-Sans-Téte

    A couple of names I randomly enjoyed the very literal translations of were Penelope Clearwater to Penelope Deauclaire, Oliver Wood to Olivier Dubois and Professor Sprout to Proffesseur Chouvrage. Simple, exact translations that just sound even better in French. The other really great example is Nick Quasi-Sans-Tête. Any guesses? Nearly Headless Nick, of course!

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    Poufsouffle

    Now Hogwarts isn’t Hogwarts in French, which does bother me slightly, but what is more fascinating is how some of the house names have been changed. Gryffindor becomes Gryffondor, Slytherin becomes Serpentard (both fair translations) but then Ravenclaw becomes Serdaigle and Hufflepuff becomes Poufsouffle. While they do literally translate to “claw of eagle” and “puffy puff”,  I do however get a little mad that the translator (Jean-François Ménard) doesn’t change their first names to keep the alliteration. It’s maddening to me to have Helga Poufsouffle and Rowena Serdaigle.

    Malefoy

    At first I didn’t think anything of the added “e” in Malfoy, but then I’m became suspicious that it might be a philosophy thing. I assume that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone couldn’t be translated directly because France has such a long and complicated relationship with philosophy (Beauvoir, Satre etc.). Now I’m wondering if the same tradition has anything to do with Malfoy’s name too. “Mauvais foi” (bad faith) is an existential idea conceptualised by Beauvoir and Satre, and I’m sure I’ve read it as “mal foi” somewhere too. I may be wrong, and it could just be a pronunciation aid but I like to think it’s a little cooler than that. Malfoy’s character certainly has a little mauvais foi about him, I’m not sure the “e” is necessary…

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    Let me know if you’ve enjoyed this blog and I’ll highlight a few more of my favourites as I continue to read the series in French. 

    Now read Part 2, featuring Padfoot, Prongs, Grindylows & more

  • An attempt at not forgetting 17 years of French

    An attempt at not forgetting 17 years of French

    It has been three months since I finished my degree! What! While I’ve always been good at keeping up with the literature side of my degree, the French side can be a little harder to slot into everyday life (without moving to France that is, believe me – I’m trying). I was reading at least one French novel a month up until June, but since then things have been a bit crazy and my English To Be Read pile has been much larger than my French TBRs.

    It hit me today, scrolling through Twitter. There was a Tweet by French President Emmanuel Macron that I read and processed and then I continued to scroll. Wait, I just read and understood a tweet in another language. I never want to forget how cool that is. To learn a language is to open up a whole other world of people you can communicate with. It has also been a huge amount of hard work to get my French to where it is today, but ‘today’ is also the first time in seventeen years that I haven’t been studying French academically.

    I remember going to a Franglish Language exchange in Lyon and meeting a middle aged man who told me he was there because he had a degree in English, a language he hadn’t spoken since he was studying it. He was now applying for a job where he needed English and he suddenly realised he had forgotten almost everything he knew about the language.

    I do not want to find myself in his shoes in twenty years time. In fact I outright refuse. So here’s what I propose to do to stop myself forgetting French:

    Read, read, read

    One French novel a month. It’s only recently I stopped doing this but it’s time to revive the habit. It is not nearly as laborious as it once was, in fact it’s a pleasure. One that I take for granted. I have a few French reading goals to, but they’re all pretty long winded so they might take a while:

    • Les Misérables (Parts 1 – 4)
    • Some Proust
    • Harry Potter en français 

    News, news, l’actus

    I’m going to take a revision exercise and try and make it a daily, if not weekly, habit. Translating the headlines of French news websites into English and English headlines into French – and of course reading the French articles. Asides from the language benefits you get from this, reading a different perspective on English news is always a bonus. Particularly when I connect much more with European coverage of Brexit than British coverage.

    On y va!

    I need to get to France. As much as is realistically possible. This one is a little harder because of money, but I just need to scrape up some pennies and go on a weekend break. The best way to improve my French is (shock) to speak French with French people. In fact I’m just going to set myself the goal of returning to Lyon for this year’s Fête des Lumières, since it was partially cancelled when I was living there. OK that was easy… now for finding some money…

  • 2016 favourites

    So to get the ball rolling on this book blog I thought I’d look back over my favourite books of 2016. Apologies for the categorisation of my favourites, it’s very Hilary-specific. Actually it’s my blog, so #sorrynotsorry.

    Non-Fiction

    2016 is definitely the year I began to appreciate and enjoy the non-fiction genre more than I ever had before. That is perhaps because in February I broke the spine in what was supposed to be a joke Christmas present from Santa. The book was Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography. Not to sound too cliché or melodramatic (nor to quote a character in my own book) but this book changed my life. I know Wolf is a journalist, not an expert of female reproductive health, and that the book is heavily scrutinised by feminists and scientists alike; but Vagina opened my mind to several entirely new and different ways of thinking about female sexuality. So much so that it inspired my dissertation topic and my first novel. While I don’t take anything in the book as fact or at face value, Wolf’s own experiences and those of the people she interviews enlightened me to realise that sexuality, especially female sexuality, is not as analogue as I had previously been led to believe. Vagina made me think, and that’s exactly what a book, especially a non-fiction book, should do, in my opinion.

    Favourite Sci-Fi

    As tempting as it is to say Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy since 2016 was the first time I sat down and read the first book, I had already discovered Douglas Adams. Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden took a while to capture my attention when I read it in 2015 but the sequel Mother of Eden, which I recently read in December, dragged me back into a world I hadn’t realised I had been missing. I mostly loved how Beckett explored how a brand new society somehow ends up in the same messes as our 21st Century planet Earth does but Beckett and Starlight give me far more hope than planet Earth ever does. This is particularly true in relation to the function of gender, the sexes, and sexuality in society, but maybe that’s just because ever since my first year of university I haven’t been able to take off my ‘gender goggles’. I highly recommend the Dark Eden series, and can’t wait to read Daughter of Eden.

    Favourite Biography 

    No surprises to anyone that knows me well but Lauren Graham’s Talking as Fast as I Can storms this category for me (especially since I already gave Wolf to best Non-Fiction). A Gilmore Girls fan to my stone-cold core, 2016 was a pretty exciting year for me with it returning for its revival and Graham writing another book, this one all about her and the show. I listened to Someday, Someday, Maybe while running a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoyed this biography. What’s lovely about Graham is she writes how she talks, and when you’ve watched as much Gilmore Girls as I have her voice is a pretty special one. Graham doesn’t just write about reprising Lorelai Gilmore though, she tackles her childhood, finding her feet as an actress, writer and woman and writes a bloody lovely ode to being single, the latter of which hit pretty close to the mark. Graham manages to make everything and anything, no matter how sad or uncomfortable, funny, something I myself aspire to do.

    Favourite in the French language 

    I started the year reading Madam Bovary back to back, once in English and once in French. While I love the story, Flaubert’s classic missed the top spot just because of how sick of the poor old Bovaries I was by the time I was done (twice). Though I’ve read some really classical and ‘racy’ French literature for a university module (love, lust and the meaning of life: a theme in French literature) my 2016 favourite in French probably goes to a Czech-man. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being landed in my lap and in my heart in 2015 (I love it especially because it led me to read Anna Karenina) and I had read it in English. Just before leaving Lyon though I grabbed a few books from Decitre including Milan Kundera’s La Fête de l’Insignificance. The biggest reason this is my favourite French Language book of 2016 is because I was amazed at how Kundera’s voice sounded the same in French as it had in English. I don’t know how but it amazed me, that the voice in my head for The Unbearable Lightness of Being returned for La Fête de l’Insignificance. Isn’t language cool?!

    Favourite Fiction

    Since Vagina opened my eyes, books about female sexuality have been pouring into them. From Erica Jong, to George Eliot, and the likes of Kate Chopin, D. H. Lawrence, Sarah Waters and Jeanette Winterson in between, 2016 has been full of licentious literature as well as the mammoth task that was reading War and Peace, some more Orwell and my first Victor Hugo. No doubt about it though, discovering Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook was my favourite fictional treat of the year. I don’t think it needs explaining and I’m not sure I even could, I just love this book and could talk, read and write about it all day, but I’ll save that for my dissertation, or maybe another blog post.

    A personal favourite

    I couldn’t talk about books that I read in 2016 without giving a shout out to a family friend who wrote and published his own book. It is Interleaving by Richard Hopkins. It made me miss London when I was stuck in a miserable classroom in Isère and is nothing like anything I’ve ever read before, although perhaps that is because I haven’t read any Dr. Johnson, who’s pretty major in Interleaving. It’s available on the Kindle store for £2 and the proceeds go to charities supporting homeless people in London – so there’s no good reason not to read Interleaving!

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    By some miracle I ended up on the back of the copy of Interleaving that Gill and Richard gave me for my birthday!

    There are a few other books I’d like to ramble on about here but I fear I’ll just start making up categories for the sake of it if I don’t stop now. So before I go, here’s a quick shout out to a few others that I enjoyed in 2016:

    How to be a Writer – David Quantick
    Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
    L’immeuble des femmes qui ont renoncé les hommes – Karine Lambert