Polyglotte

Une polyglotte is the french word for someone who speaks more than 2 languages. Being in France and working on  my french has made me realize how important it is to me that I learn as many languages as I can -- I love studying them and I really believe in the importance of being able to communicate and being a world citizen. Also, it's just interesting! Today my friend invited me to a lecture at the American University in Paris to listen to a presentation by a man who is a scholar/translator of Samuel Beckett. Now, I'm in a class right now and we've read two plays by Beckett - En attendant Godot (I'm sure you can guess that one) and Fin de Partie (Endgame). When I first saw those plays on our reading list, I have to say I was a little disappointed. I'd never read either of them before the class, and I was a little bummed to be reading plays that were written in English in French, as 1) I'm sure to not understand them as well and 2) that's not the original language the author wrote them in. BUT I WAS WRONG! Samuel Beckett originally wrote both of those plays in French, and then only later after they were successful did he translate them into English. Who knew? I mean, another great thing about learning languages is that it really opens up the realm of literature that is available to you, because there really is nothing like reading "Le Petit Prince" in French, or any of the other various books/plays, etc that have been translated from French into English.

Just some random pictures of this beautiful city.

Anyway, so this lecture today was fascinating. Here's the summary that was posted on the website, just to give you a general idea of the topic: At the invitation of the Center for Writers & Translators and the Masters in Cultural Translation, André Topia will speak of his experience of translating Volume I of The Letters of Samuel Beckett into French for forthcoming publication by Gallimard. “Horrible langue que je sais encore trop bien” is how Beckett described his own native language, English, in which he was finding it hard to write. In fact, our professor had told us that Beckett strongly believed that literature should be written in a language other than one's native tongue. He felt that you never really "hear" your native language any more, and so lose some of the nuances and poetry that make it great. All this combined with the problem of then translating his works back into English..and then this lecture guy's job is translating Beckett's personal correspondence into French! Needless to say, I was very excited to go.
The AUP center is located behind an old church in the 7eme, and I got there a bit early and waited for my friend. It was held in a small room around a table, which made for a really nice, intimate setting...although let's be honest so did the delicious free quiche and cookies. Anyway, so the man introduced himself and pretty much just started talking about the topic. It turns out that Beckett knew a lot of languages and loved using each of them to manipulate what he wanted to say. He wrote in German, Italian, French (and various french dialects) and English. His letters to people are filled with really obscure words and some that he's even made up to suit his own purposes -- like "kranky" -- which apparently takes the k from German to make a word that means essentially the English "cranky" but with more anger. So, the more the man explained his job the more complicated it started sounding...it was basically his job to take everything Beckett wrote privately and translate it into a language he (Beckett) deliberately did not choose to write in. M. Topia also discussed a bit the differences between English and French, which were really interesting to hear coming from someone who's an expert on the topic. Apparently, English is a much more nuanced, poetic, and subtle language -- you can say anything at least two different ways in English -- which he explained is due to the way the English language was formed -- half of our words come from the Anglo-Saxon languages of before 1066, while the other half come from French and Latin words that were brought over after the Norman invasion. French, on the other hand, is very repetitive and a lot of English terms don't translate (let alone Beckett's terms). M. Topia used the example of "editor." The french don't make a distinction between the words "editor" and "publisher", and so when Beckett talks about his editors in his letters, it's the translator's job to figure out exactly what to do with that. The whole thing seems like kind of an impossible job to me, but also one that I imagine would be very mentally stimulating and puzzle-like, at times.

Nothing to do with the post, but still a good shot.

The most fascinating part, though, was hearing Topia discuss the differences between the French and English languages. I struggle all the time with "translating" what I want to say in English into French because there are so many expressive subtleties that can't be translated. Also, being someone who has a fairly extensive vocabulary (I don't mean to brag but you know I get those Word of the Day emails yuppp) it gets difficult to express exactly what I want to say (in the English sense) in the French sense. I've definitely learned while here to rely less on thinking of what I want to say in English and then translating it in my head into French and more on just thinking in French. Topia also used the example of the word "quip." There is no french equivalent, and that just shocks me! So then if I wanted to say that someone "quipped wittily", I wouldn't be able to in that exact sense. So I'd have to change what I wanted to say which changes how I communicate with someone. I guess I had never really though about the inability of things to be translated before, and how crazy it is that our native language affects us so much. Honestly, the whole thing kind of vindicated my feelings about how hard it is to learn French (or any language!) and brought up a ton of questions about translating things in general. How difficult! (Thank god for people like M. Topia). And just think of how that translates (haha) to our world and communication between people who speak different languages...it blows my mind. And all because of some Irish author who thought English was too "easy."