“You either have it or you don’t.” That’s what a lot of language professionals think about our profession. It’s what I thought when I was a university student studying abroad in France and I would listen to other American students speaking French, trying to determine if I was as good as they were. Ten years later, I decided for myself that I had a gift for languages—without anyone ever telling me so—and I decided to give freelance translation a try while living in Quebec City, Canada. It was only recently when I obtained the title of Certified Translator from the Corporation of Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters of New Brunswick (CTINB), however, that I felt that my opinion of myself was justified. While the road to certification was a bumpy one for me, it has turned out to be a positive and fulfilling experience that I would recommend to all translators, regardless of where you live.

First, let me give you some background information. Not having studied translation formally in school, when I first started out I didn’t realize that Canada had its own roster of translators associations, or that certification was even an option. After speaking with an acquaintance in the US who had told me that I needed to be certified in order to work for the company where he worked, I joined ATA and decided to start by completing a mentorship with an experienced translator. At the beginning of our mentorship, my mentor told me how she had failed the ATA certification exam twice before passing on her third try. Since I looked up to her and valued her advice, I figured that getting certified was essential in order to make it as a translator, and I decided to go for it on my next trip to the States. Unfortunately, after eventually failing twice myself, I decided that I would wait until trying again, thinking that I needed more experience and practice.

At the same time, since I didn’t know how long my husband and I would be living in Canada, I debated whether an American or Canadian certification would bring me the most benefit. I eventually heard about Quebec’s professional association, the Ordre des traducteurs terminologues et interprètes agréés du Québec (OTTIAQ), and started looking into their certification process. I learned that, in Canada, the titled of Certified Translator is granted by each province’s regulatory body, the Canadian Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council (CTTIC), and that each province’s translators association has its own certification process. I was happy to find out that OTTIAQ offers a few different paths to certification, all of which take into account one’s educational background and professional experience and don’t necessarily involve an exam (more on that later). Given my specific experience, the only other criteria I had to fulfill before submitting my application for review was obtaining at least 5 years of experience.

Just before reaching the 5-year mark, my husband accepted a job offer in Saint John, New Brunswick, and more options became apparent to me after looking into New Brunswick’s certification process. Now, I not only had the option of taking an exam or having my qualifications reviewed, but I could also get certified by way of a mentorship. Given my experience with the ATA exam and the uncertainty of meeting the requirements for a “certification on dossier,” I opted for the mentorship in the hopes that my work would speak for itself, in the end.

I should note that, while ATA certification boosts your credibility in the United States, it is not required by all government agencies and, in some cases, a foreign certification will do. In Canada, however, certification is often required by the Translation Bureau in order to translate official documents for the government. And in New Brunswick—the only officially bilingual province in Canada—certification is mandatory. All the more reason for me to be certified.

Over the next 6 months, I submitted more than the minimum of 30,000 words to my mentor for her review and feedback. While my first few translations came back with a slew of comments (turns out I did need more practice), little by little I started seeing fewer and fewer revisions and, by the end of the mentorship, more than one document came back to me with no revisions at all. Although my mentor told me from the beginning that her aim was for me to go from a “very good translator to an excellent one,” I didn’t start to feel worthy of receiving the title of Certified Translator until she told me a few months into the mentorship that she was definitely going to recommend me for certification.

The big news came a few weeks after the end of the mentorship when I received word from the president of the CTINB that my mentor’s recommendation had been approved by the board and I was officially a certified French-to-English translator. Hooray! It was about time.

Looking forward, I hope to take advantage of the reciprocity agreement between the CTINB and Quebec’s association to have my certification recognized by OTTIAQ, as well as benefit from the liability insurance that the Order offers. As with ATA, there are many benefits to being a member of other translators associations; you just have to pick and choose which ones are most beneficial to you.

And who knows: maybe ATA’s new computerized exam will prove to be another way for me and many other translators to demonstrate our skills, in the conditions in which we feel most comfortable. It’s what I’m hoping for, at least!

Natalie Pavey is a French to English translator who specializes in French to English translation services in the fields of sustainable development, business communications and marketing.

Registration Now Open:

French Language Division Dinner for the ATA’s Conference in San Francisco

SOLD OUT!

Please feel free to organize informal lunches and dinners with your French colleagues.

Meet up with friends and colleagues for the annual FLD dinner on: Friday, November 4, 2016, at 7:00 pm

LOCATION
Café Bastille
22 Belden Place, San Francisco.
0.6 miles from the conference hotel, a 15-minute walk.
Tel: (415) 986-5673

Cafe Bastille

PAYMENT AND RESERVATIONS
Space is limited and this event is expected to sell out! Advance payment required. Cost is $52.25 per person, including tax and gratuity.
> Please note that no beverages are included and are to be purchased on a cash basis only.

To reserve a spot, [SOLD OUT] No reservations accepted after Wednesday, October 26, or after the event is full. No refunds.

=======

MENU (selections to be made the night of the event)

First Course, choice of:
French Onion Soup or
Mixed Baby Lettuce Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette

Second Course, choice of:
Beef Bourguignon or
Coq au Vin or
Mushroom Fettucini (Vegetarian) or
Moules Mariniere or Normande (Mussels in white wine or cream)

Third Course, choice of:
Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake or
Raspberry Pistachio Cake

++ If you have special dietary needs that are not accommodated in the menu above, please contact us at divisionfld@atanet.org immediately after making your reservation on PayPal so that we may make arrangements.

QUESTIONS?
Contact divisionfld@atanet.org

Welcome to the 7th episode of the French Language Division’s Continuing Education Series. In today’s episode, FLD Administrator Eve Bodeux and FLD Assistant Administrator Jenn Mercer join Angela Benoit for the Summer 2016 State of the Division episode. Get the latest on all things FLD, including a sneak preview of what your Division is planning for the upcoming 57th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association, in San Francisco, that will take place from November 2 – 5, 2016. (Follow the conference on Twitter with the hashtag #ata57.)

SOUNDCLOUD: You may access Episode 7 and other podcast episodes on SoundCloud here. On SoundCloud, you can listen to the episode in your browser or download a copy of this episode directly to your computer.

ITUNES: This episode and the entire podcast series are also available on iTunes here. On iTunes, you can subscribe or listen online.

FRENCH VOICES AWARDS
The French Voices Awards rewards both American translators and publishers for translations of works that have been published in France in the last 6 years. Recipients are selected by an independent literary committee. Each book receives a $6,000 award, shared between the American publisher ($4,000) and the translator ($2,000), ($5,000 and $1,000 respectively in the case of a comic book or picture book). Each year, the committee also elects a Grand Prize Winner, who receives $10,000 in total: $6,000 to cover the foreword fee and the publishing costs, and a $4,000 non-negotiable bonus to the translator ($7,000 and $3,000 respectively in case of a comic book or picture book). A book tour will also be offered to the French author after his work is published in the US.

HEMINGWAY GRANTS
Hemingway Grants allow publishers to receive financial help for the translation and publication of a French work into English. Grant beneficiaries are selected by the Book Department of the French Embassy in the United States. Grants awarded for each work range from $500 to $3,000.

ACQUISITION OF RIGHTS GRANTS
The Institut Français helps American publishers offset the cost of acquiring the rights to French works. Grant beneficiaries are selected by the Institut Français in Paris. The amount awarded cannot exceed the amount of the advance paid to the French publisher for the acquisition of rights and varies from €500 to €7,000.

Publishing Grants and Prizes from the French Embassy Website

PEN/HEIM Translation Fund Grants for literary translations

[Update: Registration is now open! Click here to join us.]

The American Translators Association will be hosting its 57th annual conference for translators, interpreters, and agencies from November 2 through November 5, 2016 in San Francisco, California. Join colleagues in several days of learning, networking, and other business opportunities. Registration opens soon!

To learn more about the conference, click here.

Accommodation information is available here.

You can also follow the fun on Facebook or Twitter using the conference’s special hashtag, #ata57.

Delphine de Vigan’s Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit (Nothing Holds Back The Night) begins with its heartbreaking end: the suicide of her mother, Lucile. With suspense set aside, de Vigan instead sets to the task of “writing her mother” by uncovering and unraveling her life in a story that is part memoir and part novel.

Lucile was one of nine children in a chaotic, spirited but close-knit family. By the age of seven, she was working as a fashion model, which garnered her attention from those within her immediate circle as well as those who recognized her from her posters throughout Paris. Doted on by so many, she claims to have “paid the price for her beauty.” Though, even as she laments the attention, she is acutely aware that her changing body prevents her from continuing the work and she must stand aside while her younger sisters take her place. As she navigates her youth and adolescence, her family suffers more than its share of tragedy, the impact of which stays with Lucile as she emerges into adulthood. As she steadily grows older, her mental state also becomes increasingly unstable with frequent episodes of mania, depression, and delusion, setting the uneven rhythm for the rest of her life. Her tenuous grasp on reality, of course, also punctuates the lives of her two daughters, who survive her mother’s vacillations, but not unscathed.

While telling of the story of her mother, de Vigan interweaves her own journey to discover her and reach her in some way that she perhaps couldn’t as a child. She culls through letters and notes written by Lucile at various points in her life and during varying degrees of lucidity; a documentary video of the family recorded by a local TV station; nearly 50 hours of audio recordings from her grandfather; and interviews with as many members of her family as are willing to participate. The second half of the book shifts in tone and in speaker as de Vigan explores her own memories and intertwines them with everyone else’s allowing the reader to become a witness to a private exploration of suffering. She is aware that telling her mother’s story is a flawed and beautifully imperfect undertaking and she seems to prefer it that way. It is, after all, not unlike her mother.

Catherine Savino

Catherine Savino is a FR-EN translator, project manager, and writer originally from Detroit and currently living in sunny San Diego.

La Nuit Sacrée, by Tahar Ben Jelloun, is not for the faint of heart. The story begins, “Ce qui importe c’est la vérité,” and the author maintains this principle from beginning to end. Drawing from his experience as a professor of philosophy, the Moroccan writer takes a direct look at the issue of gender inequality from all directions. Naturally, themes of violence, jealousy, love, and hate surface quickly.

Although this is a sequel to his first major success, L’Enfant de Sable, La Nuit Sacrée can be enjoyed on its own. How could you not be drawn into a novel whose premise is a woman’s struggle with her identity after her father, who raised her as a male, dies? Particularly in a country where only men could inherit a family’s wealth, the difficulties are overwhelming and numerous.

In this case, our protagonist (formerly known as Ahmed) leaves home. She never really receives a new name, which forces you to consider the character as simply a person, rather than belonging to a particular gender camp. Although she refers to herself as a woman, she is unlike any of the women around her. She struggles with the various types of captivity femaleness brings, after what could only be described as a childhood of imprisonment within a lie. Ben Jelloun does not flinch from this conundrum, and the protagonist seems to emerge from everything stronger than your average person.

Dream-like situations and dream scenes recur often, building the emotional environment brilliantly. After such a bouleversement of one’s identity, anyone would feel as if they were in a dream (or nightmare). Scenes from reality interrupt introspection with petty fights, jealousy, and acts of senseless violence, adding to the sense of ungrounded confusion. Sometimes the real violence is so severe as to be unreal. But the protagonist embraces every experience as something previously out of her reach, saying, “Je n’avais pas envie de fuir, ni meme de résister… Je n’étais pas indifférente. J’étais curieuse.”

For all the darkness and chaos, La Nuit Sacrée is a compelling and magical tale. Everyone can relate to the struggles in some way—for who has never had an identity crisis? As you read through the harsh realities, you are pulled along, forced to practice a difficult characteristic: courage. By the last page, you will feel as if you’ve accomplished something important. You will have persevered alongside the protagonist. You will have prevailed.

Carolyn Yohn

Carolyn Yohn translates French and Hungarian legal and academic texts into English from her office in Northern California.

Have you ever had a lover?  Have you ever been a lover?  Or, perhaps a better question, is there someone who is the love(r) of your life?  Have you ever lived or dreamed a love so beautiful, so real, that it could not have possibly existed?  Are you haunted by memories of what was or what could have been?   Some nights, maybe only in your dreams, does that become your reality?  Do you wonder what love really is?  What it looks like?  How it smells?  How it feels?  Reading L’Amant (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras brings up these questions and more.  Written in 1984 and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, The Lover skyrocketed the already well-known Duras to international acclaim.  Its theme of forbidden but powerful love continues to resonate with readers today.

The Lover is the story of a poor, white, 15-year-old French girl living in French-colonized Indochina (present-day Vietnam) in the early 20^th century. She falls in love—or, if you don’t believe it’s love, has a torrid physical affair with—a rich, 27-year-old Chinese man.  China’s colonization over Vietnam has been shattered by the French, and those people remaining are permitted to stay, in part because of their wealth or contributions.  These two broken and resilient people come from vastly different worlds.  They could never connect.  Yet, here she is, alone.  He’s intrigued, she’s amazing.  Nothing could possibly come of this.  Or could it?

Could such a love be real?  Could a poor little abused white girl in colonized Vietnam really fall in love with an older, rich and powerful rich Chinese man?  Could he love her?  Is this just a form of prostitution? After all, he gives her money to give her family, and he enjoys a sexual relationship with his would-be colonizer, reversing, challenging, and twisting traditional roles of race, power, and gender. (This is a generalization, but traditionally, the Chinese were, and perhaps still are, hated by the Vietnamese.)

It is the story of love, yes, but also of survival and death: the girl survives her father’s death, an abusive family, the death of her beloved brother, and more.  And she loves.  She loves her French roommate at boarding school.  She loves her brother.  And then there is her lover.  Our protagonists have no names, which creates a kind of slippage, allowing the reader to enter the text in a way.  The open language, lapses, white spaces, and wide margins (in traditionally type-set editions) allow those who have been marginalized, those with no voices, to enter and speak.  In fact, Duras’s writing style, characterized as l’écriture feminine by noted French feminist Hélène Cixous, creates a cloud-like world where time loses meaning.

The language is deceptively simple.  The narrative, however, does not follow a linear train of thought.  Instead, the story weaves around an aged narrator whose face has been ravaged by time and alcoholism and who reminisces about her “true” self and the infinite incarnations of that self throughout her life.  The text invites the reader into her world.  We are there when her brother dies, when her best friend leaves to get married, when she is excited about school, when she remembers her mother singing.  It is fuzzy at first, and the reader is disoriented.  But let it go.  Go with it.  Let it wash over you like the waves along the Mekong.  Imagine the bustle and smells of the Cholen, the section of Saigon known as Chinatown.  Feel the warm sun and the cool shade of the lovers’ love nest.  You will be taken on an incredible journey into a world that explores the very nature of memory, love, power, betrayal, and reconciliation.

Truth is somewhat elusive in this powerful text.  In some interviews, Duras claimed the text was autobiographical, but the text is classified as a work of fiction.  There are contradictions in the text that always bother my students, but to me, these differences explore the concept of memory, how it changes, and how it works against us as time passes.  Our cherished memories lose part of their reality as we write them, rewrite them, and replay them in our attempts to relive them and hold on to them.  The truth is lost.  We can feel it slipping away sometimes, causing us to hold on tighter.  We attempt another revision or ignore any disparities until there is no longer an outside perspective.  We look in the mirror and no longer see the adult we have become; only we can still see the young girl or boy, perhaps naïve and ignorant in their world view but worldly all the same and ready to embark on an adventure.download film Walk with Me 2017 now

The narrator looks in the mirror and sees not the woman withered from age and trauma but her true self, herself at fifteen and a half.  I can too see this girl boldly crossing the Mekong on a ferry wearing her threadbare hand-me-down silk dress, a man’s pink fedora, her brother’s belt, and gold lamé high-heeled shoes.  The wind is blowing her braided hair.  Her face is warmed by the hot Vietnamese sun as water splashes against the boat.  Then she notices the black limousine, hiding the silhouette of a delicate Chinese man.

Their story is one that I recommend you read.  Be prepared for confusion, twists, and challenges.  Be prepared to have your memory stimulated.  Your past loves and lovers may come to mind as you navigate this beautiful and tragic world.  The text haunts me, in the best ways.  The last few pages, especially the last paragraph, always give me shivers.  My students do always not understand; most have not been or had lovers.  They have not been all-consumed.  They still like the text but they wonder.  They have questions.  As someone with some experience in life, I have some answers.  My answer is yes.

Gay Rawson

Dr. Gay Rawson is a professor of French with over 20 years of teaching, translating and interpreting experience.  Twentieth-century French literature is one of her many passions.

French is a language that makes liberal use of synonyms. Et pour cause. Synonyms add variety to writing.

But the French don’t seem to be content with simply using the occasional word having the same (or nearly the same) meaning as another in the language. They use these “lexical stand-ins” at every possible turn.

More accurately, many of these lexical substitutes are metonyms. A metonym is a figure of speech in which a person or thing is called by another name rather than its own. (Think about how many times you’ve seen l’Elysée used to refer to the French government.)

Consider a recent article I read about a French soccer player. In the span of 79 words, the writer referred to Charles N’Zogbia as Charles N’Zogbia, le gaucher, and l’ancien Havrais. (He used to play for Le Havre AC.)

In fact, instead of using only [player’s name] and a pronoun [il, elle] for variety, French writers invariably name the player by other means. These include the use of demonyms (le Francilien, la Bulgare) as well as position or ranking (l’ailier, la 2e mondiale).

Of course, we see this in English sports journalism, too—“the power forward,” “the LSU alum”—but my suspicion is that it’s a writing technique not used to the same degree as in French.

Politics is another realm in which synonyms are widely used. As you would expect, you see titles and positions used (both to provide information and to avoid the repetition of the person’s name), as in président le la CMP and le député du Nord. But you also see sentences like the following:

Aucune majorité n’étant dégagée sur ce point, l’élu a jugé vain de poursuivre plus avant la séance.

Can you think of a single English article in which you’ve seen the term “the elected [one]” used to refer to a politician?

Synonyms abound in financial writing—especially, it seems, in articles about the stock market. Take the English word “increase,” for example. You might see it used in an article about a stock index of a particular country. Read a French article about the same topic and you’re likely to see not only augmenter, but s’élever, en hausse, monter en flèche, prendre son essor, and perhaps s’intensifier, s’amplifier, se développer, and se multiplier.

Mais le comble ? In an article in Science & Vie magazine by French science writer Lise Barnéoud titled “Vers la fin des grands arbres,” les grands arbres are referred to in almost twenty different ways: as doyens de la nature, maîtres de l’espace et du temps, rois des forêts, and titans ligneux, to name a few. (You can read my post “18 Ways to Say ‘Large Trees’ in French” for the other phrasal synonyms that she uses.)

Unfortunately, I don’t have any data on “synonym density” between French and English. (Corpus linguists, consider that an idea for your next academic paper!) But I suspect that the French use synonyms, metonyms, and other lexical stand-ins more frequently than Americans.

Matthew Kushinka

Matthew Kushinka is a French-to-English translator and the owner of RedLine Language Services LLC, a company that offers translation, copyediting, and formatting services to commercial clients

If you have comments or links to other articles about this topic, please write me at matthew@redlinels.com. I’d love to see some numbers on the subject.

The week before we left Paris, my husband and I went to Boulinier on boulevard Saint-Michel and bought several boxes’ worth of two-euro paperbacks from the sale bins. We knew that finding books in French wasn’t going to be easy in the US, and as voracious readers, we stocked up like soldiers preparing for a siege and shipped them all tarif livres to my parents’ house in Oregon. We chose books at random: some classics, some we thought we’d heard of, maybe, and others that just had good titles or intriguing cover art. Now, nine years later, we’re still working our way through that literary plunder. One of my favorite recent discoveries from the pile is a best-selling 1978 memoir by Henri Vincenot called La billebaude.

 As a little boy, Henri Vincenot lived with his grandparents in rural Burgundy, which he proudly refers to as “the rooftop of Europe.” They taught him care and respect for the land, and for the flora and fauna that provided for them so richly. Young Henri is fed on potée au lard, bouilli (pot de feu), carpe farcie à l’oseille, boudin, paté, and poule en sauce blanche, all with plenty of fresh cream. He learns at a very young age how to butcher meat and take care of the farm animals. But he is also fascinated with the people that fill his world, from the local lord and his manor to a grandmother who can magic away eczema, to a beautiful cousin who is a wet nurse in Paris. The person he admires and idolizes most is his grandfather, “Le Tremblot,” an expert hunter and woodsman who knows the region by heart and whose skills are renowned by villagers and lords alike. Le Tremblot practices la chasse à la billebaude, an adventurous style of hunting based on taking chances and on knowing the land and the ways of its animals.

As a once-vegetarian and lifelong animal lover, I have never been interested in reading about hunting. And believe me, there are a lot of hunting scenes in La billebaude. But Vincenot’s enthusiasm and passion are hard to resist. His descriptions of the hunters’ efforts are detailed and colorful, and the in-depth understanding of nature that Le Tremblot shares with his grandson is so remarkable that I found myself drawn in scene after scene.

Vincenot also offers us a child’s point of view on other aspects of village life: the tall-tale stories told by Le Tremblot and his friends; neighbors joking and teasing as they help each other with the harvest or with repairs; the excitement of welcoming visitors to the village; the arrival of new machines and other suspicious innovations; the enormous, delicious traditional holiday meals; the solemn, otherworldly elegance of church. I felt like I too was five years old, taking it all in with wide eyes. And when young Henri, cursed with strong academic ability, is forced to leave Le Tremblot and his beloved village and forests behind for boarding school in the city, my heart ached for him.

To complete our transportation into the land of Vincenot’s childhood, La billebaude is filled with Burgundian words that even the hardiest, most experienced translators and interpreters may not recognize. Some of my favorites were piolé (freckled), les chauds-réfrédis (pleurisy), and les encolpions (magician’s tools). In the Folio edition, footnotes are included to help with most of these terms. But even the ones that forced me to stop reading and put my research skills to the test were fun, because they added so much regional and historical flavor to the tale.

Vincenot does have a tendency to slip into lecture mode, bemoaning our noisy, crowded and polluted industrial society and insisting that everything was better in the olden days. But having joined him in imagination as he tracked wild deer across the Burgundy hills, explored the rich forests of the Auxois region, and stuffed himself on delectable plats du terroir, I tended to sympathize with him. In fact, many of his beliefs fit right into current environmentalist thought. Others are a little harder to swallow, such as his comment that the women in his village were content with serving the men and staying in the kitchen, and were much happier than modern “emancipated” women. But on the whole his story made me nostalgic, not for my noisy, crowded and polluted life in Paris, but for a rough, sweet life I’ll never know, in a village that once existed in a quiet corner of France.

 

Arwen Dewey

Arwen Dewey lives in Seattle, WA where she works as a singer, actor and freelance translator specializing in the arts.