|
Last month I promised "onions, shallots, puns, and trains hiding trains", so here they come.
Onions, shallots and puns?
I was comparing two translations of Lewis Carroll: the original English, Alice in Wonderland, chapter 8, goes: " ‘that’s none of your business, Two!’ said Seven. ‘Yes, it is his business!’ said Five. ‘And I’ll tell him – it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions.’ " This is a surreal argument between animated playing-cards, by the way. The 1992 "Langues pour tous" translation by J-P Berman has " ‘C’est pas ton affaire, Deux!’ dit Sept. ‘Si, c’est son affaire!’ dit Cinq. ‘Et je vais le lui dire: c’était pour avoir apporté au cuisinier des bulbes de tulipes au lieu d’oignons.’ "
Another translation adds a pun and a gag, and anticipates on the "onions" with "c’est pas tes oignons".
Here is how it looks in context: " ‘Ça, Le Deux, ce ne sont pas tes oignons!’ répondit Le Sept. ‘Pardon, ce sont justement les siens!!’ repartit Le cinq. Et je vais lui répondre: ‘C’est parce que Le Sept avait apporté à la cuisinière des bulbes de tulipes au lieu desdits oignons.’ " Instead of the aforementioned onions? Onions which were previously mentioned only because the translator decided to use that idiom? Interesting, at least, and daringly free...
Because of their shape, "oignons" in slang can be "buttocks", and then the singular, by extension, can be "anus". English speakers merrily pick up on "c’est mes oignons" or "c’est pas tes oignons" without suspecting the anatomical rudery lurking behind the expression.
And shallots? For some reason – serendipity? chance? suddenly in vogue? – I have suddenly been hearing and reading the expression "la course à l’échalote" several times in the media recently, with the sense of "the race/struggle for power". However, the basic meaning of the term is more like "the bum’s rush"; "la course à l’échalote" being "un jeu (?) qui consiste à faire courir l’adversaire en le tenant par le col et le fond du pantalon" (François Caradec’s marvellous 1977 Larousse Dictionnaire du français argotique et populaire). Now, even though a random sample of four French people, all educated to degree level, proved that 50% of the French claim never to have heard the expression in their lives in any sense whatsoever, the other 50% were in agreement about the "race for power" meaning. The associations of the expression in that figurative context are therefore those of a no-holds-barred struggle in which each one is trying to give the other "the bum’s rush" by wheeching his opponent out the door, with a firm grip on their "oignons" or indeed "échalote". A faintly ridiculous yet no-quarter struggle for power? La course à l’échalote!
|
Un train peut en cacher un autre
The SNCF warning sign telling travellers to beware "because there might be another train right behind the one you can see" has passed into the headline-writer’s catechism of cliché. The one I have read most often has been "une crise peut en cacher une autre"; one crisis may in fact mask the impending arrival of another one which may well be more deadly, and politicians or the public may be caught unawares. The unaltered expression itself is sometimes used with a figurative sense which is closer to "it’s the thin end of the wedge", a cliché which is usually conveyed by "slippery slope"-type images such as "c’est s’engager sur une pente savonneuse". Read and listen around, investigate polemical or trade-union use of "un train peut en cacher un autre", and you find examples such as "Autonomie/Réformes universitaires: un train peut en cacher un autre" among other warnings to be suspicious of what the government is up to.
|
Hedge-funds
Marc Kravetz, on France Culture on weekday mornings, is usually good value with his "chronique". On April 29th he mentioned "hedge funds" and commented on the fact that many people just use the English term, as though they knew what it meant and also assumed everyone else did too, but he also offered two translations : "fonds de couverture" and "fonds alternatifs". Le Monde systematically uses "les fonds spéculatifs", before or after giving the English term.
|
