(This document will only remain online for two weeks).
I recommend you begin by sorting out the time and the tenses. Decide how many different times there are.
There is the time of the day the storm was there and his housemates were missing.
There is the time much later when he is looking back and trying to interpret the past.
There is the time of habit, what always or typically happens, and what you always or typically have to do with traps and equipment etc.
Looking back (1) now, I think I sensed (2) something was off (3).
“Looking back, I think I felt something was wrong”. is good. But the “now” avoids the slight possibility of ambiguity, in case the “looking back” might be interpreted as referring to something the narrator did at that moment in the past.
“Thinking back” is excellent (of course, you must not follow it with “I think”)
( See the first line of this song https://youtu.be/whwEiTmgWk0?si=bApn77yQDr4YfsfG )
“Thinking back, I must have sensed something was wrong” is excellent.
I accepted “Looking back, I must have felt” although it partially omits the “I think” idea.
“Retrospectively” is not good, not least because it is latinate, and so gives out a tone of formality or business language.
Retrospectively, as the Annual Report indicates, it became clear that this initial investment was insufficient.
Also, adding verbs is generally advisable when translating from French to English.
“With hindsight” is good and Germanic.
I was a little surprised by “In hindsight” but I find it does exist and is fine.
“sensed” is less emotional than “felt”.
“I think I had sensed” is fine.
Note that because here we may well be speaking of a specific act of feeling, at a specific moment in the past (“ J’ai senti” and not “je sentais”), we do not put “could feel”.
something was not quite right
something was wrong
something was odd
something was strange
“Quelque chose de tourne pas rond” is a fairly general expression. “Quelque chose ne tourne pas rond chez lui” suggests mental instability. It is not an expression about processes running smoothly. So we need a general translation like those above.
It was a little like when you feel there is an insect tickling your ear. You make a move to brush it away, but it is actually an alarm bell, your own alarm bell inside, set at its very lowest
“Set as low as possible” is good.
Am very tempted by the past here, since the narrator is comparing one specific event with another common experience. But the present is possible.
Although the style of the passage is relatively informal, the use of vous etc limits the informality considerably, and we should translate “a little” and not “a bit”.
Note that the verb “to itch” is intransitive, so you may not say *An insect itching your ear.
“Geste” in French and “gesture” in English are very often false friends.
Oxford advanced learners dictionary gives
[countable, uncountable] a movement that you make with your hands, your head or your face to show a particular meaning
- He made a rude gesture at the driver of the other car.
- She finished what she had to say with a gesture of despair.
- They communicated entirely by gesture.
As you can see, a gesture is 1) almost always
made with a part of the body and 2) intended to communicate a particular
meaning. So here, it is not the right word.
“Alarm bell” is necessary because “alarm” could be ambiguous : it might mean that warning bell, or it might mean a feeling of panic.
“Adjusted” makes the process sound too technical. (“Adjust” is from Old French, “set” is from Anglo Saxon, so no surprise there).
The use of the latinate word “minimum” again is too formal and would be more suitable for technical or analytical declarations.
“Strict minimum” sounds extremely French. “Bare minimum” has a different meaning – it means “just enough to survive” or something similar. The Guardian recently ran a headline “Quiet quitting: why doing the bare minimum at work has gone global”.
It is not loud enough to make you jump up, but is just loud enough to keep you from sleeping peacefully.
When there is no verb, add a verb.
If you translate “too low to make you jump” you have changed the focalization without reason.
“Jump” is good, but “leap” and “bounce” are things which you cannot do beginning in a horizontal position.
“Keep you from” is better than “stop”. “Prevent” is a little less good, but I did not penalize it.
“Sleeping soundly” is fine.
I was in fact sleeping, and I awoke with a start. Was it a premonition or just the draught coming from downstairs?
Translations such as “sleeping is exactly what I was doing” change the focalization of the sentence.
I awoke with a jolt is good. Not *in a jolt.
Note that it is possible to be jolted awake, but we do not use “jolt” intransitively as in *I jolted awake.
I accepted “Was it a hunch ?”. “Premonition” is better – more mysterious, more extrasensory. “Was it a gut feeling” was good. I know I am always saying you should avoid latinate words, but the idea of a premonition is something very sophisticated and hard to explain, so...
I do not know.
Present tense : the not knowing exists at the moment of narration, not at the moment of the storm.
Although the style is somewhat informal, there is no need to use contractions. If when they had been talking about the insect, the text had used “te chatouille l’oreille” rather than “vous chatouille l’oreille”, I might have been tempted.
I was so tired from having spent the previous few days all worked up, emptying the traps, putting the equipment away and getting us all ready before the bad weather came.
« the last few days in a frenzy » was very good.
I think it is “getting us all ready” because she has to get at least one child ready too.
I have always liked storms, and in particular the time just before the storm, when you have to make everything safe, fill in the cracks, bring in enough wood to last a few days, and construct a closed space, as windproof as you can.
Note that repeating the word “storm” would be bad style in French, but is fine in English.
Note that “un moment” in French is much longer than “a moment” in English.
C’est le moment d’y aller : Now is the right time to go.
I’ll be with you in a moment : je reviens dans un instant.
They were here just a moment ago! Ils étaient là à l’instant!
Ça fait un moment que je ne l’ai pas vue: I haven’t seen her for a while.
By replacing “possible” with “you can” we increase the number of verbs.
“Hermetic” exists in English but is technical in tone.
“Airtight” is not good, because you would suffocate in an airtight space. I chose “windproof” , though naturally you would also want your space to be waterproof. Stormproof is good, as is “weatherproof”
And then, when the storm has come, you have to wall yourself in, with the crackling CB radio,
holding a piping-hot cup of coffee to warm your hands up, watching the fire in the hearth protesting because of the snow falling down the chimney and the wind gusting through.
“The storm has come” allows you to add a verb, and also to avoid having to decide between “here” and “there”.
Adding a verb is essential here. I have repeated “you have to” but there are other options.
You wall yourself in, you barricade yourself in. The « in » is necessary.
Piping-hot should be spelt with a hyphen, but even my newspaper of reference, The Guardian, does not always do so. “Scalding hot” coffee is very good, but not *burning hot coffee – you can’t burn yourself with coffee.
Note that this is a piping-hot cup of coffee, and not *a piping-hot coffee cup (this last might be empty !)
The fire protesting/ rebelling/ struggling were all good, I thought.
The snow falling down the chimney / falling down the flue.
“The snow which is falling” is good. “The snow which falls” or “the snow that falls” is not good .
Be careful with the vocabulary. *Chimney pipe does not exist. The “chimney stack” is the part of a chimney which is visible above the roof.
Then I can hear the house creaking and moaning like a little old man.
*cracking or *crackling is not possible.
“Whining” is fine instead of “moaning”.
We need “little” which is affectionate or patronising, and not “small” which is literally about physical size. If you put just “old man” it appeared as if you were avoiding having to choose between “small” and “little”, so there were penalty points.
I sometimes get the feeling she is speaking to me, just as she may have spoken to my parents and to my grandparents before me, from generation to generation right back to the first Mayer who decided to settle here in this hostile territory, claiming he would be stronger than nature.
Since the house may be speaking, it is being personified. It is a good idea to personify as “she”, and those who did got bonus points. This is not obligatory, however, and there were no penalty points for not doing so. Strangely, personifying the house as “he” is not possible. Ships and cars are often personified as “she”.
We are counting the generations here, so it must be either “from generation to generation” or “from one generation to another”. Not *from a generation to another.
It has to be “back to” or “right back to”. “Until” or “up to” seem to only work forwards.
Il ne faisait pas semblant d’être plus fort, il prétendait être plus fort. Il faut dire “claim” not “pretend” ; I thought “act as though” was fine (a way of avoiding the problem).
So the house is still standing and I am warm inside, kept safe by its walls, just like a diamond in its velvet box. Except that I am all alone.
We have gone back to the time of the beginning of this extract, where our hero wakes up feeling something is off. You can use the present tense (because it is as if we were quoting the words inside her head). Or you can use the past tense (because the situation described is at a now closed period from the past).
People did not seem to have many difficulties with this section.
I accepted “except I am alone”, but “except that” is better.
When I went downstairs, the door was wide open and piles of snow had already blown in. That annoyed me, and I started shouting « Jesus, Bess, can’t you close this damn door ? You’ll have us all bloody dying of cold ! ».
“Downstairs” is one word not two.
The snow did not “rush inside”, because only animate beings can rush.
I cannot think of an alternative to “piles”, apart from “heaps”. It cannot be blocks, which are too geometrical, or “packets”, which are wrapped in paper.
“The snow was already piling up inside” is very good.
“For God’s sake” (note capital letter – you cannot be secular while invoking His name.
/ “for goodness’ sak”e (note the spelling of this last, although native speakers often omit the apostrophe).
That damned door/ that damn door/ that bloody door/ that flipping door. I accepted “that freaking door” but it sounds very young person slang to me. The F*** word is not used in this kind of novel.
The most common translation of the last part was “we’re all going to die of cold” or “we’re all going to freeze to death”. This is correct. It is « going to » (prediction based on present evidence) and not “will “ (prediction based on expertise).
Have you read this letter ? These people are going to be very difficult to negotiate with !
Watch out, that bottle is going to fall.
But she did not answer. It was only then that I saw that the child’s boots were not there, and that their coats were not hanging on the pegs. I realized that she had gone out with him, when even an odd girl like her ought to have known that you do not go outside in the middle of a blizzard
“Kid” is both informal and often negative. You speak of your “kids” when they annoy you, not when they might be dying in a snowstorm
“Pegs” or “coat stand” ; I was surprised by “coat rack” but Google images says it is fine. A “coat hanger” is a foot-ish long triangular thingy you put your coat or shirt on before hanging it in a wardrobe. “Special” is a false friend. If someone says “I think you are very special”, you have to understand something like “je tiens vraiment à toi”. You are more likely to reply “Will you marry me ?” than “I assure you I am quite normal”.
“Should have known” is fine, but why not show that you know how the most difficult semi modal works ?
No comments:
Post a Comment