L3 orals classes are starting up this week. I will be giving you the documents on paper, but beforehand, have a look at the first passage, from John Locke.
This booklet contains the first series of passages.
My Tuesday group is at 1.30pm in Amphi 4
My Wednesday group is at 11 am in T103
Bon courage pour les épreuves!
Il n'y aura donc pas de cours de thème le 31 janvier.
The original passage we are working from can be found here
http://www.jcmullen.fr/0923themelast.pdf
Obviously we are here in the presence very much of a
literary style, so formal words and latinate words are very welcome.
Again, it is handy to think of the time periods involved.
Mostly historical, but the paintings are still extant, so some present tenses
will be involved.
He was of unimpressive[1]
stature, and of reserved character, but
he caught people’s[2]
attention by his feverish silence, his dark excitement and his manners, which
were in turn arrogant and obtuse : baleful,[3]
some have said[4].
This is a most seductive identification, even it it turns out to be pure
fantasy : this pageboy is a type and not a specific portrait :
Tiepolo took him from Veronese, not among his little assistants ; it is a
pageboy, it is the pageboy, it is nobody.
A no less dubious tradition has him appear 40 years later[8]
, once more perched high up, on the windows shaken by the wind, among those who
witness the Tennis Court Oath in the sketch made of it by David : here, he
is the ageless silhouette showing to some small children the uplifting, stormy
sight of five hundred and sixty raised hands.
[1] Average is too neutral
[2] Impossible to say « the ». Attention is a
personal attribute like an arm. Also « one’s is not good here, because we
are not speaking of a single unidentified individual.
[3] Surly ¿ menacing, sinister
BALEFUL
| English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org ›
...
threatening
to do something bad or to hurt someone: He gave me a
baleful look. his baleful influence.
[4] Someone tried “as mentioned above » This is not the
meaning.
[5] « Later on » is too informal.
[6] This wedding took place on 9 June 1156.
[7] This is what it is called in English, although some have
commented that it was « neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire ».
[8] Tiepolo’s painting dates from 1753, the Tennis Court Oath
was in 1789, David’s sketch was produced in 1792
I have received work on the following subjects. If your work is not here, I will have mislaid it on my hard drive somewhere , so please send me an email.
1.
Women's Voice Magazine’s Analysis of Revolutionary Women’s Battles in 1975.
2.
The Notting Hill Carnival and the
First London Pride Parades of the 1970s.
3.
LGBT+ Bashing Reports in Gay
News (1972-1983)
4.
The Topic of Equal Rights at Work
in the Magazine Spare Rib in the 1970s
5.
The Influence of Motorsports
and Mclaren on Social Changes in The 1970s
6.
Teenagers and Sex Education: Controversial
Perspectives in Britain of the 1960s and 70s.
7.
The Representation of Female
Characters in Doctor Who (1970-1975).
8.
The Representation of Women in Yardley
Of London’s Adverts during the 1970s.
9.
The Impact of Reggae Music on British
Society.
10.
Doctor Who Fanzines in the 1970s.
11.
Glam Rock,
Sexuality and Gender in the British Music Show Top Of The Pops
12.
Bolan, Bowie,
and Representation in 1970s Glam Rock in the Music Magazine Sounds
13. Miss World 1970 in the Film Misbehaviour and the Women’s Liberation Movement Protest in the UK Press of 1970.
- The Guardian coverage of the UK in the EEC in 1973 and 1975
14.
Queen, Their
Music and Their Connection to British Youth During the 1970s in the UK.
15. Vegetarianism in The Ecologist magazine (1970 - 1979)
- ABBA s Impact in the UK in the 1970s
- - The Female Body and Sexuality in Spare Rib
-
Just a reminder as to where you can find the collection of passages we are translating.
Tomorrow we will be looking at the extract from Les Onze.
(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
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...
