Lost in Translation

A new Paris tabloid InfoMatin, wrote the other day: "All proposals designed to legislate on the use of language give off a stale smell. And a regressive one, because words have a capacity to fly in the face of those who persist in acting as customs officers of the language."

This was a response to the new bill to enforce the use of French on public signs and in private conferences (зд. частные беседы). The defence of the French language is an item of recurring interest: there is, of course, only one real enemy of the Gallic tongue: American English.

But elsewhere things are different. Unremarked by everyone outside Germany, the Society for the German Language (GfdS) has admitted another bunch (group) of words. These are new German words rather than imports but the Germans do not have "douaniers" like the French – any old import can make itself at home in Germany in about 10 minutes. One can write articles consisting almost entirely of English.

German has a gift for fabricating new words in a way Americans might envy. Each January the GfdS picks a "Word of the Year." The one for 1993 was Sozialabbau which " stands as a generic term for a series of the difficult changes that have been felt in the lives of millions of people in east and west Germany."

This flexibility is something lacking in French. Mind you, there arc words that leave me stunned at the richness of French life: ramaillage or "the treatment of skins in preparation for the manufacture of chamois leather." Maybe this reflects the infinite linguistic variety the French reserve for such matters as food and women's clothes.

Each language has characteristics which govern the way people think and behave. It is widely believed that it is the people who create the language but the opposite is true. Now, you may ask: if French is so good at sensuality, why is it identified with clarity, precision and analytical brilliance? The answer is that the French have to struggle against the grain of their language to obtain these skills. They labour to make absolutely precise in 40 words what English makes clear in four. (Unless, of course, they are treating animal skins.)

The same phenomenon can be seen in Japanese, whose structure is so at odds with its script that its speakers have to develop fantastic brains to make any sense of it.

The besetting English sin is sloppiness. The language is so good at conveying meanings and ideas with a minimum of effort that nobody tries very hard. New ideas and words are drawn to it like whores to a victorious army. From French, with its emphasis on eloquence and elegance, one often makes a desperate effort to retrieve any sense at all. It is hard to detect the difference between brilliant observation and the charlatan (зд. banality).

Only when translated into English it is possible to estimate the true value of their works.

The Germans have a different problem. Their language imposes lunatic rules of syntax and grammar. This strait-jacket has to contain a language whose greatest gift is an astonishing capacity for metaphysical and abstract expression. It is no accident that there is a certain kind of German which produces words and phrases that remind one of madmen in uniform.

What the French and the Germans have in common is a certain distaste for English. The poet and novelist, Tucholsky, wrote 60 years ago: "English is a simple but difficult language. It consists of loud foreign words which are badly pronounced." One uses it without loving it. Not so with French. The journalist, Gunter Simon writes, "When two non-Frenchmen speak French between themselves they are immediately mutually sympalisch. Whole peoples love French even if they hardly like the French."

There was a radio programme a few nights ago about English people living in France and how they spoke French. They confirmed that they reserved French for endearments and English for irony and sarcasm.

The Emperor Charles V famously said: "1 speak Spanish to God, Latin to my confessor, Italian to my mistress, French to my men and German to my horse." If he had known English he would have spoken it to his research assistant and his PR girl.

(And what about Russian? Maybe to the racketeer? – author.)

James Morgan ("Financial Times")

Комментарии tabloid – бульварная газета

stale = not fresh; regressive = зд. reactionary;

Gallic tongue = the French language;

"douaniers" = custom officers (French);

chamois leather – замша, лайка;

against the grain – зд, «против шерсти»;

to be at odds with - to contradict;

script = spelling;

besetting – преобладающий, главный;

sloppiness – небрежность;

to retrieve = зд, to get;

lunatic = mad, crazy, senseless;

strait-jacket – смирительная рубашка;

metaphysical = зд. philosophical;

endearments = words of love;

PR – Public Relations (связи с общественностью).

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