Le Produit Fini

The Finished Product

I have a finished product! My own translation of the first nine chapters of Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, complete with pictures! (I got the pictures of the drawings off of google. They are beautiful, and it was cool to see them in color because the ones in my copy are in black and white.) I would like to say merci again to Madame MacDermott for helping me out with some tricky parts. I will post one more little excerpt that I really like but please check out the entirety of my translation here!!!!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E3MGjjG_s6Vfs5C0nW1u4-ToFkOGKeueYPE_JnVfFFg/edit

I read this one article today from the New York Times published at the 50th anniversary of the Little Prince. I learned some interesting things including that the invasive baobabs on the little prince's planet represent Nazism. It makes sense considering this book was written during World War II by a man who had to flee France because it was invaded. I wish I had known that before I read the book. (If you don't understand what baobabs have to do with anything, read the translation!)

Anyways, here is one last little excerpt for you, from Chapter 7. The little prince gets annoyed when the narrator, focused on fixing his broken down airplane, dismisses his seemingly irrelevant troubles:

“I knew a planet where there was a crimson man. He had never smelled a flower. He had never looked at a star. He had never loved anyone. He had never done anything other than addition. And all day he repeated like you: ‘I am a serious man! I am a serious man!’ and that made him swell with pride. But that’s not a man, that’s a mushroom!

“A what?”

“A mushroom!”

The little prince was now all pale with anger.

“For millions of years flowers have grown thorns. For millions of years sheep have eaten those flowers anyway. And that’s not serious enough to try to understand why they devote themselves to so much effort to grow thorns if they don’t serve any purpose? It’s not important, the war between sheep and flowers? It’s not serious and more important than a fat red man’s additions? And if I knew a one-of-a-kind flower, that doesn’t exist anywhere, except on my planet, and that a little sheep could wipe it out in a single bite, like that, one morning, without realizing what he was doing, that’s not important?”  

He blushed, then restarted:

“If someone loves a flower of which only one specimen exists in millions of stars, that is enough to make him happy when he looks at them. He says to himself: ‘My flower is there somewhere...’ But if the sheep eats the flower, it is for him like, suddenly, all the stars went out! And that’s not important!”

He could say nothing more. He burst suddenly into sobs. Night was falling. I had dropped my tools. I ignored my hammer, my bolt, thirst, and death. There was on a star, a planet, mine, Earth, a little prince to console. I took him in my arms. I rocked  him. I said to him: “The flower that you love is not in danger... I will draw him a muzzle, your sheep... I will draw

you armour for your flower... I...” I didn’t know what more to say. I was feeling very inept. I didn’t know how to reach him, to get back to him... It is so mysterious, the land of tears.

Sources:

"French Present Participle - Le Participe présent." About.com French Language. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. <http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/presentparticiple.htm>.

Landers, Clifford E. Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. N.p.: n.p., 2001. Multilingual Matters. Ebook Collection (EBSCO Host). Web. 28 Feb. 2013. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=c0d77986-855f-4bfd-8226-de59c08ed92e%40sessionmgr11&vid=1&hid=28&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=nlebk&AN=90960>.

Reif, Rita. "ARTS/ARTIFACTS; A Charming Prince Turns 50, His Luster Intact." The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 Sept. 1993. Web. 31 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/19/books/arts-artifacts-a-charming-prince-turns-50-his-luster-intact.html?pagewanted=2>.

Les Couchers de Soleil

Sunsets

Update: Last week I talked to Madame MacDermott about my project and asked her a few questions about some parts I was having issues with. It was really helpful to have insight from someone much more experienced with the language. There are some tricky idioms I would not have gotten without her help. Merci Madame!

Here's another excerpt of my translation. It is actually the entirety of chapter six (some of these chapters are quite short). 

There are still some bits that I'm working out but

I really like this chapter.

Ah! little prince, so I understood, little by little, your sad (depressed, melancholy) little life. You didn’t have a lot of time to entertain yourself except with the sweetness of sunsets. I learned this new detail, the fourth day, in the morning, when you said to me:

“I really like sunsets. Let’s go see a sunset...”

“But we have to wait...”

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for the sun to set.”

You seemed very surprised at first, and then you laughed at yourself. And you said to me:

“I’m thinking I’m still at home!”

Indeed. When it is noon in the United States, the sun, everyone knows, sets over (in) France. It would be enough to be able to go to France in one minute to attend (see) the sunset. Unfortunately France is much too far away. But, on your (oh-so) little planet, it’s enough for you just to pull your chair a few steps. And you watched the dusk (twilight) any time you wanted (desired, liked)...

“One day, I saw the sun set forty-three times!”

And a little later you added:

“You know... when one is really sad one likes sunsets...”

“The day of the forty-three sunsets, you were really sad?”

But the little prince didn’t respond.

Voici mon Vlog!

Here is my vlog! I apologize for the background noise.



Art of Translation Vlog from Rebekah G on Vimeo.

"S'il vous plait... dessine-moi un mouton..."

"Please... draw me a sheep..."

Here is an excerpt from my translation. It is from chapter two. The line above was one of the easiest to translate and I love it because I can just imagine the little prince saying it in his little voice. Sections highlighted in red are marked because I am struggling with them and I need to come back and sort through them more thoroughly. Words in parentheses are words that are alternate meanings fro the previous word and I haven't finally decided which to use yet. 

So I lived alone, without anyone to truly talk to, until a crash in the Sahara desert six years ago. Something was broken in my motor and as I didn’t have a mechanic with me, nor any passengers, I prepared myself to attempt, on my own, the difficult repair. It was a question of life and death. I had barely enough water to drink for eight days. 

The first night I fell asleep in the sand a thousand miles from any inhabited area. I was more isolated than a castaway on a raft in the middle of the ocean. So you imagine my surprise, at daybreak (sunup) when a funny little voice woke me. It said: “Please... draw me a sheep!” 

“What!” 

“Draw me a sheep...”

I jumped to my feet like I had been struck by lightening. I (thoroughly) rubbed my eyes. I looked hard. And I saw an absolutely extraordinary little fellow who was considering me seriously. There is the best portrait that, later, I succeeded in making of him. But my drawing, of course, is much less charming than the model. It’s not my fault. I was discouraged from my painting career by grown-ups, at the age of six, and I never learned how to draw, except for boas ouvert et fermes.

I was looking at this apparition (specter, ghost) with my eyes round with surprise. Don’t forget that I was located a thousand miles from any inhabited area. Yet my little man did not seem lost, nor dying of exhaustion, nor dying of hunger, nor dying of thirst, nor dying of fear. He had nothing of the appearance of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any inhabited area. When I was finally able to speak (when I finally succeeded in speaking), I said to him: “But what are you doing here?”

He repeated softly, and very seriously: “Please... draw me a sheep...”

When the mystery is too impressive (overwhelming) one doesn’t dare disobey. As absurd as it seems, a thousand miles from any inhabited area and in danger of dying, I took from my pocket a piece of paper and a fountain pen. But I remembered that I had always studied geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar and I said to the little man (with a little bit of bad humor) that I didn’t know how to draw. He responded:

“It doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep.”


If anyone would like to view my translation in the works, you can do so here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E3MGjjG_s6Vfs5C0nW1u4-ToFkOGKeueYPE_JnVfFFg/edit?usp=sharing

Les Mots Difficile

Difficult Words


When I first developed the idea for this project, I obviously grossly overestimated myself. I do not have enough time to get through the entire book, go back and fix the trouble spots, plus compare to
the published English translation. Since I want to actually get into the translation and not be rushed to get through the entire story, my first order of business is to modify my goal to translating the first nine chapters of the book. I would round it off to ten, except that the end of chapter nine marks a natural transition in the story.

I guess I should have realized that this would take more time then I have. I’m four chapters into the book and I don’t even know how many words I’ve had to look up. There are words that I don’t know, but there are also words that may have a different meaning depending on the context. Take the word encore, for instance. Encore means “again” as in “Je veux aller encore” (I want to go again). But the word encore can also mean “still”, as in “Tu manges encore?” (You’re still eating?). According to wordreference.com it can also mean “yet”, “now”, and “only”, based on the context. There are tons of other words like that, and then there are words that I think I know but put together in an idiom mean something else. Like the phrase “tant bien que mal”. If I translated that word by word it would be “so much good that bad”. But it really means “after a fashion” or “somehow”.

Another word I’m struggling with is the word “bonhomme”. If you dissected that word, literally it would be “goodman”. It’s sort of slang and it’s like “guy” or “fellow” but there are tons of different versions of it in English. According to wordreference and my dictionary it could mean anything from “chap”, to “fellow”, to “bloke”, to “sonny”. The word is thrown around a lot in the story and I’m never sure which form fits best where.

Once I accumulate years of using French and experience immersion in French language and culture, hopefully I will be able to recognize idioms and phrases. Right now I will have to rely on my dictionaries and my French teacher. The site wordreference.com is an extremely helpful online dictionary which presents definitions in context, and my other dictionary is Le Robert et Collins 9th edition. I’m going to mark the spots/phrases that are really confusing and ask Madame MacDermott about them.

This is what I use when I can't find what I want on wordreference. Like the word for stylographe (fountain pen).

I’m going to post a little excerpt from what I’ve translated so far in a new post, because I don’t want to make this one super long.

La lecture

Reading

It seems the majority of what I’ve done so far for this project is read. Last cycle I read about translation. This cycle I read a little bit about Saint-Exupery and France in 1943. But the most exciting thing I read was the book that my project is actually focusing on!

Le Petit Prince was written by Saint-Exupery while the world was engulfed in World War II. He wrote when he fled to the U.S. after France was invaded by Germany. The message of appreciating the small beauties and wonders of life is much more poignant when considered in context. In 1943 no one was sure what was going to happen to France, it’s people and it’s culture, and this book seems to me to serve as a reminder as well as a beacon of beauty and hope. This is something I have to keep in mind when translating because since I’m supposed to be creating in the readers of my English translation the same emotional response as the French readers, this may affect the style and word choice that I use. (Yes, there is a point to, even minimal, background research.)

Interesting fact about Antoine de Saint-Exupery: he was an aviator who flew in the French Air Force during the war, but before that he flew around the Sahara desert, delivering mail to isolated settlements. That would explain why Le Petit Prince takes place in the Sahara and the narrator is a pilot. (If you don’t know the story, it is about a pilot who crashes in the middle of the Sahara desert, stranded with a broken airplane and only enough water for eight days. He meets and befriends a little prince from another planet who tells him about his travels across the universe before coming to earth.)  Another interesting fact: after writing Le Petit Prince and other works, Saint-Exupery took a flying mission for France in North Africa. He left on July 31, 1944 and disappeared. He was never found (Antoine de Saint-Exupery 1). Why are there always mysteries surrounding famed artists and innovators?

So I read through the entire book! I’m happy because I understood a lot. Some chapters were more clear than others but overall I got the main ideas of the story and oh, what a story. It was really quite beautiful. And also kind of sad. It was a portrayal of life through the eyes of a child, but a child who understands things better than most adults.  I didn’t stop this readthrough to look up any words, so hopefully specific details will become clear with the help of my dictionary and wordreference.com. I marked passages that were especially confusing to make sure I take enough time with them.

There are three weeks left in this project. I’m just starting to translate now, and I really don’t know how long this is going to take me. My original goal was to translate the whole book, but I’m not sure if this is realistic anymore. The book is divided into short chapters, so I’m going to translate the first one and based on the time that takes me, decide how much I’m going to do. Right now I’m thinking that I’m going to downsize my goal to the first 9 to 16 chapters. I can’t wait to get to work translating this into English. I will begin this cycle, meaning tomorrow. Finally!

Sources:

"Antoine De Saint-Exupery." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2013. 
<http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/aexupery.html>.
Thomas, Francis-Noel. "The End Of A World." Humanities 33.4 (2012): 28 MasterFILE Premier. Web.  
3 Mar. 2013 <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&sid=9e17963c-d6b4-4e91-9fe4-  451e41e8485a%40sessionmgr4&hid=118&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&A=78555478>.

Mon Livre et Quoi Que J'ai Lu en Fait Jusqu'à Maitenant

My Book and What I've Actually Read So Far

My copy of Le Petit Prince came for me yesterday! Yay!!!

So I have my book, the only problem is I can’t start reading or translating it yet. I still have some preliminary research to do. To be honest, I am not at the point I would like to be at with this project and I don’t know if I will be able to get through this whole book. I’m not sure how long it will take me to translate a section thoroughly and accurately. Obviously this is just practice translation, it’s not a full work that I’m trying to publish. Still, this will probably take more time than I had originally estimated. As Nicole and Carolyn have already suggested, I think I am going to have to reset my goal from translating the entire book to a set number of sections. I’ll determine the number of sections at a later time.

Despite the fact that I am not yet on to actually reading/translating the story, what I have been reading lately is very interesting. I have already reviewed the brochure from the American Literary Translators Association called The Making of a Literary Translator. It basically gave me an overview of what literary translation actually is and what it requires. The article mentioned the importance of reading through the work before translating, which I have already planned to do, the helpfulness of collaboration with other translators/authors/native speakers and the significant combination of meaning and sound. I don’t know any native French speakers but in terms of collaboration it might be helpful for me to meet with my French teacher, Madame Macdermott, to see if she would go over my translation with me. The idea behind the combination of meaning and sound is that a translation should not just portray the literal meanings of the words in another language but that it also must have the sound and the feel that makes that work art (7).

This theme was stressed in the other source that I have been reading, the book Literary Translation: A Practical Guide by Clifford E. Landers. According to this book, the general view is that a translation should provoke in its readers the same emotional response that the original provoked in its readers (Landers 49). I will need to keep this in mind when I begin my translation.The ideas is not to necessarily translate literally the words in the text but to translate the meaning and the effect that meaning has in terms of the target and culture language as it would in terms of the source culture and language. (Target language is the term for the language being translated into and source language is the language being translated from, in my case English and French respectively.) This book has been really helpful as well as really fascinating. It has given me a lot of insight on strategies to use when translating and I am beginning to read the section on techniques. I will continue to consult this book after I start translating and I plan to apply the techniques and strategies presented.

I’m really excited to get to the translation part already, but as my guides have stressed is important to do background research and to read through the text so that I can ground my translation in context. This weekend I plan to research what I can about Le Petit Prince, Antione de Saint-Exupéry, and the place this book has in French culture. As I am already behind, I want to get this done so that I can start reading this week. Of course, this week I’m going to be crazy busy because of the musical, but hopefully I will be able to get some reading done.

Sources:

American Literary Translators Association. The Making of a Literary Translator. N.p.: American Literary Translators Association, n.d. American Literary Translators Association. University of Texas at Dallas. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://www.utdallas.edu/alta/pdf/TheMakingOfALiteraryTranslator.pdf>.

Landers, Clifford E. Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. N.p.: n.p., 2001. Multilingual Matters. Ebook Collection (EBSCO Host). Web. 28 Feb. 2013. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=c0d77986-855f-4bfd-8226-de59c08ed92e%40sessionmgr11&vid=1&hid=28&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=nlebk&AN=90960>.