#french writing in english

[dumblr]

“Avec toi, je sui moi” 

“With you, I am me.” 

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some French Loans in Middle English

Loan Word - vocabulary borrowings

Borrow - to introduce a word (or some other linguistic feature) from one language or dialect into another

Administration authority, bailiff, baron, chamberlain, chancellor, constable, coroner, council, court, crown, duke, empire, exchequer, government, liberty, majesty, manor, mayor, messenger, minister, noble, palace, parliament, peasant, prince, realm, reign, revenue, royal, servant, sir, sovereign, squire, statute, tax, traitor, treason, treasurer, treaty, tyrant, vassal, warden

Law accuse, adultery, advocate, arrest, arson, assault, assize, attorney, bail, bar, blame, chattels, convict, crime, decree, depose, estate, evidence, executor, felon, fine, fraud, heir, indictment, inquest, jail, judge, jury, justice, larceny, legacy, libel, pardon, perjury, plaintiff, plea, prison, punishment, sue, summons, trespass, verdict, warrant

Religion abbey, anoint, baptism, cardinal, cathedral, chant, chaplain, charity, clergy, communion, confess, convent, creator, crucifix, divine, faith, friar, heresy, homily, immortality, incense, mercy, miracle, novice, ordain, parson, penance, prayer, prelate, priory, religion, repent, sacrament, sacrilege, saint, salvation, saviour, schism, sermon, solemn, temptation, theology, trinity, vicar, virgin, virtue

Military ambush, archer, army, barbican, battle, besiege, captain, combat, defend, enemy, garrison, guard, hauberk, lance, lieutenant, moat, navy, peace, portcullis, retreat, sergeant, siege, soldier, spy, vanquish

Food and drink appetite, bacon, beef, biscuit, clove, confection, cream, cruet, date, dinner, feast, fig, fruit, fry, grape, gravy, gruel, herb, jelly, lemon, lettuce, mackerel, mince, mustard, mutton, olive, orange, oyster, pigeon, plate, pork, poultry, raisin, repast, roast, salad, salmon, sardine, saucer, sausage, sole, spice, stew, sturgeon, sugar, supper, tart, taste, toast, treacle, tripe, veal, venison, vinegar

Fashion apparel, attire, boots, brooch, buckle, button, cape, chemise, cloak, collar, diamond, dress, embroidery, emerald, ermine, fashion, frock, fur, garment, garter, gown, jewel, lace, mitten, ornament, pearl, petticoat, pleat, robe, satin, taffeta, tassel, train, veil, wardrobe

part 1/2 ⚜ Source ⚜ Word Lists ⚜ Notes & References

[sketchyracoon]

No matter the universe them getting together is a silly event. Hopefully emo them is safe from the timeline imploding though...

[raspberryusagi]

Me, rambling to my wife about this crackpot theory I came up with in the shower about how Les Miserables may have been an answer to The Count of Monte Cristo, or at least could be read as such: ... But then Valjean didn't personally screw Javert over like Dantes' enemies did-

My wife: Are you sure Valjean didn't screw Javert? I thought I read that on AO3 once.

[libraryraccoon]

HEAR ME OUT ABOUT DIAVAL!READER

I just need somewhere to just write that and people need to hear me out on this : A MALE!Y/N BEING DIAVAL. THE REAL DIAVAL.

Like, yk Diaval in the movie ? That's him, but with a different apparence. He rename himself Y/N for people not recognized him as Diaval.

And one day, Aurora or Maleficent come and say something like "Oh ! Hey Diaval !" (If it's Aurora) or "Long time no see, Diaval." (If it's Maleficent). And I can just see everyone confused because Reader hide the fact he was Diaval and a crow (like he was in a human form, and people had only think he was a human in Diasomnia that know too much).

Also, I can see Crowley that is the real crow of the Evil Queen. And Y/N know he's the crow of the evil queen, and Crowley know he is Diaval. And it would just be akward in public between them, but in private ? I CALL THEM GOSSIPY BITCH-

And just imagine Crowley when he was the evil queen crow with no name, so Diaval found him the name Crowley, and for thanking him, Crowley give him the name Y/N. And years after, Diaval rename himself Y/N before going to the NRC and the evil queen crow rename himself Crowley before being the headmage of the NRC... THEY ARE BROTHERS OUR HONOR.

I also can see Diaval!Y/N scolding Crowley for making Yuu do all his work.

And in the theory Overblot!Crowley, I can just imagine Diaval!Y/N knowing something is wrong with Crowley and finding pretty quickly that Crowley is an overblotter, and (for the phantom!Grim theory) Grim being his phantom. I just know Diaval!Y/N will do all for protecting the children and the staff, he won't fight Crowley because he wasn't a threat (for now) and because he was his friend. And I know Diaval!Y/N will blame himself for Crowley overblot. I just know it.

And for Grim, even if he is a phantom, Diaval!Y/N will just act like if he was a normal child. He'll just watch him a little more closely than the others.

*Ahem*, yeah, just hear me out on crow of the queen!crowley and Diaval!Y/N and the NRC staff and students just being confused.

[silverameco]

as a french person i feel like it's my duty to make Sirius and Regulus speak french in my fic

except i have a problem : my own language cringes me😭

[anxiouslowercase]

sas rh: let eoin survive the fall au » a tale of two lieutenants (part two)

[sforzesco]

any sforza family enjoyers have reading recommendations on galeazzo maria sforza. nonfiction only bc this is research, english/italian/french is fine!

[qalrey]

just two teenage girls who are crushing on each other fighting over some guy

it's been years since i've drawn furries with human-like features

[literaryvein-reblogs]

More French Loans in Middle English

Loan Word - vocabulary borrowings

Borrow - to introduce a word (or some other linguistic feature) from one language or dialect into another

Leisure and the arts art, beauty, carol, chess, colour, conversation, courser, dalliance, dance, falcon, fool, harness, image, jollity, joust, juggler, kennel, lay, leisure, literature, lute, melody, minstrel, music, noun, painting, palfrey, paper, parchment, park, partridge, pavilion, pen, pheasant, poet, preface, prose, recreation, rein, retrieve, revel, rhyme, romance, sculpture, spaniel, stable, stallion, story, tabor, terrier, title, tournament, tragedy, trot, vellum, volume

Science and learning alkali, anatomy, arsenic, calendar, clause, copy, gender, geometry, gout, grammar, jaundice, leper, logic, medicine, metal, noun, ointment, pain, physician, plague, pleurisy, poison, pulse, sphere, square, stomach, study, sulphur, surgeon, treatise

The home basin, blanket, bucket, ceiling, cellar, chair, chamber, chandelier, chimney, closet, couch, counterpane, curtain, cushion, garret, joist, kennel, lamp, lantern, latch, lattice, pantry, parlour, pillar, porch, quilt, scullery, towel, tower, turret

General nouns action, adventure, affection, age, air, city, coast, comfort, country, courage, courtesy, cruelty, debt, deceit, dozen, envy, error, face, fault, flower, forest, grief, honour, hour, joy, labour, manner, marriage, mischief, mountain, noise, number, ocean, opinion, order, pair, people, person, piece, point, poverty, power, quality, rage, reason, river, scandal, season, sign, sound, spirit, substance, task, tavern, unity, vision

General adjectives active, amorous, blue, brown, calm, certain, clear, common, cruel, curious, eager, easy, final, foreign, gay, gentle, honest, horrible, large, mean, natural, nice, original, perfect, poor, precious, probable, real, rude, safe, scarce, scarlet, second, simple, single, solid, special, strange, sudden, sure, usual

General verbs advise, allow, arrange, carry, change, close, continue, cry, deceive, delay, enjoy, enter, form, grant, inform, join, marry, move, obey, pass, pay, please, prefer, prove, push, quit, receive, refuse, remember, reply, satisfy, save, serve, suppose, travel, trip, wait, waste

Turns of phrase by heart, come to a head, do homage, do justice to, have mercy on, hold one’s peace, make complaint, on the point of, take leave, take pity on

Part 1 ⚜ Source ⚜ More References: Middle English ⚜ Word Lists

[i-only-eat-four-leaf-clovers]

If I made a novel-like transcription of the first episode of Riptide on AO3 would anyone read it

what if I was already making it both in french and english

[hedgehog-moss]

Top 3 Annoying Translation Mistakes I’ve Read This Year (from least to most annoying):

Category I - lazy calques that let you feel the original text under the translation, not in a good way

(English -> French) In the French translation of Hugh Howey’s Sand (Outresable), the word “robe” at one point was mistranslated as... robe. Come on! In French that’s a dress, the English “robe” is what we call a robe de chambre. And it matters! The protagonist is knocking at his mother’s door and she opens it wearing a robe rather than clothes, which (in context) suggests that she was having sex; when you translate it as opening the door in a dress, the reader pictures her looking put together and wonders why her teenage son is feeling angrily embarrassed. Sure there will be more context clues in the rest of the paragraph, but your translation is not supposed to make it harder for the reader to form an accurate mental picture.

Category II - clunky sentences that make the text unpleasant or confusing to read

(I almost used the French translation of Julian Fellowes’ Past Imperfect as an example, but I suspect the original of being clunkily written as well. Still I gave a couple of examples of clumsy sentences at the end of my review that really should have been noticed and fixed.)

(Japanese -> French) Some sentences in the French translation of Masuji Ibuse’s 黒い雨 (Pluie noire) were so clumsy I had to re-read them several times, including the very first sentence. In English it is translated very neatly as: “For several years past, S. Shizuma had been aware of his niece Yasuko as a weight on his mind. What was worse, he had a presentiment that the weight was going to remain with him for still more years to come.”

In French we get this: “S. Shizuma avait depuis plusieurs années le cœur lourd au sujet de sa nièce Yasuko ; et pas seulement depuis plusieurs années, car il sentait bien que ce poids indicible doublerait, triplerait avec le temps.”

If the idea is that this past worry is likely to persist or worsen in the future, “et pas seulement depuis plusieurs années” is a confusing (and repetitive!) way of phrasing it. It suggests something that extends further into the past, not the future... In contrast, the Spanish translation uses the exact same “what was worse” phrasing as the English one: “Y, lo que era peor, tenía el presentimiento de que esta carga seguiría agobiándole indeciblemente aún durante muchos años.”

Another example (among many) where both the English and Spanish translations use the same simple phrasing while the French translator seems to get tangled up in her own syntax:

EN: “In the event, though, he proved to have shown more care than wisdom.”

SP: “Sea como sea, el caso es que demostró tener más prudencia que sabiduría.”

FR: “Or, ces doubles précautions avaient produit un effet en quelque sorte aussi stupide qu’elles avaient été avisées [...]” This character tried to do the wise / cautious thing and it resulted in something bad, I get it. But the English & Spanish translations are objectively neater and less syntactically muddled than “his double precautions produced an effect in some way as stupid as they had been wise.”

Category III (the worst) - mistranslations that actually influence the way the reader experiences the story or characters

(French -> English) The English translator of Valérie Perrin’s Trois (Three) seemed either confused by or not able to recognise a lot of French slang, which she translated literally. At one point the word “pisseuses”, a derogatory term for girls (yeah it comes from piss) is translated very literally as girls “who wet themselves.” It’s like if the English word “bitches” was translated as “female dogs” in another language where the term is neutral, instead of using a word with equivalent sexist connotations. The word ‘pisseuses’ here is part of a misogynistic character’s internal narration. He’s an adult man thinking of teenage girls as bitches; instead the inexplicable translation “girls who wet themselves” just leaves you baffled.

The same issue pops up again later on, when the same character thinks of an old woman as “la vieille bigote”—bigot means very religious in French, but here it’s not to be taken literally, it’s used as a generic derogatory term for an old woman. The English translation is “the pious old woman”—too literal ! It sounds almost respectful? Or at the very least neutral, when actually the male narrator is thinking of the woman as “this old hag.” Also their exchange had nothing at all to do with religion so you’re left confused as to how he came to think that she was pious.

It sounds like nitpicking but these are pretty big mistakes in that they not only make things confusing but also impact characterisation. You’re not supposed to turn a character’s negative thoughts into neutral ones. The translator does it again to a female character later on, this time with the opposite effect—making her less sympathetic. She is describing her life (married to a rich but controlling man) as “des vacances à perpétuité.” In English, her life becomes “a never-ending vacation”, thus erasing the very strong connotation of prison carried by the French phrase 'in perpetuity’. You could have found some phrasing around the idea of a “life sentence” maybe—we’re supposed to empathise with this character who consciously experiences her life as a gilded cage, and softening the phrase in the translation reduces the reader’s ability to do that by making it sound like this rich woman is just bored with her life of leisure. Sometimes even small mistranslations can end up having a significant impact on how the reader reacts to a story and its characters.

None of the above are awful translations if you take the book as a whole, but all four of these books are by best-selling authors so if they get so many poorly-translated words or sentences what hope is there for the rest...!

[hetaletmego]

Let me preface with this: "cher" alone doesn't mean anything. At all. "Cher [name]" exists but it's just to open letters.

"Mon cher" is "my dear" but in the sense of "oh my dear Mr Smith fancy running into you at this barber shop"

You wanna be fancy-old-timey-loving, at least go with "très cher" ("dearest", lit. "very dear"). It's still stilted but at least it's personal.

You wanna get really personal, with a phrase that's still actually used this century, the word you're looking for is "chéri" ("darling" but a bit more relaxed, lit. "cherished", "beloved"). Potentially "mon chéri", which is the exact equivalent of "my darling".

Also this is mostly about FrUK but if speaking to a woman you go "ma chère", "très chère", "chérie" and "ma chérie" because this language is so gendered help us we're dying au masculin neutre.

Merci very much.

[cryingweasel]

I’ve seen a couple of posts about people being hesitant and not really wanting new players joining the qsmp soon + more languages being added, and I understand, but the posts mostly seem to be made by English speaking people and I don’t think they understand how big of a deal this is for some people. The internet is really focused on anglophone creators to the point that if you’re bicultural and living in the US, you will never get recommended a channel that doesn’t speak English, despite English speaking channels getting recommended everywhere else. The trending tab is only filled with English speaking creators. You have never had a problem finding content that’s in your language. That’s not something you have to do. The fact that there might be French creators added to the qsmp is so exciting for me because I will finally have a starting point to discover French creators, I will finally be able to watch content that is in my language. The qsmp is bringing non English speaking creators into the orbit of English viewers and that is so cool. People have started watching the Spanish streamer despite not understanding most of what is being said, they’ve started learning Spanish because they want to be able to interact with the Spanish community. If people are trying to learn French/Portuguese/German they’re going to have access to creators who speak that language!!! I have faith in Quackity that he won’t make the introduction of new players overwhelming, this is going to be so sick.

[little-bits-of-mind]

what does it even mean, being human?

transcription of the french quote :

"I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying)"

[dkettchen]

Brennan: in the mountains of Luxembourg

me, from Luxembourg: *gets jumpscared*

me: mf we ain't got mountains in Luxembourg