“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.
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FLD Dinner in San Francisco for ATA’s 57th Annual Conference – Sign Up Now!
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French Language Division Dinner for the ATA’s Conference in San Francisco
FLD Continuing Education Series – Episode 7: State of the FLD – Summer 2016
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.)
Grants and Prizes for French <> English Translators and Interpreters
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[Update: Registration is now open! Click here to join us.]
À Propos: Book Review – Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit
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.
À Propos: Book Review – La Nuit Sacrée
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.
À Propos: Memories of The Lover
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.
À Propos: Synonyms in French
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.
À Propos: Book Review – La billebaude
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.