This week I went to Le Marché du Livre and bought myself a couple of french adolescent novels from Quebec authors in order to improve my french. Because, frankly, my french sucks.
I can speak it very well, but my vocabulary is kinda limited. And reading really takes a long time for me to process. I’ve resorted to translating what I’m reading into english just so I can understand what it is saying.
So I figured, reading adolscent novels won’t be so indimidating because the vocabulary should be a lot simpler and having been written by Quenec authors means that there won’t be too many words I won’t understand.
I remember buying a couple of novels a couple of years ago. I read the back and it seemed really easy to read. And the novels were really, novellas, about 200 pages. So I sat down one day to read one of them and hit this word on the first paragraph that I didn’t understand. So i emailed my sister what it meant and sent her the paragraph for context. All I got from her was a big, WTF!! So we get my dad involved who quickly provided with the definition.
So I decided, if this is how its going to be, I’m getting a dictionary.
Got the dictionary and started reading the novel, sorry, novella again. I think I hit something like 6 or 7 words on that first page that I didn’t understand. And these aren’t words that you can skip and get the drift of the paragraph. These were key words, which is why it was so important that I understand them.
Now, as everyone knows, once you understand a word, you go back a few paragraph and reread again to get the drift. Well it took me two days to get past the first page, and I still couldn’t just read it because I couldn’t process those new words fast enough.
So I told my mom about this. And she said, of course, because the novels were from Italian authors and translated into french in France. So they were using a vocabulary that isn’t used in Quebec. For those who want the challenge try Une banane dans l’oreille and Appelez-moi Chérie! Good luck.
5 responses so far ↓
nymeria87 // May 17, 2008 at 4:22 pm
haha, sounds like the first English book I read. It was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and heck it took me months to get through it
Right now I can only say that knowing multiple languages is a bliss because I can relate words that I don’t know yet to similar ones in another language
Good luck with the French reading. I can recommend “Au revoir, les enfants” even though the author slips my mind right now… It’s a good, short read
Don // May 17, 2008 at 8:30 pm
What is sad about all this is that French is my native language.
nymeria87 // May 19, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Well, it happens and it really depends on where the author’s from. Louis Malle’s the author of Au Revoir, Les Enfants btw.
Kathleen Molloy // June 2, 2008 at 6:39 am
There have been some wonderful Quebec French to Quebec English translations in Canada and then there have been some the other way around that make your head spin. Congrats for diving head first into the French text. I know it isn’t easy. When the translator of my novel Dining with Death tackled some of the play on words to create La Mort au menu she had a hell of a time flipping the jokes and the dirty words. And then the copy editor had to make sure that La Mort au menu made sense. Finally, the proof read (who was from France) red circled much of the Quebec slang and we had to stand our ground to keep it in the story. Sometimes a translation is so far off fromt he original and sometimes it is bang on. So my advice is while you may feel that you have a banana in your ear at least you are not out in the potatoes! Good luck with it and keep slugging along.
Kathleen Molloy, author - Dining with Death
http://www.kathleenmolloy.offo.ca
http://www.diningwithdeath.ca
http://www.lamortaumenu.ca
Don // June 2, 2008 at 8:53 am
I read about novels written specifically for the Quebec French language. Maybe I’ll try your book eventually.
My french is already improving a lot.
And the title for the french translation is very good. It had a different feel than the English one.
Leave a Comment