Jonathan : You were born in the United States. Where and when did you learn French ?

In high school I had four years of traditional instruction in French. Years later, I realized my teachers had taught me all the French grammar I would ever need to know (more than all, in fact: I have never had to translate the pluperfect subjunctive!). But I could hardly speak the language. Reasonable fluency in conversation did not come until after college, when I found myself in a former French colony, Senegal, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. I’ve lost the little Wolof I learned there, but French has stayed with me.

 

Jonathan : How did you become a translator ?

By chance, and relatively late in life. In 1990 my wife’s employer offered her a two-year expatriate assignment in Paris, and I knew it was too good a deal to pass up. I quit my salaried job, we moved to France with our two young daughters, and I became a stay-at-home dad a.k.a “househusband”. After a few months, I cast about for something gainful to do while the kids were in school. I had a computer, good keyboard skills, and familiarity with Microsoft Word. A friend of a friend had started a translation company in the city. I was presumptuous enough to think I could translate from French to English. I asked that person to let me try. She did, and that is how I got started – at 0,35 FRF a word. I was a generalist then: I would translate any text I was offered.

 

Jonathan : What are your fields of specialization ?

Only one: financial. Within six months of starting out as a translator, I had found that I could specialize in what I knew from my previous life. I had a graduate degree in economics and a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) credential in investment management. There was much that I still had to learn about banking, law, accounting and so on, but I was better positioned than most to acquire the knowledge I would need.

 

Jonathan : Do you prefer to translate or interpret?

I do not do interpreting at all. I would not be good at it, and it does not suit me. One thing I like very much about translating is that I do not have to leave the house to do it!

 

Jonathan : Who are your  clients ?

At this point I have just two. Both are smallish translation companies in Paris that I have been working with for fifteen years. The market for what I do is mainly in Europe, not in North America. I am happy not to work directly for end customers. From nine time zones away, I am not going to keep Paris office hours; I want an intermediary to do that for me.

 

Jonathan : Do you use machine translation (MT) software?

I do. For every translation. I am now so used to a translation-memory environment that I have difficulty going back to the old way. For translating, I have been using one CAT tool in particular for some nine years. For aligning and generating bitexts, I use a different program. My project for the next few months is to become proficient in one of the newer CAT tools that handles both tasks well. I’ve owned the new software for several months but haven’t had time to learn it.

 

What do you find to be the most difficult aspect of translating financial texts?

Without question, the greatest difficulty is getting the terminology right: choosing the appropriate terms and wielding them correctly. For me, this is the definition of what a translator has to be able to do to be a specialist – in any field.

 

The trickiest challenges in financial terminology are often hidden behind common words and phrases. For example, take “consolidation” in the accounting sense. The very same word is used in both French and English, much of the time in the very same way – but there is one key difference in what the word is understood to mean in France. Suffice it to say that I know no way to state this meaning precisely in a phrase of fewer than eight English words. And that is a problem because where this difference matters, mistranslation can be a major error.

 

A different kind of challenge is posed by the French phrase « franchissement de seuil[s de détention] », common in securities law and regulation. Here, the equivalent term in English is the semantically unrelated phrase “notification of major holdings”. It is not strictly speaking a translation, but it is the term the translator will need to use in almost any text in which this subject comes up. In both languages, the term used is a shorthand reference to a disclosure obligation, but each shorthand focuses on a different aspect of the obligation.

 

Very interesting.  Very many thanks, Robert.

 

You’re welcome.

 

– the publication of another book based on a manuscript hidden for years

On this blog we recently announced (Actualités littéraires aux États Unis) the publication on 15 July of Harper Lee's second book Go Set a Watchman, which created an enormous amount of buzz not only in literary circles, and went straight to the top of the bestselling lists even before its publication.  This week witnessed a second major literary event, the publication on July 28 by Random House of What Pet Should I Get? by America's iconic author and illustrator of children's books, Dr. Seuss (whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel – 1904-1991).

 

 

Both authors have enjoyed enormous success. Lee's first book, first published in 1960, Go Kill a Mockingbird was translated into French and many other languages (and Watchman is due to be published in French by Grasset in October under the title Va et poste une sentinelle). The works of Dr. Seuss have sold 600 million copies [1], (including such French titles as Les Oeufs verts au Jambon, Poisson Un, Poisson Deux, Le Chat chapeauté). Neverthless, both of them may be less well known outside of the United States than they are to American readers.

This is a timely occasion to briefly compare and contrast these recent publications.

What the two books have in common is not only their proximate dates of publication, but the fact that the geneses of both were manuscripts written decades ago (Watchman in 1960 and What Pet Should I Get? somewhere between 1958 and 1962) that were only recently discovered.  Seuss’s widow found the manuscript of To Get a Pet shortly after his death but set it aside, and it was re-discovered only two years ago. It should be a source of encouragement to budding writers that Watchman, said to have been written before Mockingbird, was rejected for publication, and the same is true for Seuss's first book And to Think that I saw it on Mulberry Street – rejected by no fewer than 29 publishers.

Admittedly, Dr. Seuss  wrote for a very different readership, young children, than did Harper Lee, but it should be remembered that part of Harper Lee's success is due to the fact that Mockingbird has been assigned as a textbook to generations of schoolchildren in the United States. The Seuss books also have an important place in educational history in the USA, because they are credited with changing the reading habits of millions of American children and making reading into a fun experience.

As one review states (in verse);

Dr. Seuss helped us learn how to read,
Boomers, X-ers and millennials all.
He made up new words — like “lightninged” and “nerd,”
And also made reading a ball!

Mockingbird was made into a film, with Gregory Peck in the lead role. Four of Seuss's books have been made into films, many years after they were first published :

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
The Cat in the Hat (2003)
Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
The Lorax (2012)

In April Random House increased their first printing of What Pet Should I Get? from 500,000 to 1 million because of demand.

The book was reviewed last week on the front page of The New York Times Book Review Section, which attests to the importance attributed to any new book written by Dr. Seuss, who died 24 years ago. [2] [3]

Rapper Tyler, the Creator, donned a full Cat-in-the-Hat suit on a popular TV show and rapped the entire new book.

 

But despite the importance attached to this latest publication of a Seuss book, it is unlikely to cause the same amount of brouhaha as the earlier major event of the literary scene, if only because What Pet Should I Get? will be Dr. Seuss's 47th book. [4] 

from What Pet Should I Get? 

It remains to see when a French translation will be published. Previous Dr. Seuss books have been translated into French by Anne-Laure Fournier Le Ray.

[1] compared with the Harry Potter books, which have sold 450 million copies.

[2] Three other books were published posthumously.

[3] Harper Lee is alive at 89, but lives a secluded life and by some accounts suffers from amnesia. Consequently it has not been possible to clear the fog of mystery or any of the conspiracy theories surrounding the pause in her career of 55 years before Watchman surfaced so dramatically.

[4] of which 44 were illustrated by Dr. Seuss himself.

 

Lecture supplémentaire :

Dr. Seuss Book: Yes, They Found It in a Box
The New York Times, July 21, 2015

Reading Aloud to My Daughter, From Prison
The New York Times, July 7, 2015

 

 Jonathan G.

Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity in 1915. Initially we wanted to cover the anniversary of this event on the blog, but in searching for an original angle, not covered by the mainstream press, we came across a lesser-known but equally interesting member of his family, Lieserl, his daughter.

No-one is better qualified to present to our readers the unusual story of Lieserl and her relationship to the German scientist than Michele Zackheim, author of EINSTEIN'S DAUGHTER: The Search for Lieserl (and of other fascinating books [1]). For many years she worked in the visual arts as a fresco muralist, an installation artist, a print-maker, and a painter. Her work has been widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and in many other museums throughout the United States. She has been the recipient of two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Michele teaches Creative Writing from a Visual Perspective at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Ms. Zackheim very kindly agreed to write the following article for the blog.

——————–

The New York Times a fait état de la découverte d'une correspondance amoureuse entre Albert Einstein et Mileva Marić. On y apprit qu'en 1902, avant leur mariage, ils avaient eu une fille du nom de Lieserl. Jusque-là, il n'avait jamais été question de Lieserl dans la biographie d'Einstein.

 Mileva Marić et Albert Einstein

In 1987, The New York Times ran an article about the discovery of love letters between Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić. In that correspondence it was disclosed for the first time that in 1902, before they were married, they had a daughter. They named her Lieserl. Until these letters were discovered, she had not been written into the Einstein story.

    It intrigued me to think that hidden deep in the Balkans lurked the mystery of Einstein's missing child, a child whose fate remained unknown. Impetuously, naively, I decided to find her.

    It took me almost seven years to write Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl. My research took me on extensive trips to London, Berlin, Zurich, Bern, and Budapest, and three times to Serbia—twice while the country was at war; once when there was promise in the air.

Albert Einstein had always been my idol. In my small town in California, he was the only Jewish figure who didn't elicit anti-Semitic rhetoric. It never entered my mind that I would grow to dislike him deeply. But I did.

* * *

One day in 1994, I drove along the freeway that edges San Francisco Bay to Albany, California. It was a foggy day and the saltwater scent of the bay was delicious. I had an appointment to visit Evelyn Einstein, Albert's granddaughter. That first visit prompted a turbulent fifteen years of friendship.

    Evelyn met me at the front door and then quickly sat down in a wheelchair that was decorated with garish plastic Star Trek gewgaws. She was a heavy, somewhat plain-looking woman with cropped brown-and-silver hair, and she wore black pants, tan Birkenstock sandals, and a bright crimson shirt. (Each time I saw her over the next fifteen years, she was wearing the exact same, clean, well-ironed shirt.) Attached to her collar was a silver Star Trek pin with a button.

    "I like pushing this button," she said to me as soon as we shook hands. "Look." She pushed it and laughed when I was startled by the loud noise.

As she guided me into the living room between piles of wet boxes, I was swept back in time to the rooms I had seen in her grandmother Mileva's houses in both Titel and Novi Sad, in Serbia. Evelyn's furniture was the same style—heavy and dark and uninviting. I couldn't tell if the upholstery was gray or just dingy.

A few days earlier, a water pipe had burst and flooded the living room. The tables were covered with piles of damp paper. The sofa was heaped with musty boxes. I was soon to become familiar with Evelyn's house: a chaotic, jumbled repository of history.

When I tried to sympathize with her about the disaster, she merely laughed. "Oh, don't be concerned," she said. "My house is always a bit upside down."

I was invited to move some boxes and sit on a clammy sofa while Evelyn faced me in her wheelchair.

"I have to apologize," she said, "for not dressing up for your visit. You see, my mother never taught me how to dress. And, as you can see," she said, making a sweeping motion with her arm, "I have inherited my family's slovenly behavior. I'm not elegant. You could shoot me before you would get me into nylon stockings. High heels have always horrified me! Anyway, I try not to stand out in company."

All of a sudden, a crowd of clocks began to chime.

"I have twenty Swiss pendulum clocks," Evelyn said over the racket, "and I love the cacophony."

Evelyn appeared to take a perverse joy in confusion. I soon learned that she would begin a conversation, whether on the phone or in person, cautiously. If I simply chatted about my family, she would begin to warm up. By the time we were halfway into our conversation, she was speaking freely and easily, with a wonderful, high-spirited humor. And I could always depend on hearing her lively—and cranky—reflections on world politics.

Evelyn was often difficult, yet I enjoyed her shrewd intelligence and her humor. When I visited, I could make her happy by driving her to her favorite sushi restaurant in Berkeley and treating her to whatever she wanted. One late afternoon, over an enormous amount of sushi, she said, "Most of the time, I'm alone. I'm quite a hermit. My problems drive my friends away. I feel totally abandoned. You'll drop out of my life at some time. Just wait and see."

Many years passed before her demands and her insatiable need for attention finally wore me down, just as she promised.

But in retrospect, she was the only one in that family who had a sense of humor.

* * *

Einstein's son Hans and his wife Frieda adopted Evelyn from an agency in Chicago, Illinois. She was told that her birth mother was a simple farm girl and her father a farm hand. But her adoptive mother told a close friend that Evelyn was actually Albert's daughter; that she was the result of one of his many dalliances. [2] Einstein insisted that Hans, even though his wife was ill by then, adopt her.

I don't know the truth, although I've heard this story from various sources.

Evelyn tried having Einstein's DNA tested with matter from his brain. "The great man's brain had disintegrated in formaldehyde, so it was useless. Anyway," she said, "One has to ask if two farm hands in the Midwest could have a daughter with my IQ." Evelyn Einstein's was 178.

    "Hans Albert, my adoptive father, may really be my brother—and my brother, Bernhard, may really be my nephew. And when I'm in a good mood, I enjoy a perverse delight in the entire scenario!"

Evelyn did not like the iconic image of Einstein sticking out his tongue. It was taken sixty-four years ago, after a birthday party honoring him at The Princeton Club. He was tired and didn't want another camera in his face. Understandable, yes. But why is this photograph considered a reflection of his humor? He was not being funny; he was being nasty. Sticking out one's tongue is considered a gesture of contempt, an insult. But the aura of saintliness that surrounded Einstein was solid. He had become an icon.

True, often he was funny and captivating and wise – but always with his friends and lovers and the general public. Not with his family. With his family he was gruff and unforgiving. I never heard a funny story about him from family members.

In 1997, when Evelyn's birthday was approaching, I asked her what she wanted more than anything in the world. "I want to meet the actor Robin Williams. He's the most intelligent, funny, intuitive person I have ever seen."

    I wrote him a letter and within two weeks had scheduled a meeting between Evelyn and Robin Williams, who lived in the San Francisco area. On the appointed date, he drove to Evelyn's house with his assistant. They spent two hours together. She was thrilled. Over the telephone after the visit, her voice sounded more hopeful than it ever had. I asked her how the meeting went.

    "I don't remember ever meeting a famous person," she told me. I reminded her about her grandfather, about Robert Oppenheimer, about Churchill's daughter, about the attempt to make a love match between her and Edward Teller's nephew.

    "They were not anywhere in the same league as Williams!" Evelyn exclaimed. "He's special; they're ordinary."

Michele Zackheim

[1] Michele's first novel, Violette's Embrace, is a fictional account of an American artist on the trail of the French writer and cult heroine, Violette Leduc. Broken Colors, a novel, traces the path of the painter, Sophie Marks from England of World War II to postwar Paris and the Italian countryside and then on to the American Southwest. Michele's most recent novel Last Train to Paris tells the story of Rose Manon, posted as a foreign correspondent to Paris, who finds herself caught in a web of terror and decades later must come to terms with the consequences of a heart-wrenching decision. The novel is in the tradition of bestsellers such as Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky.

 

       

Violet's Embrace                            Broken Colors                     The Last Train to Paris

 

 [2] The daughter of Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric’s , Lieserl was born in 1902 in Titel, in the Vojvodina, before the couple married. Albert was in Bern when she was born and never saw his daughter; indeed he refused to travel to Titel to see her.  Mileva stayed with Lieserl for a year in Vojvodina and then joined Albert in Bern where they were married. Lieserl was left with her grandparents and died in a scarlet fever epidemic when she was about three years old.  No grave was registered or found.

In my interviews with Evelyn Einstein, she often raised the idea that she was the result of a love affair between Albert Einstein and a dancer from New York.  However, the only material I could find about Evelyn was her birth certificate stating that she, in 1941, was born “out-of-wedlock” to a young couple in the midwest.  Hans Albert and Frieda Einstein adopted her from a foundling agency in Chicago.  Evelyn’s theory was that Albert Einstein thought that his son and daughter-in-law should adopt her because (1) they had just lost a child and (2) he felt guilty about abandoning Lieserl in 1902.

 

The following interview was conducted in English by Skype between Los Angeles CA and Stamford, Connecticut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                 
                            

M. de  J. – l'interviewee                      J.G. – l'interviewer

 

 

 

Connecticut in fall                                California in fall                             

 ———————————————————————————–

LMJ: You were born in Indonesia, which at that time was the Dutch East Indies [1]. What brought your parents there?

 

Marjolijn: We are talking about MANY generations back, on my father’s side at least 5 generations back to the mid-nineteenth century; on my mother’s maternal side at least 3 generations back.

LMJ: So your mother language was Dutch? Were you schooled in Dutch?

Marjolijn: I was born on Borneo where my father worked in the Royal Dutch Oil fields. In March of 1942 when the Japanese invaded the then Dutch East Indies we were living on Java. (The book Song of Survival: Women Interned, written by Helen Colijn, which tells the story of the British missionary, Margaret Dryburg, takes place in one of the camps on Sumatra.)  The Japanese incarcerated all non-Indonesians into camps of women and children only (boys until the age of 10) and men’s camps. Women were made to work in the banana plantations, herding swine, or digging pits; children were to tend the vegetable gardens, the produce of which went to the Japanese commander’s house. Education was strictly forbidden.

My mother, at great risk, had decided she didn’t want an illiterate child and began to teach me and a small group (4, 5?) of other children with a stick in the sand, as there weren’t any paper, pencils, or books. She was not a teacher but simply improvised, taking things a step further when we appeared to be ready to move on. Miraculously, all but one of us entered 4^th grade after the war was over. When we arrived in Melbourne I was 9 years old and very warmly dealt with at St. Michael’s Anglican school. I did end up repeating 4^th grade in Amsterdam a year later because the material taught in Melbourne and in Amsterdam was too different and, of course, I had not had any Dutch history at all.

LMJ: Having been a survivor of WW2 at a young age, did you feel a special affinity to Anne Frank.

Marjolijn: Yes, to some extent but much of that was also due to my not having any friends in Amsterdam yet and to our being so close in age, that is to say the age I was when reading her diary and the age she was when writing it. In real time, born in 1929, she was 7 years older than I.  She seemed like a far-flung friend to me. My diary was similar to hers in that it talked about school and school friends and such. When I read through it a few years later I found it self-absorbed and I destroyed it, as I have done with every other diary I ever kept for any length of time, stopping that activity definitively when I was in my thirties.

LMJ:  You completed B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. studies in the USA. What were your majors? What was the subject of your doctoral thesis?

  Marjolijn: B.A. from Hunter College in NYC with a major in French and a minor in Classical Greek. M.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with a major in French and a minor in Spanish. Ph.D. from the same university with a major in French Literature, a 1st minor in Spanish Literature and a 2nd minor (required) in Comparative Literature. My doctoral dissertation was a stylistic study of one of the books (“Les Feux”) of Agrippa d’Aubigné’s lengthy epic Les Tragiques, concerning the Huguenots and their suffering at the hands of the Catholic Church.

LMJ: You taught summer courses at New York University for 10 years. Tell our readers about that.

Marjolijn: I began teaching Literary Translation (French à English) in NYU’s SCPS program, which as an elective course was then offered for ten weeks only in the summer. If I am not mistaken all the courses are taught on-line these days and I must confess that I am happy I was still able to teach this face-to-face! The students were completing many required courses in specific areas (Legal, Medical, Commercial translation) and this was one of the few they could choose as an elective.

LMJ: You have a long list of honors and awards. Which one gave you the most satisfaction?

Marjolijn: The African Literature Association  has been and still is the most important professional organization to which I belong. For me it has been an education from the beginning in areas of literature and cultures of which I knew (and still do) all too little. After my membership of almost 28 years it has also become a community of friends for me, which I cherish. Receiving the Distinguished Membership Award from the ALA for my translations of Francophone African literature in particular was a crowning touch coming from an immensely respected and extraordinary organization.

LMJ: You were invited to be translator-in-residence at the Villa Gillet in Lyon. [1] Tell our readers a little about that.

Marjolijn: I found out that one could apply if working on a French or Francophone project of interest to them, so I did with Ken Bugul’s Riwan ou le Chemin de sable (1999). In September 2007 I spent an intensely satisfying month there, finishing about half the text and in the interim getting to know Lyon in many of its marvelous culturally rich aspects. Unfortunately, no publisher was ever found for the translation and I had to abandon the project when other (paying!) work came around.

LMJ: You first visited Africa in 1986 and subsequently made several visits to West Africa in the 1990s. What took you there?

 
Marjolijn: The purpose of my first visit was to visit my son, who had volunteered for the Peace Corps in Togo. Subsequent visits were to Togo, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. On two such occasions I went on grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and on two others for African Literature Association Conferences. I did research in those countries, with the assistance of my husband who was a professional photographer and who videographed subjects of interest. He filmed one 75-minute documentary that I presented at an ALA Conference.

LMJ: Explain the connection between your family’s colonial background and your interest in Africa

Marjolijn: I have been an activist all my life and have always despised colonialism, so that having the ability to use my professional activities to bring the voices of some African writers to an English readership was, and remains, very much a political action for me, in addition to the love I bring to these texts, of course.

LMJ: Can you name two African authors whose works you admire and have translated, and whom you have come to know personally.

Marjolijn : Werewere Liking, originally from Cameroon, has been living in Côte d’Ivoire for most of her adult life. She established the Village KI-YI M'Bock (signifying "ultimate knowledge" in Bassa, Liking's native language) in 1985 on the periphery of the city of Abidjan. (The Village KI-YI can be found on-line in many different entries.) Its purpose is to protect and maintain traditional Pan-African culture in all its forms, ranging from theater, dance, music (both instrumental and vocal), the plastic arts, costume design to performances and classes for adolescents. Liking is a truly Renaissance person in that she is equally gifted in almost all of these arts herself. In addition she is a really fine painter and playwright and an exceptional novelist. Of her novels I have translated three: The Amputated Memory (The Feminist Press, 2007), It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral (Journal of a Misovire), and Love-Across-a-Hundred-Lives (University of Virginia Press, CARAF, 2000). Although I admire and love all of them, my personal favorite is Love-Across-a-Hundred-Lives for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is the amazing character of the grandmother who weaves in and out of the narrative, spreading her wisdom (literally) across the ages.

The novelist and filmmaker Assia Djebar is from Algeria where she grew up and did her university studies, before moving to Paris. In June of 2005 she was elected to the Académie Française, the first Maghrebian author to receive this honor.

Her film Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua (1978) is the story of an Algerian woman engineer returning to Algeria after a long Western exile. Women are always the main focus in her work – women in their relationship to society, to the men in their lives, to their professional and private worlds, to exile and to war – mixing historical truth and mythical material, as well as autobiographical and fictional elements. Of the many works she has written I have translated the following: Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War (The Feminist Press, 2005), Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, (CARAF, University of Virginia Press, 1992), Algerian White, co-translator: David Kelley (Seven Stories Press, 2001).

   

Thanks to a great extent to the ALA and to university departments of African Studies and African Literature, among others, African literature and African writers individually have finally gained some of the prestige, recognition and attention that must be paid to them in the West. We need to get away from the Euro-centered world and these works are among some of the finest guides to get us there.

 

LMJ: What translating projects unrelated to African writers have you found to be particularly interesting or challenging?

 

Marjolijn :  In the past few years I have had the pleasure of working on several psychoanalytic books written in Dutch (two by Hendrika Freud and two by Antonie Ladan). Psychology and psychoanalysis have always been of great interest to me; the challenge lay in working on a text whose content is not all that familiar to me on a professional level. However, as with some of the African writers, I was friends (since childhood!) with the former and able to approach the other so that LMJs I had could be sent directly to them, always a blessing and – more often than not – a necessity.

LMJ: Finally, of all the works you have translated, can you mention any particular one to which you feel a special affinity.

Marjolijn: One of my own favorite translations is Myriam Antaki’s Verses of Forgiveness, a small, supremely lyrical novel that takes place in the Middle East, whose theme is the tragedy caused on so many levels by Judaism, Christianity and Islam’s misunderstanding of each other.

   

Marjolijn de Jager's contact details :
(203) 322-0706, mdjtranslations@gmail.com

 ——————————————————————
Footnotes  by Jean Leclercq:

 

[1] Thanks to its hardy navigators – whom we sometimes tend to forget – the tiny royalty of the Netherlands was able to carve out (and to preserve until the 20^th century) a vast colonial empire in Asia and in the Americas. In the East this enterprise was the achievement of a commercial company, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (the VOC), created by the Dutch Republic of the Seven United Provinces in 1602. The VOC also maintained a monopoly over Japan’s commerce with the West. Before being dissolved in 1799, the VOC was the instrument of Batavian capitalism and imperialism over two centuries. Subsequently, the colony of the East Indies was managed as a separate entity. Its defense was ensured by a private army of mercenaries, and it was independent of the Dutch metropolitan forces. The poet Arthur Rimbaud signed up to serve in the East Indies, and after undergoing basic training in Den Helder (in Zeeland), he was sent to Java. He took very poorly to military life; he was quick to desert and returned to Europe by working on a cargo ship. That fleeting experience in the Far East must certainly have been a revelation for the young man from the Ardennes.

 

[2] Aubigné (Agrippa d'),1551-1630. « French poet, born close to Pons, in Saintonge (a former French province) a childhood friend of King Henry the Fourth, who remained an avowed Protestant all his life. Extremely precocious, he could read Latin, Greek and Hebrew before the age of eight years. (Dictionnaire des littératures, published under the direction of Philippe Van Tieghem. Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1968, pp. 258-259).

   

Agrippa d'Aubigné lived and died in the Maison de la Rive, Hotel de ville Street, Geneva.

He was the grandfather of Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquess of Maintenon, second wife of King Louis XIV

 

[3] A deformation of the German word Eidgenossen (name of the Genevan partisans of the confederation opposing the Duke of Savoie), which the French Catholics ended up using (originally pejoratively) to refer to Calvin Protestants in France. The wars of religion opposed the Papists and the Huguenots. French synonym: parpaillot(ote).

 

[4] La Villa Gillet, located in the Cerisaie Park at 25, rue Chazière, Lyon, aspires to be a laboratory of ideas. Artists and thinkers meet there periodically to contemplate together the problems of the contemporary world. The building was constructed in 1912, designed by the architect Joseph Folléa for the Gillet family, rich local industrialists. In May each year, the Assises internationales du Roman are held there. It is worth noting that since 2011 the Villa Gillet organises "Walls & Bridges – Transatlantic Insights" in New York. This festival is designed to facilitate a dialogue between French and American thinkers and artists.

 —————————

Additional reading:

Literary Translation by Marjolijn de Jager, Ph.D. 

Paradise Road (1997 film)

 

 

E X C L U S I V E    I N T E R V I E W

linguist of the month of February 2017 

Jonathan Goldberg interviewed Professor Ayres-Bennett by Skype from Los Angeles 

 

Echo Park, Los Angeles	The Cam River, Cambridge

Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Professor of French Philology and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, [1] works on the history of the French language and the history of linguistic thought, particularly in seventeenth-century France. Her major research interests include questions of standardisation and codification, linguistic ideology and policy, variation and change, from the sixteenth century to the present day. A bibliography of the selected works of Professor Ayres-Bennett, appears after this interview.

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LMJ : For how many years did you learn French at school and at what point did your interest in French become so rooted that you realized it would become the cornerstone of your career?

W A-B : As was typical for my generation in the UK, I began studying French at the age of 11. I continued studying it at school for 7 years, and completed high school with Latin as my second language, and German as my third. My parents and sister were keen mathematicians, but I was drawn to languages, thanks to an early fascination with words, crossword puzzles, dictionaries, etc. I did my undergraduate degree in French and German at Cambridge and then went on to do postgraduate studies leading to a DPhil. at Oxford. I am currently a Professorial Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.

   

LMJ : What was the subject of your doctorate?

W A-B : As an undergraduate I loved the history of linguistics, the history of the French language and seventeenth-century French literature. As a result I became fascinated with the mid-17^th century linguist, Claude Favre de VAUGELAS. He established a reputation as an influential commentator on the French language but the specific contents of his work, Remarques sur la langue françoise utiles à ceux qui veulent bien parler et bien escrire, Paris, 1647, were less known. They intrigued me and I wanted to study them in detail.

LMJ : You were the lead researcher on a project on the genre of observations on the French language. The Corpus des remarques sur la langue française (XVIIe siècle) was published by Classiques Garnier Numérique in 2011 and constitutes an important part of the Grand Corpus des grammaires françaises, des remarques et des traités sur la langue (XIVe-XVIIe siècles).

What were the stepping stones that led you to that particular field of research?

W A-B : Vaugelas's observations generated a whole series of other works of a similar kind. These volumes of observations are typically French, and complement dictionaries, grammar books and more formal teaching manuals. For those who are familiar with the contemporary French linguist, Bernard Cerquiglini, his book "Merci Professeur," and his popular video segments under that title make him a modern-day equivalent of the 17^th-century writers of observations.

In 1635 when the French Academy was founded, the Academicians promised to publish a dictionary, a grammar, a work on poetics and a work on rhetoric. The first edition of the dictionary did not appear until 1694, and the Academy was slow to make progress on the other works. Instead, Vaugelas's observations took the place of the grammar, a series of observations on good French usage or, le bon usage, the title adopted by Maurice Grevisse for his famous grammar in the twentieth century. It is hard to imagine the influence that Vaugelas's remarks had in his day. For instance, the playwright, Pierre Corneille revised his plays in the edition of 1660 to bring the use of French more in line with Vaugelas's grammatical pronouncements. And Racine was supposed to have taken his copy to Uzès in the south of France to prevent his good French usage from being corrupted!

     

LMJ : Does anything exist within the French Academy or independently of it that may be regarded as the 20th century version of those observations?

W A-B : Yes, the French Academy's website now has a column called, "Dire, ne pas dire" which contains such linguistic "dos and don'ts". French national and regional newspapers with language columns or chroniques de langage are another source of guidance on matters of the French language. As mentioned, linguists like Cerquiglini are also in some ways successors to Vaugelas and what we call the French remarqueurs.

   

LMJ : One of your fields of study has been diachrony. Can you explain that field to our readers and how etymology relates to it.

W A-B : This is basically a simple concept: diachrony considers how and why language changes over the course of time. Etymology deals essentially with the origin of particular words or the historical development of their form and meaning. My own interest is principally in the history of particular French constructions, e.g. the history of French word order or of negative constructions.

Traditionally the history of French relied on looking at literary texts, but I have tried to trace changes in more common usage or the vernacular by looking at other types of texts. It is not really until the 20^th century that we get recordings of speech, so we have to be ingenious as historians of a language to try and find sources that best reflect more informal and spoken styles.

   

LMJ : From Cambridge, the centre of your work since 1983, the influence of your research has gained recognition in France and beyond. Can you mention some of the awards and prizes you have received?

W A-B : I was fortunate to be awarded the Prix d'Académie by the French Academy in 1997 and then again the Prix Georges Dumézil in 2013 for my work on Vaugelas and the French remarqueurs. In 2004 I became an Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques for my services to French education and culture.

 

LMJ : One of the two most recent works that you edited was Bon Usage et variation sociolinguistique: Perspectives diachroniques et traditions nationales (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2013). Which sociolinguistic aspects do you think are of the greatest interest to the layman.

W A-B : Sociolinguistic variation looks at how language changes according to the sex, age, education or socio-economic status of the speaker. I have looked at this type of variation historically for French and have been interested, for instance, in exploring how men and women's language differed in the past or whether we can see the direction of future change in the speech of young people.

In seventeenth-century France there was a movement against grammar being too formal or pedantic and that is why the volumes of observations did not follow the format of part of speech grammars but were intended to deal with points of doubtful usage in a pleasing way (just as Cerquiglini does today). At this time, women came to be seen as the arbiters of good usage, because their view of "good" French was not "contaminated" by any knowledge of Greek or Latin grammar.

 

LMJ : Your latest project is the MEITS research project, of which you are the Principal Investigator, leading teams from four prominent British universities and comprising about 35 researchers. Can you describe it in a nutshell?

W A-B : MULTILIGUALISM: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies, launched last year on the European Day of Languages, is a major interdisciplinary research project funded under the Open World Research Initiative of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Universities of Cambridge, Queen's (Belfast), Edinburgh and Nottingham are the partners conducting it. We are also working with a whole range of non-academic partners, ranging from small grassroot bodies such as the Cambridge Ethnic Community Forum to major bodies such as the British Chambers of Commerce or Age UK. Linguistic competence in more than one language – being multilingual – sits at the heart of the study of modern languages and literatures, distinguishing it from cognate disciplines. Through six interlocking research strands we investigate how the insights gained from stepping outside a single language, culture and mode of thought are vital to individuals and societies.

 

LMJ : The MEITS research proposal appears to be very ambitious in its vision, its goals and the different aspects of multilingualism set down. We cannot cover all these aspects within this interview but we will encourage our readers to access the material available digitally. 

Some of those goals are at a macro level, e.g. "To create a cultural shift in the conception and practice of language learning." At the micro level one of your aims is "to have a transformative effect on language learning at the level of the individual."  How will all the conclusions and fruits of your research filter down to the prospective multilingual student or practitioner?

 

W A-B : MEITS seeks to show how languages are important to key issues of our time, such as social cohesion, conflict resolution and national security. Instrumental arguments in favour of learning a language have tended not to succeed because English speakers know that they can 'get by' in many places in the world without knowing the local language. So we are looking for other reasons to encourage language learning. For example, we are beginning to discover that learning other languages offers enormous cognitive benefits. Research is showing that the study of languages by people in their 60s or older can improve their attention span or indeed help slow down the onset of dementia, and such findings will be important for an aging society. We plan exciting new research conducted through a holistic prism. We hope that people will come to realise the beneficial and intrinsic value of learning languages. The scale and scope of MEITS will hopefully make it transformative, and we are going to work with schools and other bodies to ensure our results are widely disseminated.

 

LMJ : Which other bodies will be brought in?

W A-B : We plan to have an outreach programme that will involve schools, policymakers, charitable bodies, and other non-academic partners, who will all disseminate the results, and help elevate the status of language learning in the public perception. To give you an example, my team will be working in Northern Ireland with Co-Operation Ireland (an all-island peace-building charity) and particularly its LEGaSI project which seeks to develop leadership skills and confidence in disenfranchised loyalist communities. The alienation felt by this community towards Irish language and culture is being tackled in two ways. First, through the study of place names. In showing that Irish is part of the shared 'linguistic landscape' of Northern Ireland, greater awareness of the rootedness of the linguistic traditions is promoted across the whole community. Empowerment of loyalist communities, including former paramilitaries, is also being facilitated through language training in Irish. This allows them to feels some ownership of the language as well as developing the soft diplomatic skills which will help them to negotiate respectfully across the community divide. This then is a good example of how learning languages can help build bridges.

   

LMJ : You mentioned that you discovered museums in Britain for things as uncommon as lawnmowers, but none for languages. Please elaborate.

W A-B : As a further step in bringing the benefits of MEITS to the wider public, we are going to set up pop-up museums in various high-street shops across the UK which will have fun and interactive displays and activities explaining our results to the general public. When I started putting the project together, I was astonished to find that the UK has a museum for dog collars and another for lawnmowers, but not for languages, despite their centrality to so much of human activity. We hope that these temporary exhibitions will in time lead to a permanent national museum.

 

LMJ : We have published two articles on this blog that take up issues raised by Professor Claude Hagège, an articulate "defender" of the French language, who has written books and articles and appeared on TV shows, expressing strong views opposing the domination of English. As my closing question for the benefit of those readers who may have followed this debate and who may have strong views on this subject, what is your view?

W A-B : At French and other Universities where I have been a guest speaker or visiting professor [2] I have found my French colleagues to be torn between the desire to protect their own language and the need to have their research published and read globally, which can be easier if they write in English. Across Europe there is a move to offer university courses in English to attract more international students, but this cannot be at the expense of French and other European languages. It is vital, in my view, that linguistic diversity is maintained and that we protect and promote all languages. This is why in my project we are also looking at 'minoritized' languages such as Irish or Welsh in the UK, Occitan in France or Catalan in Spain. Whilst it is undoubtedly valuable to speak English, this is not enough. That is why the promotion of multilingualism, both for the individual and for societies is crucial.

 

Footnotes:

[1] the renowned British collegiate public research university, founded in 1209.

[2] Professor Ayres-Bennett was Pajus Distinguished Visiting Professor, at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012.

 

 

 

Ayres-Bennett, W. (1987)
Vaugelas and the Development of the French Language.  
London, MHRA

Ayres-Bennett, W. (1996)
A History of the French Language through Texts.
London, Routledge

Ayres-Bennett, W. (2004)
Sociolinguistic Variation in Seventeenth-Century France.
Cambridge, CUP

Ayres-Bennett, W. and Seijido, M. (2011)
Remarques et observations sur la langue française: histoire et évolution d'un genre.
Paris, Classiques Garnier.

Ayres-Bennett, W. (2011)
Corpus des remarques sur la langue française (XVIIe siècle).
Paris, Classiques Garnier Numérique.

 

Additional reading:

Le bon usage: using French correctly
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Audio:

Introducing MEITS Part One
Introducing MEITS Part Two

        

An Officer and a Spy :
by Robert Harris

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition
  (January 28, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385349580

reviewed by Donna Scott, Los Angeles

When I first heard that Robert Harris had written an historical novel based on the Dreyfus affair (as the scandal of the 1895 trial and conviction of the French military officer Alfred Dreyfus became known), I was curious as to why a fictional account when there have been so many nonfiction examinations of the case in recent times. I wondered, specifically, what advantage could there be to retelling the story with the author's imagination as an added element?

Harris himself has answered the question as to the "why" he became interested in the project. Film director Roman Polanski had become very interested in the Dreyfus affair and asked him to write a screenplay; Harris decided to work on a book first. They'd collaborated successfully together on the 2010 film, "The Ghost Writer," a political thriller based on Harris' book "The Ghost" about what most agree is arguably a thinly veiled portrayal of Tony Blair and his wife as a ruthless British ex-Prime Minister and wife. Harris, once an avid supporter of Blair, became disenchanted with him when Blair followed George Bush into Iraq.

In the hands of a writer of Harris' abilities, "An Officer and A Spy" turns out to be a great read for readers of historical fiction, spy thrillers and literature. By choosing fiction, Harris gives his readers a keener and more nuanced understanding of the case, its ramifications and its relevancy to today's current events around the world.

For those who are only vaguely familiar with the trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, the many famous French literary and art figures, as well as politicians, caught up in its controversy and ultimate outcome, you truly have a treat in store for you. My own knowledge had been limited to a few of the facts: Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French military was convicted of being a spy; anti-Semitism played an important role; an ensuing libel case involving Emile Zola's famous "J'Accuse…" article resulted in Zola's going into exile, fleeing imprisonment in France; and that whatever else surrounded the case was a black mark on the French military and government of that period. Even for those who are well versed in the subject, I would guess most still aren't familiar with the intrigue surrounding the making and ultimate dismantling of his conviction. Harris makes good use of the audacity, carelessness and humorous stupidity of the guilty parties, which is well documented (much of which is available on the internet).

Harris' narrator is Georges Picquart, a career military man who had once been Dreyfus' teacher, to whom the army is "…my heart and soul, my mirror, my ideal." It's at once a wise, ironic and clever choice on Harris' part rather than choosing the more obvious Alfred Dreyfus. Storytelling is at its best when a character is presented with a predicament and takes a journey that will forever change him. Good literature is not only well written, but does this particularly well, imparting the reader with valuable insight to take back into "real" life. In Harris' retelling of the Dreyfus affair, not only does Picquart go through a series of traumatic events that will irrevocably change him down to his very existential self, but so does the country of France as well. And so, it's doubly satisfying for the reader to experience both the personal and world view.

At the start Picquart is convinced of Dreyfus' guilt, and for his loyalty and participation in the trial is rewarded with a promotion to head the counterespionage agency. Without giving any spoilers away (this reads so much as a thriller that to give you too much of the plot will ruin much of the sheer pleasure of the experience), once Picquart begins examining what seems to be a second case of another soldier passing on military secrets to the Germans, he finds himself in the undesirable position of the reluctant whistle-blower.

Picquart now has access to the documents that were kept secret from all but a select few in the government due to their "sensitive content." The trial itself was clearly absent of due process. Sound familiar? This is only the first of many issues involving the Dreyfus affair that will ring true of today's current events: the rights to due process of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately comes to mind.

The complex thread of mounting evidence in favor of Dreyfus' innocence is meticulously laid out. I found the details not boring, but fascinating puzzle pieces, shared with the reader in real-time as Picquart puts them together. His journey results in self-revelations as he grapples with decisions of if—and how—to move forward with the ruinous information about the military and the men he's so honored to serve. The decision of a political whistle-blower requires due consideration to the collateral damage he will cause. Picquart knows that he will cause harm to personal lives and the very institution of France's government and its military. Many are innocents caught up in the wake of the guilty. No matter on which side we fall, we are reminded that even Julian Assange and Edward Snowden had to have faced similar dilemmas as whistle-blowers.

As Picquart doggedly unravels the evidence that sent Dreyfus to Devil's Island, France's move into modernity becomes increasingly threatened. Its world becomes populated by assassination attempts (both of reputation and physical murder), the lurking serpent of anti-Semitism striking the population of France with its venom, a division of opinion within its famous political and artistic citizenry, and a cover-up we could not have imagined had we not recently lived through our own series of outrageous cover-ups. (When reading Picquart's instructions from the higher-up to drop his investigation into the Dreyfus court-martial because, "It would reopen too many wounds…It would tear the country apart," I found myself screaming at the pages, "it's always the cover-up, stupid!)

Harris takes great pains to expose why the environment in France at the time seemed ripe for the rush to judgment and subsequent wrong-doing perpetrated by so many. There was then in France a feeling of fear and paranoia of Germany, after being defeated by them only twenty-five years earlier in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Dreyfus, a German-Jew with family ties still in Germany, fed these anti-immigrant sentiments. Such sentiments exist in France and throughout parts of the world today as the ethnicity of countries' citizens undergo massive shifts, threatening the nation's identity. As nationalism feeds upon these growing insecurities, we can only hope there will be enough George Picquarts to stem the tides of injustice that follow.

 Donna Scott

 

Non pas comme l’arrogant géant de renommée grecque franchissant terres et mers de son pas conquérant

Ici, à nos portes, baignée par les flots et le soleil couchant, se tiendra une femme,
puissante, portant une torche dans laquelle la foudre est emprisonnée

Son nom est « Mère des exilés ». Son flambeau rayonne,
annonce la bienvenue au monde entier ;

Son regard clément protège le port relié par les ponts unissant les cités jumelles.

Garde donc, vieux monde, tes fastes d’autrefois, proclame-t-elle de ses lèvres closes,
donne-moi tes pauvres, tes sans-abri,
tes masses innombrables rêvant de vivre libres,
misérable refus de rivages surpeuplés.

Envoie-les-moi, les déshérités, que la tempête me les rapporte ! De ma flamme, j’éclaire la porte d’or. 

 

translated from the French: "La vie devant soi" reviewed by Donna Scott

             Donna Scott                               Romain Gary

Right from the start, Romain Gary succeeds in shaking loose the literary shackles that won him the 1956 Prix Grancourt France's coveted literary prize, only to win it a second time (forbidden by the rules) for this novel, under the carefully constructed pseudonym Emile Ajar. No longer bound by the expected literary prose and style of Romain Gary, he creates a voice that is peppered with malapropisms and puns. Through these clever language devices we are forced to read the words with new meanings, turning our collective and personal presumptions about life, human nature and the laws we devise to live by upside down. Readers who skim will lose out.

The tale is doled out with hilarious, insightful and empathetic doses of dark humor, irony and satire by his protagonist Mohammed, uneducated, but with very smart observations. It is a voice we trust and never tire of. Momo, as he's called, is a ten year old Arab boy (later discovering he's actually fourteen), left at the age of three by his sole parent, a prostitute mother, in the care of Madame Rosa, a Jewish Holocaust survivor and former prostitute. The rest of the story is a simple one, told by Momo: he and Madam Rosa are all they have in the world. The trouble is, Madame Rosa is dying, and Momo means to take us on the journey along with him and their community of immigrant Jews, Arabs and Africans, as well as a loving transvestite, to see that this old, fearful Holocaust survivor finds a dignified death.

Author and protagonist share a vague history: Gary, the internationally celebrated author, French war hero and diplomat, was born in Eastern Europe to a Jewish single mother (he never knew his father),  who had great ambitions for her son—a writer being only one of her aspirations. “The Life Before Us” makes use of Gary's background: Momo declares this narration to be “my Miserables.” Gary invites comparisons to Victor Hugo's historic tome of injustices to those of his own Paris in the 1970's. And, while both also contain love stories, the one between the young Arab immigrant and his old and dying Jewish surrogate mother is the very heartbeat of Gary's Miserables. A great distinction is that, Gary's story is language driven; it's impossible to imagine “The Life Before Us” presented by an omniscient narrator, anymore than you can separate Huckleberry Finn's distinctive voice and language in Mark Twain's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

On the very first page, Momo's testimonial of love fills his description of her climb up to their seventh floor walk-up: “(that) Madame Rosa, with all the pounds she had to lug around with her, had more than her share of daily life with its sorrows and cares.” And his humor, as he continues: “She said so, too, whenever she wasn't complaining about something else, because to make matters worse she was Jewish…if ever there was a woman who deserved an elevator it was Madame Rosa.”

On being Arab in France, Momo tells us, “For a long time I didn't know I was an Arab, because nobody insulted me. I only found out when I went to school. But I never got into fights. It always hurts when you hit somebody.” “(She) called me an Arab asshole, for the first time—she'd never done it before because she wasn't French.”

Blacks have it no easier. Momo's Belleville is landscaped with tenements “with as many as a hundred and twenty inmates, eight to a room and only one can…so they go wherever they can, because those things won't wait. Before my time there were shantytowns, but the government cleared them away because they made a bad impression.” About one black: “It seems he'd already killed a few people, but that was between blacks and they had no identity, because they're not French like the American blacks and the police only bother about people who exist.”

Especially provocative is his use of the word abortion: Madame Rosa wouldn't go to a hospital because “in the hospital they let you die until the bitter end, instead of giving you a shot. She said they were against mercy killing in France and forced you to live as long as you were capable of suffering…there was no way of getting abortioned at the hospital.” Abortions had just become legalized in France in 1975—the year “The Life Before Us” was published. However, the debate over euthanasia has once again been reignited since the double suicide in a Paris hotel in November, 2013 in the upscale Saint-Germain district of an 86 year old couple who left behind a letter addressed to French legal authorities “demanding the right to die in a dignified manner.”

Observations about human nature are delivered with dead-pan dark humor: Concerning the disregard in the world, he says, “You've got to decide which kind of disregard you prefer and people always pick the biggest and most expensive, like the Nazis, who cost millions, or Vietnam…People need millions and millions to feel concerned, and you can't blame them, because little things don't amount to much.” “If the army spent its time taking care of old people, it wouldn't be the French Army any more.” “In Africa everyone belongs to a tribe…in France there aren't any tribes on account of self-seeking individualism.” “France is completely detribalized and that's why young people band together and try to do something about it.” One of the kindest people in the book is Madame Lola, a Senegalese transvestite, who wasn't allowed to adopt because “transvestites are too different and that's something that society never forgives.”

Momo's language delights with its delivery, all the while the truths of his messages break our hearts. Romain Gary has applied with great precision what writers have long known: the more specificity you apply, the greater its universality.

Above all, Gary has entertained us, all the while informing us about love, human existence and the meaning of how to live your life. It's no wonder it now finds itself on the syllabus of American Universities.