par Uri Sluckin | Oct 13, 2015 | English, Global, Tradwell
Hello Neil, You’re a major trend-setter, if there ever was one. In the day and age when correspondence means text or twitter, just a hundred or so characters strung out into a few meaningless phrases with no punctuation and mandatory misspelling to prove that one is digitally aware and in tune with one’s children, you actually went to a post office (it’s refreshing to know that they still have them in LA), inquired how many stamps would be needed to make certain that an envelope weighing 20 grams would be safely hand-delivered six thousand miles away by a Gallic postman doing his morning rounds in a yellow, electrically-powered mail van and slotted into a stone-chiselled letterbox of a sub-Parisian village property in a village where two museums (Maison Louis Carré, the only private house built in France by Alvar Aalto and Maison Jean Monnet where the now-crumbling Europe was devised in the early fifties) and Fondation Brigitte Bardot (the house where she swung in the seventies now legged to her own menagerie of cats with no tail and goats with no purpose) mark the time chimed out by the two sixteenth century bells (Marie and Martinne forged in 1555) of the Gothic church, erected on the ruins of a Byzantine worship. Read more Licking the two stamps, you actually provided a DNA sample that would survive sub-zero temperatures and jetstreams to glide down on a sunny autumn morning and surprise its grateful addressee. I assure you, your transcontinental DNA will live on as an exhibit in a stamp collection that hasn’t enjoyed an arrival for over ten years. Certain...
par Uri Sluckin | Sep 4, 2015 | Astuces traduction, News, Tradwell
Pour marquer le lancement de la campagne du Gynaecological Cancer Fund pour collecter des fonds #LadyGardenCampaign, Tradwell vous propose de briser le tabou et parler de noms utilisés dans la langue du Shakespeare pour décrire le vagin. Sur le web il y en a des sites qui vont jusqu’à 238 noms, mais lesquels sont tolérés dans une conversation mondaine, plaisanteries entre amis ou à apprendre aux enfants pour que un bambin ne cri pas « vagina ! » devant la belle-mère. Read more When you were growing up, your parents might have had their own special names to describe le zizi, both male and female, in order to shelter you from the adult world for as long as possible. In English the list of names is virtually endless. There are the cute ones to be used around kids, such as Minnie (confusing if you like Minnie Mouse), Front Bottom (very middle class), Foo Foo (probably from French foufoune), Mary (don’t ask me!), Lady bits (very upper middle class), Flower (as in flower power?), Noonie (again, it’s out there, but why?), Nether regions (but not always cold), Downstairs (with upstairs for décolleté?), Fanny (except that it means bottom in the USA)… The “hedonistic” ones, used by boys out drinking together, such as: Bearded oyster (une huître barbue, can you imagine?), Hippo’s yawn (depends on the lady you’re with), Meat or Beef curtains (a bit bavette), Baby or Money maker (true in a lot of cases), Twat (or the other one beginning with a “C”) this one is used more as a “friendly” insult these days, Pussy (still n°1 but not accurate if Brazilian...
par Uri Sluckin | Août 31, 2015 | Astuces traduction, Global, Tradwell
C’est la rentrée, un mot formidable pour décrire la fin de la trêve estivale, en politique, travail ou enseignement. Il n’y a pas d’équivalent en anglais, pourtant 5 fois plus riche en mots (300 000 dans le Petit Robert et 600 000 dans l’Oxford English Dictionary, although they say the real number is almost double). Tradwell fait sa rentrée aussi, dans la joie et la bonne humeur avec une petite leçon d’argot londonien or the Cockney rhyming slang. lire plus There are 3 versions: Classic: apples and pears = stairs, dustbin lids = kids, butcher’s hook = look, Modern: Jimmy Choos = shoes, Vera Lynns = skins = cigarette rolling papers, and Mockney: fake, pretending to be Cockney by not pronouncing haitches (letter h) or swallowing “t”s (we won’t bother with Mockney). Cockney rhyming slang expressions are formulated by finding words that rhyme and describe the word (object, feeling, etc.), in a straight or roundabout way. Straight is fairly easy (bees and honey = money), roundabout often needs explanation (oily rag = fag = cigarette – that comes from the dirty jobs being done by smokers), pissed as in being drunk as in Brahms and Liszt = pissed or my old china = china plate = mate (friend). It has not been conclusively proven whether rhyming slang was a linguistic accident, a game, or a « dialect » developed intentionally to confuse strangers. It is possible that it was used by the market traders to fool the punters and fix prices without customers knowing what they were saying. Another suggestion is that it may have been used by prisoners to confound wardens. I...
par Uri Sluckin | Juil 8, 2015 | Astuces traduction, Global
Troisième volet qui reprend le poème anonyme sur la manque de logique dans la langue anglaise. Then one may be that, and three would be those, Yet hat in the plural would never be hose, And the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, But though we say mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, But imagine the feminine: she, shis and...
par Uri Sluckin | Juil 6, 2015 | Astuces traduction, Global, Tradwell
Alors, les Grecques ont dit OXI, après quelques verres d’ouzo on peut comprendre OK. Quand on dit NO en anglais, on peut le dire et écrire d’une manière qui ne laisse aucun doute tout en restant énigmatiquement poli : not this time, thank you, ou I’d like to check with my dad, ou même I’d really love to but I have a prior engagement, ou I believe you deserve much better… . Dans le langage business c’est plus simple: not now, I’m busy sonne bien, mais vous pouvez toujours circonscrire l’embarras; I did try it once and wasn’t very comfortable, let’s try something within my range, I know a specialised consultancy, do you want me to give you their address?. Parfois OXI est conditionnel, teasing, tantalising et promising: let’s have a few drinks first, I am a bit shy so could we start with something less sophisticated? ou I do appreciate working with you but our ambitions diverge considerably ou It sounds fun but a trifle to forward for my liking. Donc pour qu’un OXI devient NEI, posons la question d’une manière différente : Now, I know that you’re not going to agree straight away and my request may seem a bit on the strong side, so I will turn my demand into a moot...
par Uri Sluckin | Juil 5, 2015 | Astuces traduction, Tradwell
Si vous hyphenez en écrivant en anglais, alors pour garder le sens du message il convient de placer le tiré au bon endroit et au bon moment. Il y a un nombre de règles qu’on trouve sur les sites de grammaire, au-delà, il faut que l’auteur improvise. Comme en français, le hyphen est utilisé pour coller des mots, signaler qu’ils expriment une seule idée. Quand tous vos on-site interventions utilisent state-of-the-art machines ça ne veut pas dire que vous aimez intervenir on site. Quand vous racontez que : the well-endowed, smooth-talking, angel-eyed, fun-loving temptress ait proposé a long-term, high-powered arrangement, je n’étais pas assez clear-headed pour bien apprécier puisque two-thirds de mon oxygen-starved cerveau disait oui, mais the other one-third était panic-stricken, j’étais half-conscious avec désir. Donc regardez les règles, ne hyphenez jamais s’il y a un very ou l’adverbe se termine avec un -ly (mostly, finely, accidentally…) mais allez-y si c’est un adjectif (friendly…). Si vous pouvez résoudre un problème de compréhension en hyphenant, c’est tant mieux (it was a nature-given gift, she remained the stone-faced smooth operator…). Aussi, quand vous comptez de 21 au 99 inclus, hyphenez : fifty-seven, sixty-nine ou fractionnez : eight-tens, three-quarters… . Hyphenez toujours après un self (self-service, self-pleasure… . Mais pour le moment, enough of this mind-confusing, self-satysfying translator-speak. Au prochain rendez-vous!...
