Month: November 2017

Web Admin

Winner of the S. Edmund Berger announced

At the 58th ATA Conference held last month in Washington, D.C., Dr. Bruce Popp (pictured below) was awarded the S. Edmund Berger Prize for his translation of Henri Poincaré’s classic work Sur le problème des trois corps et les équations de dynamique, thus achieving one of his goals of making Poincaré’s classic accessible. Bruce himself gave us a glimpse into his process in a previous À Propos article here.

We are proud to have one of our very own FLD members receive the prestigious award and would like to congratulate Bruce on his hard work and success!


Photo by Lebzy Gonzalez

Save

Save

Web Admin

The French Historical Present Tense

ata-fld-newsletter-logo

by Bruce Popp

As professional French-into-English translators, we commonly encounter the French historical present tense in meeting minutes and reports of clinical cases written by doctors. In these documents, the writers use the present tense (and thereby avoid repeated use of the passé composé and imparfait) to describe events that occurred sometime earlier. To my mind this can seem like some kind of historical reenactment. “We are standing next to the village green in Lexington. On one side Capt. Parker is steadying his company of colonial militia and on the other the vanguard of the King’s Own 10th Regiment of Foot is marching into sight.”

Continue reading