Je vais passer pour un vieux con, #1

Je vais passer pour un vieux con by Philippe Delerm is not only a fascinating and entertaining read for anyone interested in French and the French; it is also a source of understanding and insights for from-French translators confronted by any of the 42 petites phrases toutes faites that he analyses.

The phrases are:

1.      Je vais passer pour un vieux con

2.      Vous n'avez aucun nouveau message

3.      La maison n'accepte plus les chèques

4.      C'est moi !

5.      Tout d'abord, bonjour !

6.      J'ai habité trois ans rue Commines !

7.      Et puis je vais vous faire une confidence

8.      Comment il l'a cassé !

9.      Quand on est dedans, elle est bonne

10.   Les mots sont dérisoires

11.   J'en parle dans le livre

12.   Nous vous invitons à vous rapprocher

13.   C'est du triplex !

14.   C'est presque de mauvais goût

15.   J'étais pas né

16.   Alleeez

17.   Je garde mon maître

18.   C'est à voir

19.   J'ai fait cinq ans de piano

20.   Joli chapeau madame

21.   Sinon, moi je peux vous emmener

22.   On ne vous voit pas assez souvent !

23.   Et là, c'en était pas une ?

24.   Je préfère Le Havre à Rouen

25.   C'est peut-être mieux comme ça

26.   C'est très bien fait

27.   Oh, lui, rien de l'inquiète !

28.   Ça passe trop tard

29.   Il y a longtemps que vous attendez ?

30.   À l'aile, bon dieu !

31.   Et ce soir ?

32.   Attention, l'assiette est très chaude !

33.   Ils l'avaient dit

34.   Je vais relire Proust

35.   Mets ta cagoule !

36.   On n'est pas obligé de tout boire !

37.   Vous n'aimez pas l'accordéon

38.   Je vais chez Mentec

39.   C'est vraiment par gourmandise

40.   Il n'y a que moi qui passe chez moi !

41.   On va laisser descendre les gens

42.   Je ne m'en servirai plus, maintenant

What's behind the expression?

As the astoundingly prolific Andrew Morris said on his blog a few hours ago, "... I must say I do like a translator who has a keen mastery of everyday speech".
I couldn't agree more.
And, indeed, had already planned on precisely this topic this morning.
The trouble is that translators specialising in technical documents or even technical journalism, don't got too many opportunities to translate everyday speech.
The exceptions include interviews and quotations that pop up in editorials, letters from the C-suite and so forth.
Everyday speech -- indeed anything containing what the French call petites phrases toutes faites, or little phrases and expressions that say a lot -- often present more challenges than many suspect.

I've been reading Philippe Delerm's Je vais passer pour un vieux con.
... see next post.

UCAV era

On 30 October 2014, IHS Jane's 360 posted a video entitled The UCAV Era presenting an interview with Derrick Maple, Principal Analyst, IHS Aerospace, Defence and Security.

Interesting overview of terms and acronyms.
Also interesting to note the way many acronyms are mixed and matched without significant concern for harmonisation or consistency. Perhaps technical journalists and their translators sometimes expend too much energy trying to harmonise their usage and impose consistency...

New words, English 3.0, hyperbole and more

The title may be a little lame, but the links are worth exploring:

• Learning new words activates the same brain regions as sex and drugs
  Quote: "No wonder there are so many bookworms and scrabble addicts out there."
  Comment: So this is what keeps translators going hour after hour.
• The internet is actually making language better, not worse.
  Quote: "English 3.0 reveals that every time there's a technological innovation, 'it expands the expressive richness of the language in a way that wasn’t there before.' "
  Comment: Agree entirely.
• It pays to keep up with the arms race of exaggeration by Sam Leith.
  Quotes: "It is not that anyone believes the hyperbole – it is simply that in an arms race of exaggeration, you cannot afford to fall behind." "Hyperbole is the baseline."
  Comment 1: This sensation (one cannot afford to fall behind) corresponds precisely to what I feel when tempted to add an adjective or adverb in certain contexts. It amounts, I suppose, to a form of peer pressure.
  Comment 2: The baseline that Sam Leith refers to may also explain another sensation that I often experience when drafting translations of technical journalism. I refer to what might be called baseline rhythms and patterns. Regular readers of, say, defence journalism get used to a certain sprinkling and density of adjectives and adverbs.
  I'll have to come back to this. It's a bigger topic that one might assume at first glance.

Euronaval note: Of UAVs, UASs, RPAs, RPASs, drones and more

At Euronaval 2014, manufacturers, journalists, translators and others may have noticed a confusing plethora of terms for various types of unmanned aerial vehicle systems.

• The British and European perspective on the topic is explained in some detail on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVS) site.
• The FAS (Federation of American Scientists) site has a long list of links on UAVs and UASs here.
• The UAVS library page has a list of useful links.
• The UAVS page entitled UAV/RPA or UAS/RPAS? provides much useful information, though some of it may be a little dated.
• The position of US-based manufacturer General Atomics is explained in a Guardian article dated 17 December 2013 that begins:

General Atomics tells MPs the term drone is pejorative and the aircraft have a 'proven beneficial role in humanitarian crises'.

          Further on, it says:

General Atomics' submission, which is riddled with defence industry acronyms and euphemisms, says it prefers the term remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) to the word drone.

• The General Atomics site on UASs and RPAs is here.

• The UAVS page on unmanned aerial vehicle explains:

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems are one and the same thing but come in many different shapes and sizes. Most have been designed for specific roles and applications but almost all of them can be reconfigured just through a payload interchange to perform a variety of other tasks.

Variability:

• unmanned or remotely-piloted (or remotely piloted)?
• remotely-piloted or remotely-operated (cf. ROV)?
• aerial or air?
• vehicle (as in UAV), system (as in UAS) or vehicle system (cf. UAVS)?

Euronaval observations:

• the distinction between unmanned and remotely-piloted appears to be increasingly important
• unamnned appears to be losing ground to the clearer and more precise (also gender neutral) remotely-piloted 
• uncrewed does not appear to be used at all in defence circles. Nasa mentions 'uncrewed aerial systems' here. (Google hit counts for 'uncrewed aerial systems' vs 'unmanned aerial systems' was, as of 04/11/2014: 80k vs 362k)
• of the terms using unmanned, UAS appears to have overtaken UAV
• in English drone and autonomous have acquired negative connotations when used in connection with armed unmanned vehicles
• in French, drone remains very popular indeed and free of negative connotations. It is also more generic than any corresponding term in English.

Preferred equivalent

Save where earlier documents dictate which designation(s) should be used in a given translation, a short history of my preferred equivalents for drone aérien télé-opéré and the like reads as follows:

• until 2013: UAV
• 2014: UAS
• henceforth and until further notice: RPAS.

Euronaval notes, #2

Noted:

• 'unmanned' is everywhere... but how long before 'uncrewed' starts to enjoy wider use? (Or am I 'unscrewed'?) Nasa mentions 'uncrewed aerial systems' here. (Google hit counts for 'uncrewed aerial systems' vs 'unmanned aerial systems' was, as of 04/11/2014: 80k vs 362k)
• Jane's (e.g. IHS Jane's 360) is probably the only English-mother-tongue military publication to use 'antennae' as the plural form of 'antenna'. See 'radar antennae' and 'UHF SATCOM antennae' here
• Google ngram for UAV, UAS, PRCA from 1960 to 2014 here (but the acronyms may have non-military uses...)
• significant improvement in English-language documents and translations displayed by Nexter (compare French-language site and English equivalent), 

Euronaval note: Guerre des mines vs MCM

Wikipédia defines guerre des mines as follows:

En combat naval, la guerre des mines désigne toutes les opérations et tactiques relatives aux mines sous marines : le mouillage de mines, la lutte contre les mines (dragage et chasse aux mines), et les contre-mesures préventives.

The FAS (Federation of American Scientists) site has an article on mine warfare here.

Some observation made at Euronaval 2014:

• [First, an aside: No stands that I noticed boasted anyone's capabilities in mine technology. Only bad guys use mines. The good guy's job is confined strictly to mine countermeasures and the like.] 
• Most French-language journalists specialising in defence do not use guerre des mines in the sense given above. Oddly, given the way that they skirt around mines and mine laying, most use guerre des mines to mean lutte anti-mines.
  See, for example: Guerre des mines : les systèmes de drones font leurs preuves,
  Guerre des mines : Atlas Elektronik et iXBlue dans le consortium EURO-MCM
• In such cases the best equivalents are 'mine countermeasures', 'mine countermeasures (MCM)', anti-mine warfare, or just MCM, depending on the context.
• Non-specialist French-language journalists are more likely to use guerre des mines as defined by Wikipédia in which case the best equivalent is 'mine warfare'.

Conclusion for translators and translation buyers: It pays to specialise and it pays to pay attention at trade shows.