French sucked today. Today we broke the American-taught French tradition of "Just use 'est-ce que' for all questions" and struggled through inversion, quel, lequel, and all the other fun interrogative pronouns and adjectives. It was awful, but at least it was awful for everyone. The real highlight (lowlight?) was out in class translation of Pierre Marcherey's "Les Philosophes Francais de l'apres guerre face a la politique: de marleau-Ponty et de Kojeve."
It was the double handling of 1) I'm not in hist con/lit/philosophy and haven't read everyone referenced and the genealogy of their works, 2) Reading French off a page outloud and then translating is really flipping hard, and 3) my spoken French sucks. Kungfu will probably generously beg to differ, but it's really quite painful. Speed by laisons like Nick Holgan in Miami, I still confuse "un and une" with "un and una" (and "il and elle" with "el and la"), and successfully pronounced all French philosophers to be female.
I'm sure anyone who has tried to translate out loud, in front of a class in a language they aren't really all that comfortable will be familiar with this next issue: When I read to myself at home, I can see the phrases and the way the words fit together. I talk through it to myself and I recognize the formation. But when you're reading out loud, and you're nervous, you begin to focus visually on each individual word as if it were both and anchor to and a portal into the language you are in the process of butchering. The higher the nervousness, the higher the tendency to focus word by word, until you've lost all sense of context, phrasing, and even understanding of basics such as "dont" and "danc". As the nervousness picks up you then lose the differentiation between articles and pronouns and you begin to wish you had taken that shot (or two or three) of whiskey at the break so at least you'd have something to blame.
The prof described me as fighting, with all my might, the current of translation.
Well, back to the fray...
I generously beg to differ.
ReplyDeleteOy. That sounds like hell.
ReplyDeleteAnd I definitely understand the pressure of translating in front of everyone. I almost cried.
Keep fighting, soldier! You're probably doing a hell of a lot better than you think.
Oh, I do understand--not the French bits, but the translating in front of people part. I also find it particularly difficult when you're in class, reading something in a new language, and then your expected to explain it, defining words etc, using the new language. Gives me shivers.
ReplyDelete