Jeeze, the doctor is only thirty...

[NNadir]

So. as my lock down exercise, during an epidemic I'm translating Camus's La Peste ("The Plague" ) to see if I can revive my French language skills. This is the tale of Dr. Rieux, who we learned earlier is just 30 years old and who is relating the story of an outbreak of the plague in the city of Oran in the 1940s. I'm about halfway through the first chapter and I came across this exchange between the doctor and a journalist who wants to investigate the living conditions of the Arabs in (then) French colonial Algeria.

Here's an excerpt of my translation:

Softly, Rieux said that indeed such a condemnation would be baseless, but in posing the question, he was only seeking to find out whether or not Rambert’s reporting could be without restriction.

“I only grant information without restrictions. I cannot, therefore, support your investigation.”

“This is the position of Saint Juste,” said the journalist with a smile.

Rieux said, without raising his voice, that he knew nothing of that, only that this was the language of a man tired of the world in which he lived, having had, all the same, a taste of his contemporaries, having decided for his part to refuse the injustices and the concessions. Rambert, his neck on his shoulder, looked at the doctor.

“I believe I understand you,” he said finally, getting up.

Only the French can be that cynical at 30; they're better than we are. We have to be at least 55 to get there.

I'm only giggling a little bit because years ago, a friend and I used to perform this little amusing shtick in which we would pretend to be 1940's French intellectuals engaging in trop serieux absurdist ennui.

[MLAA]

1. Since you translate the above, I'd say your French skills are alive and thriving!

[DarthDem]

2. Nice!

I know a little French. Would you mind posting the original? I love comparing translations to original text, and yours looks excellent.

[NNadir]

3. The entire text in French is here:

Camus, La Peste (1947)

The excerpt I translated is below, but looking at it, I realized that I should have translated a sentence therein as "That is the language of Saint Juste, as opposed to "That is the position of Saint Juste." It's better, more accurate, fits better with Rieux's response, and even were it not so, in any case, I am trying to translate the same word Camus uses in close context with the same English word where possible.

– Je n’admets que les témoignages sans réserves. Je ne soutiendrai donc pas le vôtre de mes renseignements.

– C’est le langage de Saint-Just, dit le journaliste en souriant.

Rieux dit sans élever le ton qu’il n’en savait rien, mais que c’était le langage d’un homme lassé du monde où il vivait, ayant pourtant le goût de ses semblables et décidé à refuser, pour sa part, l’injustice et les concessions. Rambert, le cou dans les épaules, regardait le docteur.

– Je crois que je vous comprends, dit-il enfin en se levant.

[emmaverybo]

4. Excellent. You have managed to convey the tone and voice of the piece and in a prose style that I

think does real justice to the original. I am taking it your French quite advanced and you have translation skills (and talent)!

[NNadir]

6. Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. It has been many years since I've been to France...

...and many years since I tried to read it. Frankly though, mostly what I read was technical scientific French and business French.

It has always been most difficult for me to hear French. I get by speaking it, and the French are always nice and complement my accent, but unless I stay in France for a few weeks, I find myself thinking in English and then translating into French, which doesn't work, really.

My son, by contrast, speaks excellent French, and will fire off commentary at me in French, encouraging me to renew my interest in the language. He won the French Senior Award in High School. In fact he spent a summer two years ago interning in a lab in a French university. (The graduate students in the lab were mostly Brazilians and spoke Portuguese and to communicate, everyone spoke English.) It turns out that he speaks a lot of languages and has a facility for them. I don't. I feel awkward outside of English.

Maybe a part of the reason for doing this is to impress him; he insists that my mind should be as young and as adventurous as his, which is cheering his old man on, I suppose. As his university has shut classes and gone on line, it's nice to be with him again. He brings me these obscure things; today a little lecture on a technique of which I'd only vaguely had a sense of awareness, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. He wants to detect viruses. He will leave us soon enough to go on to a greater life; it's been a surprise to have him home for this brief interlude, since we have so loved his presence.

What I wouldn't do for a young mind!

As far as the French goes, Camus is relatively easy to read though, because he has this spare and direct way of writing while losing nothing of the depth. It's both deadpan and evocative at once, and often quite beautiful and filled with these subtle contradictions that thrill and can easily be missed. Camus was, quite clearly, in short, a true literary master, a giant.

I read "The Plague" in translation when I was a kid, and now, doing this, in this time of Covid, I have the pleasure of seeing what I missed by not reading it in French.

We should make the best of these awful times, turn them on themselves.

Thanks again for your kind words.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Well ... I really don't know much about French, so maybe I should shut up ...

but "le cou dans les épaules" sounds like an idiomatic expression which maybe should not be translated literally. "Neck in shoulders" sounds like a pose which we might describe in colloquial English as "chin on chest".

Again, not a francophone, nor do I play one on TV. Just offering my 2 centimes.

[NNadir]

7. It is probably an idiom for "cocked his head to the side."

I am, when in doubt, trying to preserve some accuracy for the French terminology, but sometimes it's expensive.

I see M. Rambert bending his neck to the side, and of course, his head follows. Note that in my translation he's M. Rambert, Monsieur Rambert, not Mr. Rambert.

Camus may have visualized a neck resting on a shoulder; I can't say. I'm not aware of an idiom; there may be one, but I'm not aware of it.

It's a problem in translation, whether to leave these artifacts of the original language.

You see these artifacts quite often in scientific papers; you can most read the text without looking at the institution and know from what country the authors come. The Chinese often do not pluralize nouns, and for some reason, tons of papers by Chinese authors begin with the word "Nowadays." Inappropriate prepositions abound. The science is very good, the English, less so.

There is in the text of La Peste the term "le juge d’instruction" which might be literally translated just as it sounds, "judge of instruction." One text I've seen translates it as "Magistrate," which is of course better. But in actuality there is a cultural component which is an artifact of the legal system in France, where there is an inquisitorial judge who serves the role that a "Grand Jury" was designed to serve in English law, before it became legally vestigial, so that a Grand Jury today only drops a case when it involves a cop shooting an unarmed African American guy. But originally the Grand Jury was designed to prevent innocent people from being accused. This, I think, is the role served in French law by the "juge d'instruction." To enrich the phrase, and go a little further than "Magistrate," I translated it as "Pretrial Judge." The term doesn't really fully define the distinction, but it lets you know there is one.

It's not always easy to decide.