Editorial

Welcome to the December 2009 edition of au courant!
In this issue, we’re featuring a couple of articles on the newsletter’s history, to remember how it began and how it has changed since it first began in the 1980s.
I for one am impressed by the fact that the newsletter has been going strong all this time! It’s also fascinating to see how dramatically it has changed over the years with the advent of word-processing tools, and subsequently the internet.
I wish all readers a happy and peaceful Christmas period – don’t forget the first date for your diaries in January 2010, our Fête des Rois. Following the huge success of last year’s event, we decided to repeat it, with a new location this year.

Places must be booked by 20th December, so hurry!

Articles for publication in the next newsletter should be sent to Philippa by 1st May 2010. Article contributions are welcome on any subject from any member, as are letters to the Editor.

Articles from the Newsletter

ITI Translation Workshop
by Audrey Langlassé

C’est avec un sentiment mêlé de soulagement et d’impatience que j’ai quitté Glasgow pour Londres samedi 17 octobre pour assister à mon premier atelier de traduction organisé par l’ITI. Victime de son succès, la manifestation affichait déjà complet trois semaines à l’avance. Figurant en cinquième
position sur la liste d’attente, j’ai eu beaucoup de chance d’avoir une place.
N’ayant rejoint l’ITI que depuis peu, la soirée au Pub Old Star m’a permis de rencontrer de nouveaux collègues dans une ambiance sympathique et gastronomique. Cerise sur le gâteau, mon retour a l’hôtel
s’est transformé en visite guidée « London by night » grâce à Percy Balemans et à sa connaissance encyclopédique de la capitale.
Le lendemain matin, je me suis rendue a l’université de Westminster. Intitulée «Hold the Front Page», la session de cette année avait pour thème les médias. Après une courte introduction de Pamela Mayorcas, nous avons rejoint nos groupes respectifs. Le mien comptait neuf traductrices de l’anglais
vers le français, traductrices expérimentées et débutantes, habituées des ateliers et novices en la matière,qui avaient cependant toutes en commun un vrai goût de la traduction, une passion des mots et une envie d’en découdre avec les textes.
Guidée par Florence Mitchell qui a mis toute sa gentillesse et son expérience à notre service, nous nous sommes mises au travail. La journée s’organisait autour de la traduction de 4 documents classés en sous-thèmes : général, financier/commercial, juridique et sciences/techniques ou «fun».
Nous avions 40 minutes pour chaque texte avant de retrouver notre groupe binôme de traducteurs du français vers l’anglais pour discuter de certains points délicats. Certaines d’entre nous avaient apporté des ouvrages de référence mais nous n’en avons eu guère besoin. C’est toute la beauté de mettre neuf cerveaux en commun. Cela fuse de toute part. Ainsi, nous traduisions tour à tour deux phrases, traduction simultanée qui était aussitôt commentée, discutée, améliorée si besoin était. Une hésitation sur un point de grammaire, une question d’usage (dirait-on M. Obama dans la presse française (1)?) ou de vocabulaire («think» se traduit par «estimer» quand il y a expression d’un point de vue): les conseils avisés des collègues ne se faisaient pas attendre. Et même lorsque nous n’avions pas la solution sous la main (ex. doit-on dire « un tableau de Vinci, un tableau de Léonard de Vinci ou un tableau de de Vinci » ?(2); y a-t-il un mot spécifique pour «forensic art expert (3)» ?), nous avons poursuivi nos recherches aussitôt rentrées dans nos pénates. Par ailleurs, nos amis anglophones nous ont aussi apporté leurs lumières sur des expressions telles que «flummoxed», «horribly wonderful» et ont même trouvé une excellente traduction du titre “Finger Points to New da Vinci art” en suggérant «On a mis le doigt sur un nouveau tableau de Léonard de Vinci».
Quant à la traduction du dernier document mystérieusement intitulé «You’ve no clue do you ?», nous n’aurions pas pu nous passer de l’aide précieuse d’AlisonWebb, venue de Beaucaire près d’Arles, et de celle de Shelagh Rothero.

Dans un style énigmatique qui accumule jeux de mots et références sur un rythme proche du rap ou du slam, le narrateur s’adresse à une personne aux prises avec une partie de Cluedo, véritable mise en abyme de notre position de traductrices confrontées à un texte sans contexte (ni auteur, ni source, ni date, ni indice clair quant au type de texte). Après quelques minutes de perplexité totale, nous nous sommes piquées au jeu, c’est le cas de le dire, et nous avons enfilé notre costume de Miss Marple pour filer avec plaisir la métaphore du Cluedo. Toutefois, le suspense était vraiment trop intense pour certaines d’entre nous. [ peine rentrée chez elle, Florence Tesmoingt se ruait sur Internet et nous livrait la clé du mystère: le texte était bel et bien une chanson composée et interprétée par King Creosote, un chanteur écossais.
Ce dernier point reflète très bien l’esprit de partage qui sous-tend cet atelier: partage des compétences, des expériences, des contacts et des trucs et astuces, le tout dans une ambiance chaleureuse et détendue, avec de longues pauses pour discuter avec les collègues des autres groupes. Dire que je m’étonnais que ce soit complet !

(1) Pas de «monsieur». Le français tend à répéter prénom et nom plutôt que simplement le nom de famille.
(2) Les réponses 1 et 2 sont correctes.
(3) Non, on dit “expert en art” en français.

Au courant reaches its quarter-century
By David Tash

Not actually 25 years – even ITI hasn’t been going quite that long – but this is the 25th issue of Au courant. Looking into the history of the French Network’s newsletter, with a view to attributing a serial number to each issue, has led me to note some interesting developments and general progress over the past 20 years, with inevitably a few mistakes and setbacks.
My earliest issue is dated July 1989, though I wasn’t actually a member of the French Network at that time; it was sent to me when I expressed interest in joining. No doubt a few issues had been produced before that date, ITI having been founded in 1986, but that 1989 issue of the newsletter was the last to have used A4 sheets folded to produce an A5 booklet-type format. The February 1990 issue used A3 sheets folded to produce the A4-page size with which we are all familiar.
Issues during the early 1990s often included cuttings that had been sent in by members of the network, with those issues produced essentially as collages, which were then photocopied for distribution to all members. One issue in 1994 actually had more than half of its 16 sides occupied by such cuttings from items published elsewhere.
February 1995 saw the first issue produced entirely by word processing, including some of the ‘desktop publishing’ features of Word, with which most translators were by then having to become familiar. From then onwards, photocopying was used solely to produce the copies that would be distributed to Network members.
In July 1997, the Newsletter was given a completely revised masthead showing the new ITI logo, the previous version being a black-on-white line design of the ITI ‘house’ symbol, rather than the solid version in a circle (and often the whole logo being white reversed out of black) that we now see.
The September 1999 issue included an item that looks (to me) particularly promising but was not subsequently developed: a list of 45 collective names (a “pride of lions” and “un banc de poissons”, for instance) translated each way between French and English.
A number of innovations came in 2001. There were four issues, for the first time since 1996, all printed on glossy paper, and this also corresponded with the first Panglossian puzzle (actually a crossword). Hats off to Rae Walter for continuing to come up with new ideas over eight years! The November 2001 issue was the first to bear the name ‘Au courant’, adopted by the then Editor, Jenet Peers, following an appeal for ideas to the Network members.
Four issues, from May 2003 to May 2004, included an alphabetical list of abbreviations (totaling 257 items, if I’ve counted correctly), giving the expansion in each case. Although the terms included were in both French and English, it is not immediately obvious whether the list was intended to assist people in translating in both directions, or if the English abbreviations were those that had been found in a French-language text. Abbreviations are certainly an eternal problem for translators, and many books of them (including those that show only abbreviations found in French documents) have appeared over the past 20 years or so, but whether a list with just a few hundred abbreviations – while covering all subject areas – is likely to be useful to translators is, perhaps, questionable. As a comparison, the newsletter serving the ITI Medical Network obtained permission in 1997 to reproduce a French glossary, with separate lists of abbreviations and English translations in each case, which had originally appeared in The Lancet. In the course of five newsletters, that exercise provided 144 abbreviations used in French medical texts (and I have been grateful for the inclusion of at least one of them in recent months!).
Another feature where it may be wondered whether the use made by general readers justifies the efforts put in by compilers is the solutions and explanations given in relation to problems raised on FrenchNet. This feature initially appeared in the February 2004 issue of Au courant then in all but two of the 11 issues up to January 2007, and has been revived this year. I was amused to notice an explanation of tartiflette (‘a potato dish with cream and cheese’), since the word (or rather the confection thus designated) had recently come to my attention as being London Mayor Boris Johnson’s barometer of inflation in Alpine ski resorts! A prize should be awarded for the person who can suggest the best way of cataloguing or indexing these items so that they can be found when needed.
After occasional hiccups in producing Au courant on glossy paper and then sending it by post to members (matt paper used in August 2003, and the use of A4 sheets rather than folded A3 sheets in February 2005), January 2007 saw the introduction of distribution by e-mail. We can now choose our own method of storing and reading the newsletter, and this has been responsible for an enormous reduction in the Network’s costs, keeping down our subscriptions.