For everyone’s delectation, here are the results of my Google Translate experiment: Version 1 Original: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men Couldn’t put Humpty together again. Version 2 Google-generated French: Humpty Dumpty était assis sur un mur. Humpty Dumpty a fait une belle chute. Tous les chevaux du roi et tous les hommes du roi Impossible de remettre Humpty en place. So far so good, you might think. (Apart from the complete absence of any RHYME in this Nursery Rhyme!) But watch what happens next… Version 3 Google-generated English, translated from Google-generated French (version 2): Humpty Dumpty was sitting on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a NICE fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men Couldn’t put Humpty back IN PLACE. I have put the differences between Version 1 and Version 3 in capitals. If you are trying to explain to a child the importance of deconstruction, of breaking a big problem down into small solutions, a truism expressed in our children’s rhymes, based on this one, then I pity the French child who thinks that all he or she has to do is to break up the problem and walk away. At least the English child understands what putting the pieces back TOGETHER means - and will thereby solve the problem, petit à petit, we hope. And what kind of fall is a NICE one? Don’t they all hurt? Particularly as you get older… All this illustrates how far computer-generated translations fall below the standards and understanding produced by the human mind. Many of the subtleties are “lost” in the algorithmic translations. Steer clear of the software, I advise, and use a human!
Category: French
Adjectives, adjectives, adjectives …
Yes! I finally stumped Google! Try searching for “iectare”! Go on! I bet you will get thousands of hits explaining the word “hectare”. If only Google’s algorithms had employed a Latin Tutor…
In Late Latin, “iectare” meant “to throw/toss about”. (Hence you get the French word “jeter” – “to throw” and the origin of the modern jet engine, which throws air into the combustible mix of fuel and fire, I’m told, to describe a powerful explosion flying you to your next destination)
“So what?” I hear you cry. When you are next crafting your novel, screenplay, poem or blog post, perhaps you will consider which word(s) – if any – you will “toss about/throw”(=iectare) “next to” (= ad) any noun(s) you call in for descriptive support. In other words, which – if any – adjectives you use “to lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative” (The Mikado).
My Creative Writing Tutor once made me strip out all my carefully chosen adjectives. It was a very painful, but highly salutary experience, from which I learnt the importance of the adage “less is more”. Nevertheless, I find this cliché rather ugly and ultimately unsatisfying, because both “less” and “more” are comparative adjectives bereft of any friendly noun. I would argue that any good noun deserves its own adjective, to be “thrown right next to” it, if only to make the sentence more interesting. Perhaps the clichéd adage above ought correctly to be written: “fewer adjectives make for a more rewarding experience”? As long as there are some adjectives in there, somewhere … Stand up for the lowly adjective! Add some spice to life!
Verbs, verbs, verbs…
Did you know that the Latin word for “word” is verbum? So I might as well have entitled this post “Words words, words…” Clearly, ever since the Romans, the most important kind of word has been the Verb: it’s the motor of your sentence which drives the thought home in your reader’s or listener’s mind. So it’s worth spending a moment or two, when you’re learning a new language, making sure you get the Verbs right, isn’t it?
When you hear ” I GO” I’m sure you think different thoughts from those which come to your mind when you hear “I WENT”. But these thoughts are all aspects of movement, aren’t they? It just takes place at different times. These two words are so different from each other in spelling that they mean strikingly different things when you think about them in your mind. What about “VOY” and “FUI” though? Yes you can learn, intellectually, that they correspond to the English words above, but do you automatically recognise the difference in meaning, without having to think laboriously through the English translations, which you learn for tests, practise in interminable exercises etc etc? No? Well, when you do, you can truly say you are fluent in your new language – when you can think (or even dream) in it!