Books, French, Language Acquisition, Podcasts, Recommendations

New Words #12: Caffeine Complications

I spent my junior year of college living with a host family in Paris, and Madame and I didn’t always understand each other.

Our frequent bouts of mutual confusion were based less in language—my French was reasonably solid when I arrived—than in cultural differences. She couldn’t fathom why I liked Seinfeld; she’d watched a couple of episodes, and the jokes made no sense. (In fairness, providing French subtitles for a show that made up words on a regular basis had to have been a thankless task.) And she didn’t know what the big deal was about American pizza; that place down the street was awful! (I had to explain to her that I had never set foot in a Domino’s on either side of the Atlantic but was quite certain it wasn’t what I, a New Yorker, would call pizza.)

But my favorite of our misunderstandings had to do with a request on my grocery list: decaffeinated tea. Our conversation went something like this:

– Laura! I do not understand this! What in the world is thé décaféiné?

– Well, tea—regular black tea—but without any caffeine in it.

– That makes no sense. Who would put caffeine in tea?

– Nobody. It’s just there. Unless it’s taken out.

– How does it get in there?!

– Nature? I . . . I wasn’t exactly a great chemistry student, Madame.

– Caffeine in tea! Who ever heard of such a thing? Oh, wait a minute. Do you want thé déthéiné?

– Tea without any “tea-ine” in it?

– Precisely!

– “Tea-ine” is a thing?

– But of course!

If we were having this conversation today, I’d be able to whip out my iPhone, google “thé décaféiné” and “thé déthéiné,” determine that they meant the same thing (but that the former gets, ahem, far more hits than the latter), and move on with things. But it was the late ’90s, and my host family had no computer at home, so we had to resort to the Larousse dictionary, where I discovered that théine is indeed a word . . . for a chemical compound “identical to caffeine.”

In my mind, while the word caffeine clearly shared similar origins with the word coffee, the two were separate entities; for Madame, la caféine was obviously (and exclusively) a component of le café. From her perspective, I was suggesting that tea could be decoffeed—a concept as preposterous to her as the supremacy of Domino’s pizza.

Eighteenth-century portrait of a woman seated beside a small table with a teapot. She is holding a cup and saucer.
Nicolas Henri Joseph de Fassin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Self-Promotion Corner

Now through Tuesday, May 23, Frayed Edge Press is offering a special discount on all its translated titles—including my translation of Prosper Mérimée’s Songs for the Gusle—when you use the code ReadTheWorld at checkout. This promotion is part of the American Literary Translators Association’s online bookfair; look for #ReadTheWorld on social media to find offers on works in translation from a variety of publishers.

I have new work in the latest issues of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (a poem by Adela Zamudio, translated from Spanish; print edition only) and Volume Poetry (a poem by Alice de Chambrier, translated from French; available online here). Take a look!

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure.

Julie Otsuka’s most recent novel, The Swimmers, starts as a meditative reflection on collective identity and morphs into a poignant exploration of memory loss. I’m calling it a novel because that’s the word on the cover; to my mind, however, this book might be better enjoyed if the reader approaches it as a pair of novellas linked by a particular character’s presence in both narratives.

The Prestige TV Podcast has featured conversations with Bill Hader about the first few episodes of Barry’s final season. Hader offers fascinating insights into the collaborative processes that go into the creation of great television, discussing late changes to storylines and crediting some of the most indelible moments in the series to the joint efforts of various writers and crew members. These glimpses behind the scenes are especially meaningful in light of the ongoing Writers Guild strike, during which Hader is postponing press interviews.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Left: A tuxedo cat sits in front of a pink floral decorative pillow. He rests his front paws on a brown blanket and looks soulfully into the camera. Right: A dilute tortoiseshell cat sits on a white couch, leaning against a black decorative pillow and crossing one front paw over the other while looking directly into the camera.
David and Alexis seem to be under the impression that they are being photographed for their modeling portfolios. It’s just me with my phone, you goofballs!

I hope you’re enjoying your caffeinated/teainated beverages of choice. See you back here soon.

Laura

Articles, Books, Events, French, Language Acquisition, Literary Translation, Recommendations, Spanish, Translation

New Words #11: Greetings, Dear Lady!

It’s happening again. I’m getting LinkedIn messages from total strangers that open with phrases like “Hey, dear Nagle!” and “Greetings, dear lady!”

These greetings are jarring, especially in the context of a cold business contact, but it’s easy enough to imagine how they developed. If you’ve been taught that it is polite to use dear when opening a letter in English but also that Dear Ms. Nagle is too formal for online messages, you might attempt to strike a happy medium by doing a mash-up of formal and informal terms. And if it’s acceptable to address a crowd as “ladies and gentlemen,” then it must be polite to address an individual woman as “lady,” right? Well, not exactly.

Figuring out the unwritten rules of polite conversation in another language or culture is never a straightforward matter. I’ll never forget my first intermediate Spanish class in Santander, Spain, when the instructor winced as soon as we students greeted her. We’d all been taught to use usted when addressing a teacher, but we’d traveled to a place where is appropriate in an educational setting. Our attempt at signaling respect made us sound impolite; our choice of words was holding our instructor at a distance when she was trying to be approachable.

But even among proficient speakers of the same language, regional usage varies; some speakers of English think ma’am is an appropriate way for children to address adult women in general, while others think ma’am is a euphemism for old lady. (There’s that word lady again, with its array of connotations!)

There’s a reason why William Alexander’s hilarious flowchart of reasons to use tu and vous in French (“Are you speaking to a child? Is the child like a prince or something?”) has been passed around the internet for almost a decade now. Whether or not the specifics of French address are of particular concern, we can all relate to the angst of trying to be polite but instead causing offense.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure.

The Invisible Art of Literary Editing is a new handbook that focuses on what authors Bryan Furuness and Sarah Layden call “the excellence phase” of editorial work at literary magazines and small presses, from reading and acquisitions to developmental and line editing. Drawing upon a wealth of experience on both sides of the editorial relationship, the authors emphasize the importance of timely communication (“As writers, Sarah and Bryan have submitted stories to magazines that have taken over a year to respond. ‘Timely’ is a fuzzy term, but not that damn fuzzy”) and provide examples of production timelines and positive editor-author communications for the benefit of new and aspiring editors.

I also have a couple of recommendations this month for literary translators and the literary translation-curious. First, check out Jeremy Tiang’s recent article for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop on translators’ (in)visibility. And please consider joining the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) on May 23 for Write the World, a day of live online panels on literary translators’ role in the publishing industry. Registration is just $15, and if you can’t make it to the live events, not to worry—recordings will be available.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats, doing their funny sits.

A dilute tortie cat sits on a black pillow with both front paws in front of her body and one hind paw stacked on top of them.
Alexis has opinions about the proper way to stack one’s paws.
A tuxedo cat sits with his hind legs tucked under his body on top of a cabinet and his front legs extended onto the arm of a chair beside the cabinet.
David is a big proponent of multilevel seating.

See you back here soon!

Laura

Books, French, Irish, Language Acquisition, Recommendations, Spanish, Translation

New Words #7: If and/or When

I will make dinner when I get home from work. A pretty straightforward sentence, right? Sure. But let’s take a closer look.

·      When does the dinner-making part happen? In the future, obviously. That’s why it says “will make.”

·      When does the getting-home-from-work part happen? Also in the future, duh. It’s right there in the sentence: when I get . . . Wait, that’s the present tense!

If English is your primary language, you say things like this all the time without thinking anything of it. We use the present tense in when clauses regardless of whether the action takes place habitually or is a predicted future event. This gets weirder the more you think about it: I will make dinner when I get home from work is a sentence in which a person plans to return home on one future occasion, while I make dinner when I get home from work is a sentence about a person returning home on a regular (perhaps daily!) basis, even though the phrase when I get home from work is identical in both instances. That is objectively wild.

Many other languages of western Europe handle this scenario differently. In French and Irish, for example, the future tense would be used in both clauses, given that both actions are expected to occur in the future. (How logical!) Personally, though, I have a soft spot for the way Spanish speakers approach this type of sentence: with the “making dinner” clause in the future tense and the “getting home” clause in the present subjunctive—the mood that suggests an action is possible or hoped for rather than certain. I find beauty in that grammatical feature of Spanish, with its suggestion that the future is fundamentally unknowable.

For learners, these small distinctions can lead to misunderstandings—of greater or lesser severity, depending on the languages involved. For example, if a learner of English applies French-language logic and says something like “I will make dinner when I will get home from work,” that’s not too big a deal; English speakers will find that sentence a bit awkward but perfectly comprehensible. However, if a learner of French applies English-language logic and uses the present tense in that same scenario, it will sound to French speakers as though the when clause refers not to a one-time future event but to something that happens regularly: “I will make dinner [on one future occasion] when I get home from work [every day].” It just doesn’t add up; one part of this sentence or the other requires clarification.

Even in the absence of linguistic interference, speakers of the same language can disagree about the exact meanings and implications of statements about future events. Many English speakers today consider shall and will interchangeable in terms of their meaning, with the former merely sounding more formal or old-fashioned. But in legal drafting, the debate over the use of shall and/or will to create an obligation in a contract, rather than to predict future events, is an ongoing headache, despite efforts by plain-language advocates to circumvent the issue and encourage the use of must in their place. In my experience as a certified translator working primarily with legal documents, understanding French or Spanish legalese is never the most challenging part of a contract translation. It’s the ambiguity of verbs in English—my primary language and the one I translate into—that causes me the most consternation.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure. This time around: two recent reads I greatly enjoyed.

In Brandon Taylor’s first story collection, Filthy Animals, characters struggle to reconcile their fears and vulnerabilities with their desire for intimacy. Taylor’s prose is riveting, and I was intrigued by the collection’s structure: a series of linked stories taking place over a two-day period, interspersed with individual stories about unrelated characters. I imagine this collection could have been presented as a novella accompanied by other stories, but the decision to treat each of the linked stories as a stand-alone narrative has significant implications for the reading experience.

Lauren Willig’s novel Band of Sisters follows a group of recent Smith College alumnae on a volunteer mission to a devastated region of rural France in 1917. Among them are Emmie, an heiress determined to step out of her socialite mother’s shadow, and her onetime roommate Kate, a scholarship girl turned schoolteacher who dreads being patronized or pitied by her wealthier classmates. Loosely based on the real-life Smith College Relief Unit, Band of Sisters is a lively and inspiring portrait of young women taking control of their lives amid extraordinary circumstances.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Top: a tuxedo cat lying on his belly on an open white looseleaf binder, with his head turned to face the camera, yawning dramatically. Bottom: a dilute tortoiseshell cat curled up on a cat tree beside a window, looking up at the camera, in the middle of a yawn with one eye slightly open.
A yawn, if done properly, looks an awful lot like a scream into the void.

Out next month from Frayed Edge Press: Songs for the Gusle, my translation of Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, La Guzla! I’ll be in touch when I have pre-order information. Or when I will have pre-order information. Or when I hypothetically have pre-order information. Never mind, you get the idea.

Laura

Dialogue, French, Links, Recommendations, Translation, Writing

New Words #6: Merci beaucoup, y’all

For nearly thirty years, I’ve been fascinated by a man I never met. He was the uncle of my supervisor at the after-school retail job I had my senior year of high school, and the following is everything I know about him.

1. He was a middle-aged man from Texas.

2. Sometime in the mid-nineties, he took his wife to Paris for their anniversary.

3. Throughout their ten-day stay, each time they left a shop or restaurant, he’d tip his cowboy hat and address the establishment’s (presumably horrified) employees in his very best French-adjacent drawl: “MARE SEE BOW COO, Y’ALL.”

This story pops into my head at random intervals because, well, the mental image delights me. But it has some practical applications as well. Back when I was a middle and high school teacher, the tale came in handy when perfectionistic students needed a distraction from their own perceived flaws. (“The French r sound is tough for English speakers to learn, but you’ll get there sooner than you think. Besides, you’re already doing way better than the ‘merci beaucoup, y’all’ guy, and he made it home from France in one piece.”)

More recently, I’ve been writing and translating fiction in which characters are either traveling far from home or returning from long journeys. As I work through the idiosyncrasies of their dialogue and body language, I keep noticing how their home language affects their speech patterns in an unfamiliar setting, and I’m reminded of my old supervisor’s uncle. Most of us are far more subtle about announcing our origins when we travel, but no matter how hard we might try to blend in, we can’t keep our past experiences and ingrained habits entirely hidden. When I write or translate about the ways in which habits picked up abroad carry over into a character’s daily life back home, I like to imagine that same gentleman, jet-lagged upon returning to Texas, greeting a gas station attendant or grocery store cashier in French. After all, it seems only fair that he would bring a little bit of his Parisian self home with him.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure. This time around, I’m highlighting a couple of Substacks of interest to avid readers and (especially) writers. Like mine, their posts and archives are free to read.

Each Sunday, I look forward to checking out Sarah Nicolas’s Virtual Bookish Eventsnewsletter, which lists upcoming online events—some free, some paid—that will appeal to readers and/or writers. It’s a great resource for everything from book launches and readings to classes and workshops for writers working in a variety of genres.

I’ve also been enjoying Kate Broad’s newsletter, Ask an Author, in which she answers questions about drafting, editing, and marketing novels. I particularly recommend her three-part series (starting here) about how to write quickly, deal with deadlines, and manage large writing projects.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Left: a dilute tortoiseshell cat looking off to the right, alert and bright-eyed. She’s pretty and she knows it. Right: a tuxedo cat looking off to the left, chin held high. He’s glad the artist has come at last to make his official portrait.
Alexis knows her best angles. David is certain he’s handsome from every angle.

Merci beaucoup for reading, y’all. See you back here soon.

Laura

Books, Dialogue, Fiction Writing, French, Language Acquisition, Recommendations, Translation, Writing

New Words #3: Bonjour monsieur !

Even if you’ve never taken a French class in your life, you know what “bonjour” and “monsieur” mean, so go ahead and translate “Bonjour monsieur.” I’ll just wait here.

Four new iPhones are displayed with the “hello” text in different languages: Korean, Portuguese, French, and Spanish.
Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash

Great. If you gave it a try, thank you for indulging me, but unfortunately there is one (and only one!) correct answer: “I’m not translating this until I get more context. GIVE ME MORE CONTEXT.”

You might want information as simple as the time of day. “Bonjour” means “hello,” but it also means “good morning” and “good afternoon” in many parts of the French-speaking world; you’ll want to keep those options in mind.

However, the speaker’s location and variety of French also matter. For example, “bon matin” is commonly used for “good morning” among French speakers in Canada and Louisiana; if the speaker has “bon matin” in their everyday vocabulary, you’ll probably rule out “good morning” as your best likely translation of “bonjour.”

Aside from all that, who is this “monsieur,” and in what context is he being addressed? A bilingual dictionary might suggest that the most common translation of “monsieur” is “Mr.,” but “Hello, mister,” is not a common way for English speakers to greet one another. “Sir” will work in many formal contexts, but it won’t account for all the circumstances in which a person might say “Bonjour monsieur,” and the variety of English into which you are translating may affect your choices as well. If the speaker is a teenage student saying hello to a teacher in the morning, what greeting will your target readership recognize as standard: “Good morning, sir,” “Good morning, Mr. So-and-So,” or something else?

But wait! Why are we saying “monsieur” at all? Is it because the gender of the person being addressed is important? Not necessarily. Many French speakers have a general aversion to one-word utterances, which can come across as abrupt or even rude. For example, if someone tells me that they are going on vacation next month, I might ask “Where?” in English, but in French I’d ask “Où ça?” rather than just “Où?” The “ça” doesn’t add anything significant in terms of meaning—“Où ça?” is akin to “Where’s that?” or “Whereabouts?”—but the inclusion of a second word has the effect of softening the question. The same principle applies to greetings; where an English speaker might just say one word, a French speaker is more likely to use a greeting and a name or designation of some kind (the equivalent of “Good morning, everyone,” or “Hello, friends,” for example). Maybe, then, all “Bonjour monsieur” really means is “Hello.” (Or “Good morning.” Or “Good afternoon.” You get the idea.)

Of course, all this is assuming that you intend to make the dialogue sound natural to the target reader—or that you’re a language teacher or learner aiming to communicate appropriately in a target language culture. It’s also possible that you’d prefer to preserve a hint of the source language in your translation so as to emphasize the specificity of the source text and/or its setting. This concept in translation theory—domestication vs. foreignization—is a topic for another time, but now that I’ve mentioned foreignization . . .

Noticing this type of conversational habit is useful not only for translators but also for writers of dialogue. Let’s say you’re writing a character whose first and strongest language is French and who acquired proficiency in English as an adult. You don’t want to lean on stereotypes and replace all their th sounds with the letter z (please don’t!), but the recent acquisition of a new language is an important aspect of this character’s experience, and you want it to be reflected in their conversation patterns. Looking at everyday phrases in the character’s two languages can give you insight into the kinds of conversational habits that a learner might transfer from one language to another—habits that a reader might not consciously recognize as French but that distinguish this character’s speech patterns from those of your other characters.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure.

Hilary Leichter’s 2020 debut novel, Temporary, is a brilliant satire in which regular employment (“the steadiness”) eludes the protagonist, who accepts a series of increasingly bizarre temporary work placements. How bizarre? When she’s posted to a pirate ship, she thinks the lingo will be easy enough to learn, but it turns out “Davy Jones’s locker” is where the pirates store their office supplies. The narrative of this fanciful and unexpectedly moving novel is as fragmented, disorienting, and ultimately rewarding as its protagonist’s career progression.

Words Against Strangers is a new daily game that challenges you to list as many words as possible in a given category (think “nouns that start with v” or “eight-letter words that include the letter n”). You’ll be racing against the clock (four rounds per day, each lasting one minute) but also against one random person who volunteered to play the quiz a few days in advance. I got to be the “stranger” for game #38, and it’s not too late to challenge me; you can go back and play the games you’ve missed.

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Two cats are lying on a purple and gray blanket beside a green decorative pillow. The tuxedo cat is licking his dilute tortie sister’s face. She looks like she’s smiling.
Adopting a bonded pair might be the smartest decision I’ve ever made.

See you back here soon!

Laura