To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL EPISODE
SOUNDCLOUD: You can listen to or download Episode 30 and all previous episodes on Soundcloud here.
ITUNES: This episode and all previous episodes are available on iTunes here. You can subscribe or listen online. Like what you hear? Rate us and review us! It really helps get the word out.
Episode 30: Museum Translations with Multitalented Susan Pickford
Andie Ho: Today we’re joined by Susan Pickford, who is from the UK, but she’s been living in France since the late 90s after earning a degree in French and German. She worked in publishing for a short while before beginning translation in 2001—I guess she saw the light—using her publishing background as a springboard. She joined the Louvre translation team in the early aughts, when they were setting up the museum’s first big website, and the rest is history. Susan also has a PhD in Comparative Literature and taught English at various universities, before landing a tenured position in translation studies in 2007. And now she runs the English Unit at the University of Geneva, where I attended a semester. Fabulous memories there at the what is now called the Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation. Welcome, Susan.
Susan Pickford: Thank you. I’m so pleased to be here.
Andie Ho: So you have a very interesting and varied background and career, and we’re going to get to all of it. But let’s start with the beginning. So first you started working in publishing before parlaying that into a career in translation. So how exactly did you work that transition? How did you use your publishing world experience to leverage that into a second career?
Susan Pickford: Well, to start off with, I mean, I have to say I was pretty low in the food chain when I was in publishing. I was in Paris, and I only worked in publishing for a year. But it was, to be honest, it was an excellent grounding in sort of the whole publishing ecosystem, I would say, because I was pretty much the dogsbody who did, you know, did the photocopying and went to the other departments and so on. But it really gave me an overview of the whole thing, how it hung together, where translation in particular fitted into it. I was working in a department where we produced translation or translated books in house, illustrated books, coffee table books, I’d guess you call them. And so I sort of got a sense of the economy of it and how translation really slotted into that. While I was there, I did a lot of editing, sort of language editing on the translations that came in. And I also did a little bit of translation myself. And I would say that was also super helpful because it was really broad.
Susan Pickford: There were books on everything from, you know, rose varieties, model trains, lighthouses. It was a really good broad grounding in how to write for a general audience. And it also made me think about, who am I writing for? What do they need to know? So I’d say that was a really, really good place to start. And the other thing that it taught me is that I’m really not cut out for a 9-to-5 office job. So that kind of propelled me into further study, which is sort of my other strand in life, working in academia. So from there, I started, I went back and did my PhD, and I funded my PhD largely by working in translation, starting out mostly for the same publisher in Paris, but also then it snowballed from there as I built up contacts and worked a lot with a sort of informal network of people working in the same sort of sector in Paris at the time.
Andie Ho: So you said you learned where translation slots in into the publishing industry. Where does it slot in?
Susan Pickford: That’s a very good question. I mean, I think we tend to think to think of translation as sort of an isolated phenomenon, but actually it’s really much, very much a part of a chain of command where you have exactly as in business translation or in other sectors. When we’re looking at publishing translation, you have a commissioner, somebody who wants to buy the project. You have people who are going to be editing your text. You then have buyers who you have to write for, et cetera. So you’re never working in isolation, even if you’re doing literary translation, you’re always working in a chain of command. And I think we sometimes forget that and I think it’s important to bear it in mind.
Andie Ho: Now, speaking of literary translation, you were also on the French literary translators association board for 10 years. Can you tell us about that?
Susan Pickford: Sure. So, as I was saying, we do think of translators, you know, people think that we work at home in a kind of ivory tower, but that’s really not true in my experience. I mean, I’ve always worked in teams. It’s part of, I think, part of the arts sector as well. That’s one of the characteristics, that they’re big projects and you’re often working, working to short deadlines. So I do work a lot in teams, and I’ve always had that sort of ethos of advocacy and service for the profession, because I’ve always thought that if you want to be taken, if translation wants to be taken seriously as a profession, it needs to foster that kind of collective shared ethos and values, which are sort of core, a core definition of what a profession is. We don’t sign a Hippocratic oath, but we can work towards having a collective shared set of values. And that’s really what I thought about when I was joining the French translation association. It’s kind of the idea of a rising tide lifts all boats. You know, if we’re all working together for better conditions, then it works for everybody. And I have to say, doing that, I’ve also had a lot of work through it. I’ve also passed a lot of work on from it. So I think that collective sort of seeing what we do in that collective perspective is super helpful all around.
Andie Ho: Yeah, it’s so super important when the majority of our days is us and the four walls. You know, talking to ourselves to really make it a point to get out there and connect.
Susan Pickford: Absolutely. It’s so important. You know, from a mental health perspective, fitness perspective, connecting with others, the human side of it is so important.
Andie Ho: Now, you have said that the majority of your clients currently or in the past even have been museums and opera houses, various cultural institutions. So I assume that decision was influenced by your early work on the Louvre project?
Susan Pickford: Pretty much. I would say it’s, I kind of fell into it, but it really suited me as well. So I think it’s, you know, it’s a good thing that I came into this from my perspective. I have always been interested in the arts. You know, I’m a keen museum-goer. So can’t say it was a deliberate decision to make that my speciality. But yeah, having worked on the Louvre project and having built up a network of people who are also working in similar areas. Yes. It just sort of fell naturally into place. And I have to say, it’s super interesting, super varied. You know, there’s a lot of work in the sector which is really very varied and very interesting.
Andie Ho: So in addition to museums and opera houses, who are your clients and what kind of projects do you do for them?
Susan Pickford: Well, at the minute, it really has been museums. I have been heavily working in that sector. I mean, do occasional things for record labels, operas, a little bit of music on the side as well. But the vast majority of my work is for a sort of core set, I would say, of six or seven museums that I have a good long-standing working relationship with. So, you know, big museums in Paris, which have a lot of work, obviously, because, you know, these are huge international visitor attractions. Also, now since I moved down to live near Switzerland, I work a lot with Swiss museums as well. So that’s really the bulk of where my work is now is in museums and the sort of thing I do, I do wall panels for exhibitions, temporary exhibitions. I do a lot of catalogues, a lot of website content, because obviously they have , you know, exhibitions that are constantly changing. They have to bring new visitors in with new attractions, new content. So there’s kind of an ongoing rolling stock of work that needs to be done. Plus the sort of bread-and-butter work of updating websites in terms of COVID restrictions and updated accessibility statements and things like that. So I tend to work less on those. But there is some of that as well, some more of the sort of pragmatic side of visitor attraction work.
Andie Ho: So you said there was a certain chain of command in publishing. Is that the same also in museum work?
Susan Pickford: Pretty much yes. A lot of the big museums I work for have their own publishing branches or their own publishing departments. I tend not to deal with those so much these days. I would pretty much be talking to one person who is often a curator at the museum, particularly if it’s a smaller museum. A lot of the bigger ones, as I say, the Louvre will have its own publishing branch and then I’ll be dealing with them. But since I stopped working in publishing, I have much less contact with that broader chain of command. It’s really now me talking to my contact at the museum.
Andie Ho: So how do museum clients or cultural institution clients differ from more commercial clients, would you say?
Susan Pickford: Well, I’d say there’s a question of status in that they tend to be nonprofits or state- run. So I have to say, in the French context, that means there can be a lot of admin involved in terms of billing, things like that. There are some real specific aspects to museum translation. So things like space constraints when you’re working on wall panels, you know that you’ve only got so many characters that you can play with. And you also have to be aware of the fact that you’re writing for often, in a lot of cases, a very international audience. So you know that Chinese visitors, for instance, will be mediating or will be accessing the art through the English. So you have to bear that in mind in how you write and how you gloss things. And, you know, you have to explain who various historical characters are that are in paintings for an international audience, but then keeping that within the space constraint that you have on the wall panel, that sort of thing. So that can be quite a challenge. I would say that another thing that is specific about the work is it can be highly technical when you’re talking, for instance, about pottery-glazing techniques, that sort of thing. But it could also be very, very creative when, you know, I had one project a couple of years ago, for instance, where it was an imaginary index of objects that you might find in a surrealist painting, and then it needed to be, there was lots of wordplay and the whole thing needed completely rewriting.
Susan Pickford: So you have to be sort of a master of a lot of skills. The things I’ve worked on in the last couple of years, philosophy of architecture for a journal that I work with regularly, 18th-century furniture, 19th-century photography. I did an exhibition on wampum beads for a place in Paris last year. So you have to be really on top of trends in the art world. I think that’s important contemporary art in particular. But you also have to be super skilled at getting very good at things you don’t know much about very quickly. Before I did the Wampum Beads exhibition, I could hardly have told you what they were. But, you that’s one of the skill sets, is really developing expertise very quickly with that sort of background knowledge of the fundamentals of art and art vocabulary. I think that’s one of the most important things. I would say that one thing that is specific about it as well is that I never use any CAT tools. I think it’s one of the rare sectors where they’re not necessarily very, very useful because kind of by definition, the repeatability of the kind of texts I work on is very, very low. So there’s not a lot of point in investing in CAT tools at the minute for me. So I do it all old school by hand.
Andie Ho: But what about glossaries? Do you maintain glossaries?
Susan Pickford: I personally don’t because I kind of started my career before they were a thing, 20 years ago. So I’ve honestly never quite got into it. I maintain them sort of informally, but don’t have any tools that do that for me.
Andie Ho: It’s all in your head, huh?
Susan Pickford: All in my head, yeah.
Andie Ho: Impressive. Yeah, the few times, you know, in my younger days, I accepted some projects translating some artwork because I thought it would be easy, I thought it would be “soft.” I think a lot of people do. And I was shocked by how technical it is. And I find, for me, at the time at least, it was even harder to find those technical terms than it would be for a piece of machinery.
Susan Pickford: Sure. Yeah. You have to be good. I mean, now, you know, when I started out, Google was barely a thing. So you did spend a lot of time doing research. Now, you know, 20 years down the line, it’s a lot easier than it was, looking up terms. There are good bilingual dictionaries out there that you can access. But by and large, when you’ve been working in the sector for a long time, you do know a lot of the background stuff. And I also know now to refuse projects where I’m not going to be comfortable with the level of technical language. So, for example, there are some architecture-type projects that would say no to these days, because I just know that I’m going to spend a lot of time looking up terms for 12th-century church architecture and I’m quite happy to pass that kind of text on to other colleagues who are very good at it these days.
Andie Ho: No matter how long I’ve been in translation, I’m still constantly shocked by the obscurity of the texts that we can receive. That’s part of what makes it fun.
Susan Pickford: It is. Absolutely. I mean, the sheer variety of jumping from subject to subject and being an instant expert in things, I find that instant, you know, it’s constantly super gratifying for me. Yeah.
Andie Ho: So you talked about the other half of your life. You also work at the Université de Genève in Geneva. So what exactly are your responsibilities there?
Susan Pickford: Okay, so I’ve been in Geneva now, this is my third year just starting. I run the English unit, which runs the M.A. in translation from French and Spanish to English in legal and financial and economic translation. Geneva actually has one of the oldest translation schools in the world, started back in the immediate post-war period, and it’s now become a full faculty. So I am head of a team of 10 translators who teach. I’m the full-time person at the university, and then my colleagues are all people who are working at the various international institutions that we have in Geneva. So people who are working at the World Health Organization, at the Red Cross, at the International Labor Organization and so on, who will come in and teach in their special area of expertise. So that, again, is super gratifying. And because I’m an academic as well, I do some research as well alongside that and I teach as well. I teach undergraduates translation. Yeah.
Andie Ho: So what courses do you teach?
Susan Pickford: At the moment? I’m teaching Thèmes, which is French, to English translation for undergraduates. And then I also teach translation, revision, and translation criticism later in the year.
Andie Ho: And what is your area of research?
Susan Pickford: So my research focuses on translation sociology, particularly translator sociology. So I’m super interested in, because I’ve always been at the crossroads of practice and research. I’m super interested in translator careers, how people, you know, who gets to translate what, what kind of content and in what conditions and particularly what sort of economic conditions. So I’m super interested in issues of workflow, timing, how people get to choose the, do people get to choose the projects they work on? At what stage in your career can you afford to say yes or no to things you know? Can you work in literary translation particularly? Can you work in it full time? Can you describe yourself as a professional literary translator if it’s not your main source of income? So sort of theorizing around those issues is what I’m working on at the minute.
Andie Ho: That is so interesting. Do you also look at the geographical level? Because just off the bat, I mean, for instance, Europe and America, the landscapes are so different.
Susan Pickford: Absolutely. I work mostly in the European context, to be honest, because, you know, that’s where I am. But I know the landscapes are very different. I mean, even just things like, aspects that are very little discussed, but things like the tax setup, health care setup, which means that in Europe you might be able to afford to start a career in a different way than you would in the States. And that’s not even getting into other parts of the world where I really don’t have the knowledge to talk about them. But these are interesting and important questions that I think we need to spend more time talking about in the profession.
Andie Ho: Absolutely. Okay. Final question that I ask everybody. What do you want to leave the listeners with? What would you like them to know?
Susan Pickford: I do have one thing that is quite exciting, the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in my translation career so far, is that last year, I translated a novel for the first time, a full-length novel by a Belgian author called Barbara Abel. And the book is called Mother’s Instinct, and it’s coming out soon as a film, a Hollywood film starring Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway. It’s been a little bit delayed by the strikes, but you know, you’ve got to support that. So it’s out soon. Look out for that. And I’m super stoked that that’s happened.
Andie Ho: Oh my gosh, that’s so exciting.
Susan Pickford: I know, I hope I get invited to the premiere. I mean I’m looking out for an invitation.
Andie Ho: I forget what movie I was watching recently. Oh, it was A Man Called Otto. That’s the English, American title. A Man Called Ove is the Swedish title. And I watched the trailer, I read the English version, and then I watched the trailer, and I recognized the exact dialogue from the English translation of the book spoken by Tom Hanks. So do you know if Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway are speaking words that you wrote?
Susan Pickford: I suspect not. They’ve got someone else, they got someone to do the screenplay, and then they bought the rights to the French book, because it’s actually a remake of a Belgian film from a few years ago. So I have to say, my involvement in the film is kind of peripheral. So, you know, that invitation may not happen, but still it’s…
Andie Ho: They might have taken it though from your…
Susan Pickford: Yeah, yeah, I’m going to gatecrash. If not, I’m going to take the train to Paris and gatecrash.
Andie Ho: All right. Well that’s very exciting. So everybody check out that book. What’s the French title of the book?
Susan Pickford: Derrière la haine.
Andie Ho: Okay. All right.
Susan Pickford: Yeah, complete change of title.
Andie Ho: Translated by Susan Pickford. Check it out.
Susan Pickford: Absolutely. It’s out there.
Andie Ho: All right, well, thank you so much, Susan, for joining us today and telling us all about your very interesting career.
Susan Pickford: Well thank you, Andie. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL EPISODE
SOUNDCLOUD: You can listen to or download Episode 28 and all previous episodes on Soundcloud here.
ITUNES: This episode and all previous episodes are available on iTunes here. You can subscribe or listen online. Like what you hear? Rate us and review us! It really helps get the word out.
Episode 28: Belinda Stohner on Miami Fun
Andie Ho: This is Andy Ho, host of the Continuing Education Series, a podcast produced for the members of the French language division of the American Translators Association. Offering educational content about the craft of French to English and English to French translation and the division.
Belinda Niling Stohner is a professional violinist based in Miami, FL. She has an unorthodox attitude towards the role of string players in the art world. Her groups Baby B Strings and Sugar & Scotch, and her innovative project Musical Fairytales blur the lines between classical music and pop culture. She has performed with Shakira at Super Bowl 54, Usher at the Victoria Secret Fashion Show, and alongside the likes of R&B artist Maxwell, and bluegrass fiddler Mark O’Connor. Also, she’s my sister. Welcome, Belinda.
Belinda Stohner: Hi!
Andie Ho: So, the reason I have asked Belinda here today is because she lives in Miami, has lived there for 20 or so years, and since the ATA64 this year will be in Miami, I wanted to pick her brain about what we should do for fun in Miami when we get there. Belinda, you originally went to Miami for college and then stuck around. We are originally from Kansas, so this was quite the change of scenery. What made you stay?
Belinda Stohner: Number one, the sun! That’s a no-brainer. I hate cold weather. And when I first came to do a college visit, I think it was like in the middle of February, and I was, like, sold! I don’t need—there’s no question I want to be here. That and also it’s a mid-sized city. You know, it’s not quite the very intimidating city like New York or LA or even Houston, but it’s very metropolitan and exciting, and a lot’s going on here. Things are changing all the time.
Andie Ho: There is a lot going on. It’s funny, though, The last time the ATA was in Miami, I heard someone say, Oh, I’m not interested in going because there’s nothing to do in Miami. It’s not much of a tourist town. Which struck me as crazy. When people think about Miami, obviously, they think about the beaches and all that stuff, but what other stuff is there to do there?
Belinda Stohner: There’s so much stuff. Something for everyone. If you’re really into the glam of things, there’s high-end shopping. You can go see celebrity houses on Star Island. But also, if you’re into art, there’s so many private collections and art galleries. The Pérez Art Museum is one of our big draws. But also, if you enjoy just being outdoors, there’s the Everglades National Park, which is amazing. There’s so many animals there. You can go kayaking, paddleboarding, snorkeling. The world is your oyster. It’s very diverse. You just have to go find it.
Andie Ho: You mentioned celebrities and Star Island. What are some of the celebrities who have homes in Miami?
Belinda Stohner: Who doesn’t have a home in Miami? Shakira is the latest one to move here. David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, moved here fairly recently and started a soccer team. If you’re into international soccer, Lionel Messi is basically the world superstar currently, and he just signed with Miami. Tom Brady, Ivanka Trump, one of the Jonas Brothers, Pharrell. A lot of people have houses and live here mostly full time.
Andie Ho: Have you ever seen a celebrity when you’re out and about in town?
Belinda Stohner: One time I was at the mall and Shaquille O’Neal walked by with a horde of people. It was just like a whole bunch of people and then this head sticking out, because he’s so big. He’s larger than life.
Andie Ho: Well, and you did play in the Super Bowl with Shakira, so.
Belinda Stohner: That, too. Jennifer López lives down here as well. So I saw her as well.
Andie Ho: So what is the weather going to be like in October? You said you like the sun. Will there be sun?
Belinda Stohner: We are the Sunshine State. You know, we don’t really have typical seasons like most other places. We say we have wet season and dry season. Late October is kind of the tail-end of the peak of hurricane season. So it could rain or it couldn’t rain. For example, today there was no rain forecasted and it poured for a few minutes. The thing that would be guaranteed, though, is bring sunscreen and that it will be warm and humid.
Andie Ho: Okay, and for those of you who are keeping score at home, the ATA is October 25th through the 28th, as a reminder. Speaking of the Sunshine State, what is this Brightline that I’ve been hearing so much about?
Belinda Stohner: Oh, man! So Florida is a peninsula, and for the most part, there’s maybe one highway, which is I-95, that goes north, and then one that goes west to Naples. It can get very congested. So in the last several years, they’ve been developing the Brightline. Currently, you can go from downtown Miami to Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach. The Orlando stop is supposed to open later this year, and I believe they’re working on a Tampa stop. So you can kind of traverse and go to like Disney or Universal and come back down south and not really need a car, which is amazing.
Andie Ho: Okay, so it would be easy for, say, conference attendees to fly, say, into Orlando and then come down for the conference and go back up and fly out — or vice versa, fly into Miami, go up to Orlando and come back?
Belinda Stohner: Yeah, it’s fairly inexpensive. It looks very clean from the outside and it’s quite frequent. I don’t know if it’s every 15 minutes or every half hour that there’s a train. I believe there’s probably free wifi on there. And in terms of public transport downtown, kind of where the conference is going to be, there is a free trolley that runs till 11 p.m. so you can kind of get around the downtown area. There’s also tons of rideshares like Uber and Lyft. You can rent scooters or Citi Bike if you’re into that. And it’s quite walkable downtown, you can reach a lot of things. I believe there’s a Whole Foods across the street from where the hotel is. So there’s a lot of things downtown.
Andie Ho: The conference is being held at the Hyatt Regency near Brickell? Brick-ELL? How do you say that?
Belinda Stohner: BRICK-uhl.
Andie Ho: Brickell. Okay, so that’s considered downtown?
Belinda Stohner: Yeah. Yeah. Brickell specifically is usually a bunch of high-rises. There’s a lot of banks and condos and other businesses downtown. But yeah, I would say that the Hyatt Regency is on the edge of Brickell. So you could either go to Brickell and kind check out that area or like proper downtown, which is a little more industrial and less, less flashy, I should say.
Andie Ho: Brickell, Isn’t that the area with tons of restaurants? We’ve been there before.
Belinda Stohner: Yeah, but there’s tons of restaurants everywhere. If you’ve ever seen the documentary Cocaine Cowboys, you’ll see kind of like where all the money came from to build downtown and why it’s so beautiful.
Andie Ho: All right. So what is the food scene like in general across Miami? Not just Brickell.
Belinda Stohner: Okay. Well, we do pretty well food-wise. You know, we are a very diverse city. Obviously, there’s a lot of Latin food, like Cuban, Caribbean food, South American food. But if you want to eat $200 sushi, you can do that. Or you can go to a quick corner store and eat a sandwich for a couple bucks. For Cuban food, because that tends to be a draw for a lot of people, if you go to Calle Ocho in Little Havana—that means “eighth street”—Versailles is the popular destination for a sit-down restaurant. It’s a little bit more touristy. I like La Carreta, which means “the cart,” it’s like an ox cart. It’s a little more homestyle. They describe themselves as “abuela-style.” If you like ceviche or if you like seafood, because we’re obviously a coastal town, ceviche is really good. Near the hotel, there’s Ceviche 105. There’s also one on the beach. That’s really good. You can go get a Pisco sour and some Peruvian food and get some ceviche. And then the other thing that I really like, which is pretty local to Miami, is the Jamaican food. That’s not an obvious choice for people that come to Miami, but there’s really good Jamaican food here. Clive’s Cafe is really cool. It’s a small hole-in-the-wall place. There’s a little old lady named Miss Pearl. She runs the counter and you can go in and get like some Jamaican patties for a few bucks or they have oxtail and ackee and saltfish. That’s really interesting if you’re a little more adventurous food-wise.
Andie Ho: Now, just to be clear, folks. Versailles. Yes, it is spelled like the Palace of Versailles, But it is Cuban food, not French food. Correct?
Belinda Stohner: Yeah. I’m not really sure what the historical context on that is, but I know it’s featured in a lot of things, and that’s the one that people always talk about.
Andie Ho: So what about the French food scene? Because our listeners are largely French-speakers, people interested in francophone cultures. So what’s the French food scene like?
Belinda Stohner: You know what’s interesting? There is a pretty decent-sized French diaspora here, but the really good French restaurants are kind of scattered about. You know, there is a French cafe called Cafe Crème in North Miami. The owners have had several restaurants around Miami. That’s kind of our favorite. Kind of closer to the hotel is Buena Vista Deli. Again, it’s a kind of a cafe where you can get like a quiche or a soup and a salad. And they have like a really beautiful dessert showcase that is very French. If you’re in Coral Gables, there’s Frenchie’s Diner, which, again, the name doesn’t sound like it’s an amazing spot, but it’s quite fancy inside. You can get foie gras, but also you can just get roast chicken or duck confit or steak and potatoes. So those are kind of my favorite. Frenchie’s Diner, Cafe Crème and then Buena Vista Deli.
Andie Ho: All right, moving away from the food talk, reluctantly. You talked about some of the outdoorsy things like paddleboarding and whatnot. What about indoorsy things for us nerds?
Belinda Stohner: Well, it’s important to have indoor things because if you can imagine, the heat and the sun can get quite oppressive here, especially now in the summertime. We have things like the art museums, which is really cool. Like I mentioned before, Perez Art Museum, which is near the water. There’s also the Frost Science Museum, which has a really cool aquarium. You can see sharks, you can touch a starfish and manta rays, and it’s just really beautiful. And if you’re into science, there’s that part of it too. Um, yeah, those are kind of two of my favorite things to do.
Andie Ho: So on that topic, what do you and your husband do for fun? I mean, as local residents who live there every day and obviously are not going to the touristy areas, what are some of the things that you like to do? Places to go, places to eat?
Belinda Stohner: We’re also kind of pretty book nerdy. So there’s Books & Books. The flagship store is in Coral Gables downtown. It’s very quaint, has a cafe, wooden floors, beautiful. They have a whole section dedicated to just beautiful coffee table books, if you can imagine. And it’s cool just to go there and hang out. There’s a really cool alcoholic ice cream store. I shouldn’t really call it a store, but it kind of feels like a speakeasy almost, or a bar. And they only sell alcoholic ice cream, but it’s really good, well done. It’s not gimmicky. And that’s in the Design District, called Aubi & Ramsa.
Andie Ho: Cool. All right. I think that about covers it. It sounds like there’s something for everyone in Miami. Last question that I ask all of my interviewees: What would you like to say to our audience? What would you like them to know about life, the universe and everything?
Belinda Stohner: Everything everything? Uh, work hard and be a good person. Come to Miami. It’s a beautiful place!
Andie Ho: There you have it. Words of wisdom. All right. Well, thank you very much for telling us all about Miami today. And we hope to see you soon. And I’ll definitely see you at Christmas.
Belinda Stohner: All right. Thanks for having me.
Andie Ho: This concludes our episode for today. You can subscribe to the Continuing Education Series podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes by searching for Continuing Education Series. You can contact the FLD at division@atanet.org, visit our website at www.ata-divisions.org/fld, or get in touch with us on social media. This is Andie Ho signing off. Thanks for listening and à bientôt!
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL EPISODE
SOUNDCLOUD: You can listen to or download Episode 26 and all previous episodes on Soundcloud here.
ITUNES: This episode and all previous episodes are available on iTunes here. You can subscribe or listen online. Like what you hear? Rate us and review us! It really helps get the word out.
Episode 26: A Chat with the SPD & KLD
Andie Ho: This is Andie Ho, host of the Continuing Education Series, a podcast produced for the members of the French Language Division of the American Translators Association, offering educational content about the craft of French-to-English and English-to-French translation and the division. Hi and welcome back to the podcast. We have a very exciting episode for you today. I have two guests, Paul Gallagher and Edna Santizo. They are here from the Korean Language Division and the Spanish Language Division, respectively, here to talk about what it’s like to run the largest and smallest language divisions of the ATA. Now, normally we here at the ATA or at the FLD podcast focus on French subjects, because obviously that is of interest to our memberships. But thought also, you know, we don’t talk to the other language divisions that often. So I wanted to reach out to them and see what their lives were like and kind of compare them to each other and to ours. So a brief bit about our guests today. Paul B. Gallagher is a Russian-to-English translator celebrating his 38th year in business in May. Congratulations, Paul. He has a master’s in linguistics from The Ohio State University and has also studied French, German, Polish, Bulgarian, Hebrew and Sanskrit at the college level.
Andie Ho: He took up Korean in 2007, soaking up Korean dramas, K-pop, Korean cuisine and working with Koreans in his local community to increase voter registration and engagement. As he’s gotten more into the Korean language and culture as his main hobby for the last 16 years, he was recruited by the to be its administrator in 2019 and is now finishing up his second term. Edna is a court-certified interpreter with the California Judicial Council, a conference and community interpreter and a translator. She was first elected administrator of the Spanish Language Division and is also on her second term and as an ATA and SPD member since 2010, Edna was invited to join the division’s Leadership Council in 2016 as a member of the Digital and Social Media Committee. And then the next year she was appointed chair of the committee, and that offered her a platform to learn about the inner workings of the ATA’s largest language division by far, as we’re going to discuss. So welcome, Edna. Welcome, Paul.
Edna Santizo: Thank you.
Paul Gallagher: Thank you.
Andie Ho: So, quick numbers for you. I pulled this from the ATA’s member directory. Edna, the Spanish Language Division has currently 2,073 members. French is a little less than half that at 931. And then Paul, the Korean Language Division has 98. So that is quite the disparity. That is a factor of 10 or 20, really. Edna, we’ll start with you. What is it like to run a language division with so many people from so many different places all over the world?
Edna Santizo: It’s fun and it’s challenging, as you can imagine. The Spanish Language Division, aside from being one of the largest divisions of the ATA, is also one of the oldest divisions. A lot of colleagues know each other because, you know, we run into each other at the conference. So we know a pretty good size of the members of the SPD, and that helps run the division. Aside from that, I’m blessed to follow on the steps of some amazing leaders that have, that did a lot of very good work in establishing the division, you know, creating committees, working on the website and what-have-you. And also, I’m very lucky to have a group of volunteers that are committed and that are always, you know, willing to lend a helping hand when we have activities or what-have-you. So overall, I would say it’s very fun and challenging.
Andie Ho: And Paul, what about you? What is it like to have a much smaller group of people to work with?
Paul Gallagher: Well, I would like to start with one small correction. We just added a member, so we’re at 99 today. Yeah, it is very interesting. Um, I enjoy working with Koreans, but there are certain cultural challenges because their mindset is often very different from the American mindset. They tend to be cliquish. If you want to deal with Korean, it’s best if you get an introduction from somebody they already know. But once you get in, they’re very tight. I really enjoy working with them. And the size has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage, of course, is that you basically know everybody. The disadvantage is if you need if you need somebody to do a particular task, it’s harder to find someone if you have a smaller group to choose from. But we get by, we’re fine.
Andie Ho: So that was going to be one of my first questions is would you each describe your divisions as close-knit? Obviously it’s going to be much harder, Edna, for the Spanish Language Division for everybody to know each other. But are there, you know, very close groups within that as well?
Edna Santizo: I would say so. And this is something that I’ve heard over the years and, you know, I’ve been a witness of it where people have met during an conference and they become very good friends. They share, you know, work opportunities and they look forward to the next year to meet again at a conference. And they met because, you know, they attended the annual dinner of the SPD or they attended an event of the SPD or because they found out that they’re both SPD members. So I don’t think, you know, all 2,000 members know each other. That would be very hard. But yes, like you described, there are groups of people that are very close-knit that have met at a SPD activity and that they remain, I mean, they become very close friends and work colleagues over the years.
Andie Ho: Paul, you said some of the members tend to be cliquish. Would you view the world as one big clique or are there sort of some sub cliques within it?
Paul Gallagher: In any organization with more than about 10 people, there’re going to be sub-cliques. It’s just by default. I would say that. The Koreans compared to Americans. Again, the Koreans tend to be hardworking, very diligent, very committed to their duties. So once you get somebody on board for something, they will push the limits to get it done. Americans by comparison—and of course, any group has a mix—but Americans compared to Koreans, I would call myself a shirker. And I mean, I think I’m working hard and then I look at them and. Wow.
Andie Ho: So some of the advantages and disadvantages of the sizes of your divisions are obvious. But Paul, for your small division, do you have trouble finding volunteers, or do you have more volunteers stepping up because it’s so close-knit and everybody feels part of the group?
Paul Gallagher: Yes and no. It depends on how we approach them. And I didn’t know this at first, but when I first got started, I would send a broadcast to my Leadership Council, which even though we’re recommended to have about 10 people, we at the beginning had about 12 or 13. I would send a broadcast to all of them and say, if anybody is interested in doing this, if anybody can help, please contact me. And I was getting no response. And I realized, and people within the division clued me in, that I have to approach each one of them personally and say, you know, Kyung-ah, can you help? Or can you do this? And make a specific ask to a specific person. And then they will answer. And more often than not they’ll say yes, but if I just send a broadcast, they’ll each wait for someone else to step up.
Andie Ho: You know, I have found that in the French Language Division as well and also in other organizations I volunteer for. That may just be human nature. But Edna, I mean, you tell us, you have the biggest division. Is that also true for the SPD?
Edna Santizo: Yes, I know. Can you repeat the question? I’m sorry.
Andie Ho: If you send out a general call for volunteers, do you have millions of people stepping up, you know, leaping up to volunteer because you have so many people? Or do they just sort of hide behind each other because there’s so many of them?
Edna Santizo: Well, you know, actually, I think we are very lucky. We have a total of nine committees on the SPD. Each committee runs between three to seven members per committee. And like you mentioned at the beginning, this is the third year that I’ve been an SPD administrator and I haven’t had any issues in finding volunteers as to asking for a specific task because we are very well structured. Each committee has their area and they know what they need to do and they do it. I do very little work. I will say, thankfully, in guiding the everyday operation, we have special activities and special projects that we do. And that’s where we get together and we plan and we decide who’s going to be doing what. But it’s been pretty good so far, As to calling for volunteers, usually we at the conference, the administrator, the assistant administrator, we are always talking to people, to new members. And if they show interest in joining the Leadership Council, we try to take them in. We don’t say no. We take volunteers because we need them. And usually that’s the case at the ATA conference. People approach us and they ask us if they can help. And we always say yes. And we tell them we have these committees. Let us know where you think you can help us, and then we take it from there.
Andie Ho: So what are some of these subcommittees that you have, or committees?
Edna Santizo: We have the Digital and Social Media Committee. We have the Intercambios, which is the SPD bulletin. We have a website committee, student involvement, hospitality and relationships and, let me see, podcast. We also have a podcast committee.
Andie Ho: Paul. What about KLD? Do you guys have a newsletter or podcast or anything like that? Social media?
Paul Gallagher: We have a technically we do have a blog and we do have a Facebook page, but there isn’t a lot of activity there. As you know, any blog is successful if there are frequent posts so people have a reason to come and visit. Most of the stuff, most of the activity that we have goes through our listserv, where somebody posts a message and all the members of the listserv get a copy in their email box. So they don’t have to go looking for it. It comes to them.
Andie Ho: What is your relationship, Pau, the KLD’s relationship to some of the other language divisions? Do you ever partner with, say, Chinese or Japanese or any of the other divisions?
Paul Gallagher: We have explored connections with Chinese and Japanese, who are our natural partners. If if you know English, obviously half of what you know is from French because of the Norman conquest. And so if we want to say “go back,” we can also say “return,” and “return” is the French equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon “go back.” In Korean, the corresponding parent language, so to speak, is Chinese. They’re not genetically related, but Korean has borrowed thousands and thousands of Chinese words, and they pronounce them pretty close to the middle Chinese version, in about 500 AD. The Korean pronunciations sound a lot like the Cantonese pronunciations, which have not changed a lot, but Mandarin because of the Mongol influence and the conquests over there has changed a lot. And so you know, the common name Kim, which originally sounded more like “come,” is now Jin in Mandarin and doesn’t sound like Kim in Korean. Similarly, Japanese has borrowed thousands and thousands of Chinese words and they’ve also borrowed the writing system and supplemented it with their own. So you can look at a character in Japanese and understand the meaning, but maybe not be so sure about the pronunciation. So there is this natural cross-cultural — and I should also say Buddhism and Confucianism have migrated from the continent onto the peninsula and the Japanese islands. So there’s a lot of that. The mindset, the thought process has similarities. We have tried a couple of times to put together a joint presentations at ATA. So far it hasn’t worked out and it won’t work out this year. You know, everything has been set. But I do hope that someday soon that CJK will join forces and put together a joint presentation.
Andie Ho: Edna, what about you?
Edna Santizo: Yes, we have collaborated with other divisions. I know that we have collaborated with the Audiovisual Division. We are looking forward to collaborating with the Interpreters Division this year. I’m hoping that that happens and, I can’t remember right now, you know, specific collaborations. But yes, we usually reach out to other divisions because our members, you know, we’re Spanish Division, but our members are — their specializations are you know, audiovisual, medical, they’re interpreters, they work into the legal fields. So we have members in other divisions, and that’s why we try to collaborate. Also, we try to publish on the Intercambios bulletin articles related to those specializations. And usually members from other divisions are the ones who are contributing to those articles.
Andie Ho: Do either of you have special events for your divisions at the annual ATA conference besides the annual meeting for members?
Edna Santizo: Go ahead, Paul. Oh, thank you. We do. We have what we call our annual dinner. The annual dinner is called Muchas culturas un solo idioma, many cultures, one language. And it is very well known in our division, I think with other divisions too, we usually have about 100 people in our annual dinner. We have a very famous raffle that takes place at the end of the dinner and we have, you know, so many prizes. We have licenses for Trados, for Wordfast, books, webinars, workshops. What we try to, you know, celebrate our members at our annual dinner. And it’s a networking event. It’s an opportunity to be, you know, outside of the conference setting and just relax and enjoy a dinner and get to know one another. And it’s very fun. And it’s one of the traditions that we have for the annual conferences.
Andie Ho: Paul?
Paul Gallagher: Yes.
Paul Gallagher: We do also have an annual dinner and it draws a substantial, I would say typically two-thirds or more of the attendees go to or come to our dinner. Korean food is delicious. If you’ve had it, you know. If you haven’t, one of the things I especially like about it is what they call banchan, the side dishes. You don’t just serve an entree and a drink, but six, seven, eight, ten, sometimes more little side dishes. So you’ve got six, seven, eight, ten or more different flavors mixing in with your entree.
Andie Ho: I had read about banchan. I don’t know how you say it, but the first time I actually experienced it, it was overwhelming in the best possible way. It just kept coming and so much of it and they were so different. It was—I thought, why doesn’t every culture do this? This is amazing.
Edna Santizo: I used to work for Koreans before I became a translator and interpreter. And yes, I love the Korean food like I’m a witness of it.
Paul Gallagher: I’d be interested to know, Edna. Korea is a small country, well-populated, but relatively small, and pretty much everyone can understand everybody. But I understand that there are a lot of Spanishes across the world. I was especially impressed when I saw the movie Walk the Line. The Spanish title is La Locura de Johnny y June. It’s about Johnny Cash. And I discovered that it has not only Spanish subtitles but Spanish audio as well. But they were done by people from two different countries, one from Mexico and one from Peru. So if you turn them both on, you get two different sets of, two different scripts.
Edna Santizo: Right. Uh huh.
Paul Gallagher: Did you find any difficulty understanding Spanish speakers from other countries?
Edna Santizo: It varies. Yes. There’s people from Spain versus people from Argentina and from Guatemala. So it’s a very different dialect of Spanish. But Mexico, Mexico also has like many different dialects within Mexico. But we understand each other. I think there is something that not everybody agrees on, but there is something called neutral Spanish, and we’re able to understand each other. Obviously, there are nuances, especially with, you know, jokes, humor or bad words, you know. But then, you know, each country has its own twist to that. So that may be difficult. And obviously there’s, you know, those words that have one meaning in one country and a completely different meaning in another country. And, you know, we all make fun of those words. And of course, we use them because we know, you know, they’re going to be a very good conversation topic. But I think overall, we’re able to understand each other pretty well.
Paul Gallagher: Thank you.
Andie Ho: All right. Well, final question that I ask all of my interviewees. Is there anything else you would like people to know at all? Edna, I’ll start with you.
Edna Santizo: Well, I think there is this conception sometimes, that’s what I’ve heard, that because the Spanish Division is so big that it’s not approachable sometimes or that, you know, the volunteers are handpicked or that we are not willing to collaborate with other divisions because we are so big. But that’s not the case. Please reach out to us if you need any help, if we can support in promoting your events, your content, if you have a podcast and you want us to help you, please reach out. And if you want to volunteer also, you will be more than welcome to join us. Yeah.
Edna Santizo: That’s it.
Paul Gallagher: I was going to say much the same thing. So thank you, Edna, for saying it so well. The Korean Language Division always welcomes new members. We’re happy to have you to join with you, to welcome you in. What should I say? [speaks Korean] When somebody arrives and you want to welcome them, typically that’s what they say, [speaks Korean], which is literally “quickly come,” in a polite form. It would be like usted in Spanish or vous in French.
Andie Ho: I love it. Thank you guys for being here. I think we should maybe think about some collaborations with each other.
Edna Santizo: Absolutely.
Paul Gallagher: I’m ready.
Edna Santizo: Yeah.
Andie Ho: Excellent.
Andie Ho: Maybe stay tuned, people. And also, if you want to be the one hundredth KLD member, sign up now.
Paul Gallagher: Yeah. You get a you get a free toaster.
Paul Gallagher: Just kidding. Kidding.
Andie Ho: Thank you.
Paul Gallagher: Thank you, Andie, for hosting this.
Edna Santizo: Thank you, Andie. Appreciate it.
Andie Ho: This concludes our episode for today. You can subscribe to the Continuing Education Series podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes by searching for Continuing Education Series. You can contact the FLD at division@atanet.org, visit our website at www.ata-divisions.org/fld, or get in touch with us on social media. This is Andie Ho signing off. Thanks for listening and à bientôt!
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL EPISODE
SOUNDCLOUD: You can listen to or download Episode 25 and all previous episodes on Soundcloud here.
ITUNES: This episode and all previous episodes are available on iTunes here. You can subscribe or listen online. Like what you hear? Rate us and review us! It really helps get the word out.
Episode 25 — Matt Bunczk on Paralegal Certificates
Andie Ho: This is Andie Ho, host of the Continuing Education Series, a podcast produced for the members of the French Language Division of the American Translators Association, offering educational content about the craft of French-to-English and English-to-French translation and the Division. Matt Bunczk is an FLD member and translator who is ATA-certified in both German- and French-to-English. He specializes in business, legal and financial translations. He’s based near Philadelphia, where he obtained a BA in French from Ursinus College and a certificate of proficiency in paralegal studies from Delaware County Community College. His undergraduate studies have taken him to places including Strasbourg and Senegal. He’s been translating full time since 2015. Welcome, Matt Bunczk.
MB: Thank you, Andie. It’s great to be here.
AH: Now, I’ve already spilled the beans on why I asked Matt to speak with us today. And it’s because of that certificate of proficiency in paralegal studies from Delaware County Community College that I wanted to talk to him about it. One of our colleagues put me on to the fact that you earned this paralegal certificate, and my interest was immediately piqued because I had never heard of such a thing and didn’t know such a thing existed. So I want to hear all about it today. Why, when, where, how,, everything. And maybe our colleagues will be inspired to get one as well. So first things first. How did you learn about this paralegal certificate? Since I’ve never heard of it.
MB: I was, well, when I started freelancing back in 2015, there were just a lot of different projects coming at me, and there were some that I was that I was able to do just with my business background and as a project coordinator and an executive assistant. And then there were others that were kind of out of reach for me. But I would have liked to be able to translate them and understand the documents and everything. And so I really got into the paralegal program because I wanted to explore those documents that I was interested in translating.
AH: Did you want to specialize in legal right off the bat? Is that what made you get it or was it just because you were receiving legal and wanted to understand more about it?
MB: I think it was because I was receiving the legal documents and I wanted to understand more about them. And I think I also had the impetus from setting out on my own as a freelancer and no longer being an employee of a company and just understanding how the law affected me as an independent contractor. And in that process, I also learned a lot just about my rights and my obligations as a person. So there’s been a lot of enlightening moments along the way.
AH: So you got it from a Delaware County Community College. You got your certificate from there. Is that near you?
MB: Yes. It’s about a half an hour away from me. And Delaware County is not the county that I live in. I actually live in Montgomery County, but at Montgomery County Community College, they don’t have a paralegal certificate program. But in neighboring Delaware County, even though I would have to pay more to attend that community college, I found it very affordable still, and I was able to drive there and attend the classes.
AH: Okay. So it was in-person?
MB: Yes. And they also had a hybrid model where they wanted you to show up in person, but if you couldn’t show up in person, they streamed the class online.
AH: And this was in in what year? I mean pre-COVID?
MB: Yes, this was. I started the program in 2019 and then I completed it in 2021.
AH: So they were a little bit just ahead of the curve, huh?
MB: Yeah, absolutely.
AH: Do you know, do they happen to be full online at this point?
MB: I’m not sure about that. I would venture to say that they went back to in-person classes, but I’m not sure about that.
AH: So you said 2019 to 2021. Was it a two-year program or one-and-a-half or, I mean, how did they count it?
MB: Yeah. So technically, there are two tracks to this program. If you don’t have an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree, you could obtain your associate’s degree in paralegal studies. If you have an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree, you could take their certificate of proficiency program, which is just the classes focused on the paralegal studies. And so since I had a bachelor’s degree already, I was able to do the professional certificate program. And that was a little shorter than two years. That was about a year and a half.
AH: Taking how many classes at a time?
MB: I just took one or two classes at a time. And I was able to fit that comfortably into my schedule and still have a social life.
AH: That was going to be my next question is, how did you balance working full time, running your own business and then being in school at the same time?
MB: Basically, I took a class or two in the evenings and over the summer, and like I said, it was just one or two at a time. And it was just for each class. It was about three hours of class time each week. And then probably the same, if not a little more, more hours for homework. But it was definitely doable working full-time.
AH: And all the classes were in the evening?
MB: Yeah. Yep. There was no problem there.
AH: Okay, so that sounds like it lends itself to working professionals, people who are already working a full-time job.
MB: Exactly, yeah.
AH: Okay, so what was the curriculum like? What kinds of classes do you take to get a paralegal certificate?
MB: So they start out their program with an introduction to paralegal studies, and that gave an overview of our legal system in the United States. And then after that, I took two classes in legal research and writing, and that was followed by contract law and then another class called Technology in the Law, which made sure that we were able to draft documents in Microsoft Word and create PowerPoint presentations and work with software that you would find in law firms. And then after that, I took a real estate law class. I took an accounting class because they want their paralegal students to have some general idea of how accounting works. I took civil litigation and tort principles, civil litigation and toward applications, criminal law. And then at the end of it all, I had — it was almost like an internship, but it was geared toward working professionals so you didn’t have to show up at an internship every day. But in the evenings we would go to our professor’s law firm. She had a private practice and she would give us real live cases to work on.
AH: Oh, wow. That’s really neat.
MB: Yeah, it was really neat and really eye-opening and really humbling.
AH: Wow. So how many of those classes did you choose, and how many of them were mandatory for everyone in the program?
MB: So most of those classes were mandatory. There was one elective that we had to take, but we had a choice of which elective we took. And the choices were family law, there was one called elder law, there was bankruptcy law, there was business organizations, administrative law. And the one that I took, I actually took it at Montgomery County Community College, and I had the credit transferred in, and that was a business law class.
AH: All right. Okay. So I don’t know if you have a full answer for this, but how does a paralegal certificate differ from full-blown law school? Is it…I mean, did you… Do people in law school take the classes that you took and then continue on? Or was it like a pretty separate program?
MB: Right. What I heard from the chairperson of the paralegal studies department when I was first being received into the paralegal studies program was that this program was almost like the equivalent of the first year of law school, and it touches on most areas of the law. I would say it doesn’t go as in-depth as a law school curriculum would go, but it still gave you still went pretty deep with everything.
AH: You mentioned tuition being relatively affordable. I mean, we don’t have to go into specifics, but you found it was affordable for your case?
MB: Yeah, absolutely.
MB: I don’t mind sharing how much it cost for me as an out-of-county student. I paid about $1,000 a class, not including the books. So with 11 or 12 classes, that was around $12,000. And I wasn’t paying that all at once. I was just paying as I went.
AH: Okay. And then you mentioned that you could go into the certificate program even if you don’t already have an associate’s or a bachelor’s. So what are the qualifications to get in?
MB: You would basically have to apply to the program, like, just apply to the college and declare your major as a paralegal studies major.
AH: Okay. So you could just be straight out of high school, for instance?
MB: Absolutely, yep.
AH: Okay. Well, how many of your fellow students were straight out of high school or traditional college age? And how many of them were older or non-traditional?
MB: I would say it was split half and half. So half the students were straight out of high school and then the other half were working professionals.
AH: And how big were the classes?
MB: They were, I would say, they kind of ranged between probably between eight and 15 people in a class, I’d say.
AH: Oh, that’s a nice little size.
MB: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had great discussions that way.
AH: Oh, good. So did you feel like you got some good personal attention from your professors?
MB: Oh, yeah. Lots of personal attention. Yeah.
AH: You mentioned going to your professor’s actual law firm. That’s pretty cool.
MB: Oh, yeah, Yeah, that was. And, yeah, she trusted us with her cases, and she was okay with asking her clients if it was okay if we sat in on the discussions and helped with the cases and everything and yeah, it was really a wonderful opportunity.
AH: So what kinds of backgrounds did your fellow students come from? I mean, were there lots of other translators like you or people who actually, you know, wanted to work as a paralegal afterwards? Where did they come from?
MB: Most of them, they were seeking employment as a paralegal. For me, I was kind of the oddball. I mean, they were very interested in my translation work and everything. I definitely felt out of place because, you know, I kind of didn’t have it in my mind that I would be working as a paralegal after this. And I still don’t because there’s a level of stress in the work that I’m personally like, I don’t feel like I’m up to it. But yeah, most people in the program were working toward working as a paralegal.
AH: I can definitely relate to being in a room and being the oddball translator there.
MB: Exactly.
AH: So the big questions. How has this helped you in your translation work, if at all? Like, how have you been able to use this in your translation career?
MB: I would say the most important thing that it’s given me is it’s enabled me to translate the documents that I’ve wanted to work with, and then some. There are lots of moments where I’m saying to myself, oh my God, I’m so glad I took these classes. And I don’t feel so lost when I’m facing certain documents or certain situations.
AH: Have you been able to actively use your certificate as a selling point to potential clients?
MB: Oh yeah.
AH: Or is it more of a personal…
MB: I do put myself out there as someone who specializes in legal translations. I’m not necessarily actively seeking out legal translation, but it is something that interests me very much. It’s something that I think I’m pretty good at. Those are my feelings about that. Does that answer the question?
AH: I think so, yeah. And yeah, it makes sense. If you also specialize in business and financial, you’re probably going to see a fair amount of legal coming at you as well.
MB: Absolutely. Yeah.
AH: Okay, Well, this has been very interesting. Um, last question that I always ask all of my interviewees. Is there anything else you want listeners to know about life, the universe and everything?
MB: [laughs] Well, I guess in terms of the paralegal program and paralegal studies, I guess I will end by saying that I know it’s not for everyone. I know there’s one listener in particular who won’t touch legal translations with a 10-foot pole. But if you are interested in legal things, if you would like to learn more about our legal system in the United States, it’s definitely an interesting program. Linguistically, you do so much mental gymnastics, working with words and dealing with terminology and statutes and court cases. So it’s definitely an exercise in working with your words, and I think it would definitely improve your skills as a translator even if you don’t go into legal translation. Um. And, I think that’s it.
AH: All right. Words of wisdom from Matt Bunczk. Thank you so much, Matt, for this perspective. Very interesting. I may be googling paralegal certificates near me soon. We’ll see. But thank you for your time today. We appreciate it.
MB: Great, thanks a lot for the opportunity, Andie.
MB: Appreciate it.
AH: This concludes our episode for today. You can subscribe to the Continuing Education Series podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes by searching for “Continuing Education series.” You can contact the FLD at division [at] atanet.org, visit our website at www.ata-divisions.org/fld, or get in touch with us on social media. This is Andie Ho signing off. Thanks for listening and à bientôt!
Matthew Bunczk is an ATA-certified German-to-English and ATA-certified French-to-English translator specializing in business and legal texts.
ATA Podcast host Andie Ho is a certified French to English translator specializing in the food industry. She earned her M.A. in translation from Kent State University and is now based in the Houston area. She currently serves as the ATA’s French Language Division administrator. You can follow her on Twitter at @JHawkTranslator or email her at andie [at] andiehotranslations [dot] com.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL EPISODE
SOUNDCLOUD: You can listen to or download Episode 29 and all previous episodes on Soundcloud here.
ITUNES: This episode and all previous episodes are available on iTunes here. You can subscribe or listen online. Like what you hear? Rate us and review us! It really helps get the word out.
Episode 29: ATA 2023 Conference – French Sessions
Andie Ho: Hello, hello! I’m your podcast host, Andie Ho, and for this episode we don’t have any guests. Well, we sort of have one. You’ll find out. But what I want to do this time is talk about the French conference sessions that are going on at ATA 64 in October, October 25th through 28th of this year in Miami, Florida. Now, we’ve got six sessions this year that are labeled as French or having to do with French. Four of them are the traditional hour-long sessions that we all know and love. But this year there are some new formats for some of the sessions at ATA. Some of them are 30 minutes long and we have one of those for our French talks. And then we have one that is 15 minutes and that’s called a MicroTalk. There’s going to be some MicroTalks sprinkled throughout ATA that are 15 minutes and they’re supposed to be something like a TED Talk. I’m very excited about this new format. It’s going to be interesting to see how it goes. And I’m very pleased that the Board and other people organizing the ATA are innovating and trying new things. Now, for the first session, I will let one of the speakers herself tell you what it’s all about.
Liza Tripp: Bonjour, tout le monde! My name is Liza Tripp, and I’m a certified French-to-English translator. I’ll be presenting with Denise Jacobs at this year’s 64th ATA conference in Miami on Thursday, October 26th at 10:45 a.m. Our session’s entitled “Est-ce Que Ça Cloche?! Coping With Culture Clash in French to English Fashion Translation.” In this session, we’ll be delving into French fashion language and in particular, noticing how terms in this sector often fluidly evoke not just concrete fashion words, but more abstract and culturally charged concepts such as art-making legacy. And English? Well, not so much. Using recent translations from fashion and gallery exhibits, fashion books, and marketing materials we’ll learn to identify where linguistic gaps can signal cultural gaps and how we can add back just a bit of that cultural je ne sais quoi when translating these materials into English. This year we don’t have the last session on the last day, so I hope to see everyone alert and energetic in Miami. À tout!
Andie Ho: Now, of note, Liza and Denise’s session is also labeled as “Book and Literary Translation,” “Localization,” and “Other T&I Topics.”
Now, the next session we have is called “Chemical Name, Chemical Structures: What’s a Translator to Do?” And it’s being put on by Matthew Schlecht. It is from 1:45 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. on Thursday. And here’s the description. “Translators and interpreters encounter chemical names in many subject matter areas, including medicines, cosmetics, and food additives. They can appear in news items, school assignments, and everyday conversations. There are proper official names for all of them, but these are honored mainly in the breach. Finding the right chemical name to fit the register of a document is a challenge, but sometimes even getting the correct spelling is daunting. This session will cover the translation of chemical names from German, French, Japanese, and Spanish into English, describe strategies and approaches, and show how to capture and generate chemical structures for inclusion.”
Now it’s also labeled as “Science and Technology T&I,” “Medical T&I,” and “German,” “Japanese,” and “Spanish.”
The next one is from 2 to 3 p.m. on Friday. And it is called “Québec: The Gift That Keeps on Giving.” The speaker is Claire Kusy. I’m not positive how to pronounce her name, so pardon me, Claire, if I mispronounced it. And here’s the description. “The practice of translation in the Francophone province of Quebec provides a fertile landscape in North America. Quebec is at the crossroads of so many fascinating elements: history, culture, politics, law and, of course, language.
From a translator’s perspective, the unique Quebec context and experience makes the profession a highly stimulating one, reaffirming the translator’s role as more than a simple conduit. Through the lens of legal translation (the speakers area of expertise), this session will delve into some of the more intriguing aspects of a Quebec translator’s practice.”
This one is labeled as “Legal T&I” in addition to “French.”
All right. The next one runs from 3:30 to 4 p.m. This is one of our half-hour sessions and it takes place on Friday. It is called “Le Repas des Fauves to The Beasts’ Feast: A Translator’s Linguistic and Cultural Feat.” Now, interestingly, no speaker is listed, so I guess it’s a mystery. We’ll find out when we get there. Here’s the description. “Julien Sibre’s play Le Repas des Fauves describes the conflictual interaction between friends who are trapped in a Parisian apartment during the German occupation of France. How does the English translator mediate between the two texts to convey the linguistic and cultural essence of a psychological drama deeply rooted in specific historical and psychological circumstances? The speaker will discuss the challenges she experienced while translating Sibre’s work into English to demonstrate that compromise is often the only strategy available to the literary translator.”
Unsurprisingly, this one is also marked as “Book and Literary Translation” and sounds very interesting.
The next one is the only ATA MicroTalk labeled as French, and it runs from 8:50 a.m. to 9:05 a.m. on Saturday. It is called “Civic Engagement in the Translation Classroom: A Virtual Exchange Experiment.”
And the speaker is Kathleen Loysen. “The speaker will discuss a semester-long virtual exchange between two groups of university students of French to English translation (in France and the U.S.). In these virtual classes, students were guided through a project involving research on the history of slavery in both New Jersey and Bordeaux and its relationship to the Black Lives Matter movement. Students performed research, translated documents, and created content for a video documenting their experience. Students also discovered how seemingly universal notions of democracy, citizenship, and diversity have evolved in both countries. The session will be delivered in English with selected examples in French that will be translated and explicated.”
This session is labeled as an “ATA MicroTalk,” of course, as well as “Educational T&I” and “T&I Education and Training.”
And last but not least, from 4 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, we have a session called “What’s Cooking: An Introduction to Culinary Translation” by Olivia Singier. “Over the past few years, interest in food and cooking has become more popular thanks to globalization and the expansion of food-related media. How difficult could it be to translate menus and cookbooks? Chicken with pasta and tomato sauce—that sounds easy enough to translate! The truth is, it’s anything but. Using examples from past projects, the speaker will discuss the various techniques used to translate food and specialized terms in cookbooks. In this interactive session, attendees will receive tips on how to develop their skills and perhaps add culinary translation to their specialties.”
This one is marked as “Book and Literary Translation” and “Other T&I Topics.”
Now, those are the six sessions that are labeled as French for this year’s ATA conference. But of course, there are going to be so many more sessions. On a personal note, although we want to support our fellow French speakers, there are so many more sessions to check out. And in fact, I encourage you to go to ones that you think have nothing to do with your career or your language or your specialty. Some of the most interesting sessions I’ve ever been to are ones that have nothing to do with what I do on a daily basis. And honestly, I didn’t really get anything out of them on a professional level, but they were just so much fun and so interesting. And you get to meet new people outside of your usual circles that you might not meet in other circumstances. Yeah, it’s really interesting and there’s so much to explore, especially if you’ve been to ATA number of times now. I’m not going to say it gets “samey,” but you know you’re comfortable, and if you’re looking for something new and a new way to stretch yourself at the conference in a way that you haven’t done in a while, it’s definitely a quick way to do it. Anyways, I will see you all soon and I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
HOW TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL EPISODE
SOUNDCLOUD: You can listen to or download Episode 27 and all previous episodes on Soundcloud here.
ITUNES: This episode and all previous episodes are available on iTunes here. You can subscribe or listen online. Like what you hear? Rate us and review us! It really helps get the word out.
Episode 27: Jean-Baptiste Joachim on Teaching French Online
Andie Ho: This is Andie Ho, host of the Continuing Education Series, a podcast produced for the member of the French Language Division of the American Translators Association (ATA), offering educational content about the craft of French-to-English and English-to-French translation and the Division.
Andie Ho: Aujourd’hui, nous allons parler à Jean-Baptiste Joachim, qui est professeur de français, d’anglais et d’espagnol. Professeur, mais pour les adultes. Son activité principale, c’est l’enseignement du français, et plus principalement le français oral. Je l’ai invité aujourd’hui à nous parler parce que ses activités sont proches de la traduction et de l’interprétation. Jean-Baptiste Joachim, bienvenue, merci d’être là !
Jean-Baptiste Joachim: Bonjour Andie. Merci de m’accueillir !
Andie: Bon, quand je pense à un prof de français, normalement je pense à une école, une maîtresse, les cours de récré. Pour moi c’est ça un professeur de français. Mais toi tu ne fais pas ça. Donc explique-nous ce que tu fais exactement.
Jean-Baptiste : Effectivement, c’est vrai que ma vision des cours de français n’est pas exactement la même que celle dont on a l’habitude. Et pourtant c’est peut-être une approche qui est assez commune, assez fréquente, même si on ne s’en rend pas forcément compte.
Aujourd’hui, on apprend les langues grâce à Internet. Il y a des centaines et des centaines de chaînes YouTube pour apprendre des langues. Il y a énormément de vidéos de qualité, des podcasts, des sites internet et de plus en plus de personnes sont maintenant capables d’apprendre seules, de manière autonome. Donc parfois elles commencent dans un cours et puis elles décident de passer à la vitesse supérieure, de commencer à explorer elles-mêmes différentes ressources. Et très rapidement, elles arrivent à un niveau qui est beaucoup plus élevé que le rythme proposé par la classe. Elles essaient alors d’avoir des cours particuliers pour pouvoir améliorer leur communication et avoir une approche un peu plus personnalisée.
J’ai donc surfé sur cette vague des cours privés et des cours particuliers suivis par beaucoup de ces personnes, qui parfois étaient un peu frustrées de ne pas pouvoir communiquer à un niveau plus élevé. Et donc je leur propose une approche personnalisée, avec la réalisation de leurs objectifs de manière beaucoup plus sérieuse. Voilà comment j’ai commencé à travailler.
Andie: Donc comment t’es-tu lancé dans ce chemin ? Est-ce que tu es professeur de formation ?
Jean-Baptiste : Alors, à l’origine, je suis plutôt linguiste de formation. Mais pas « véritablement linguiste » : j’ai suivi un cursus à l’université qui s’appelait « Langues étrangères appliquées ». L’objectif, c’était d’étudier les langues étrangères, mais dans un but professionnel. Donc par exemple faire de la traduction commerciale, faire de la traduction de notices, ou alors travailler dans une entreprise d’import-export avec une bonne connaissance de la culture et des langues des pays dans lesquels on serait amené à travailler.
Et quand j’ai terminé mon master, j’ai commencé à travailler dans l’import-export. J’ai travaillé dans différentes entreprises, mais je me suis rapidement rendu compte que je n’étais pas forcément fait pour travailler en équipe : je suis plus un travailleur solitaire qu’un travailleur en équipe. La raison en est que je suis très facilement distrait. Comme je te l’avais déjà raconté, je suis très facilement distrait et quand je suis en équipe, eh bien je passe plus de temps à rigoler avec les collègues qu’à véritablement travailler. Pour pouvoir travailler correctement, je dois être dans un cadre vraiment très calme et silencieux, en face-à-face avec une personne et, comme ça, je suis sûr de pouvoir avancer.
Donc quand je me suis rendu compte que ça n’allait pas dans les entreprises, j’ai réfléchi un petit peu, et à l’époque où j’ai commencé à enseigner, je travaillais au Luxembourg et au Luxembourg, c’est assez fréquent d’avoir une deuxième activité. Certaines personnes ont un poste durant la journée dans une entreprise et le soir prennent un deuxième petit boulot, généralement en relation avec leur passion pour pouvoir, eh bien voilà, vivre un petit peu de leur passion.
Et donc j’avais une amie qui était professeure de sport. Pendant la journée, elle était responsable financière et, le soir, elle donnait des cours de sport dans une salle de sport. J’étais assez impressionné. Je me dis « Waouh, quand même, avoir une journée de travail et ensuite enchaîner ! ». Et j’ai participé à un de ces cours. J’ai vu à quel point elle était heureuse et à quel point c’était une autre personne. Et je me dis : « Pourquoi est-ce que, moi, je ne ferais pas quelque chose comme ça ? ».
Et je me suis rapproché de différents instituts qui enseignent les langues au Luxembourg. J’ai proposé ma candidature et j’ai commencé à donner quelques cours comme ça, à droite à gauche. Et puis au début de l’année suivante, l’école m’a demandé si cela m’intéresserait de devenir professeur à temps plein. Et j’ai répondu, « Pourquoi pas, comment est-ce que ça se passe ? ». Mon interlocutrice m’a donné les conditions et m’a dit « Tu sais, toi, si tu t’installes en tant que professeur indépendant, je peux te garantir que tu auras 30 heures de cours dès la première année. » J’ai dit banco. J’ai accepté de quitter mon poste pour m’installer en tant que professeur indépendant. Et depuis, je n’ai pas arrêté. Je n’ai pas arrêté et j’en ai fait mon activité principale !
Andie: Et cela se passait quand ?
Jean-Baptiste : C’était 2014. J’ai commencé à travailler en tant que professeur en 2014. J’avais déjà fait auparavant du soutien scolaire, quelques activités comme ça, à droite, à gauche, mais jamais dans les entreprises. Et jamais de manière clairement organisée, comme un professeur de français, avec le matériel pédagogique nécessaire.
Andie: Donc tu as commencé par être prof de français. Tu es toujours prof de français, mais tu as beaucoup plus de contenu. Tu as des podcasts, des vidéos YouTube… ? Parle-nous de ça.
Jean-Baptiste : Effectivement, aujourd’hui, j’ai essayé de développer mon activité pour créer du contenu. Disons que la création de contenu, c’est d’abord pour satisfaire ma curiosité personnelle, parce qu’il y a beaucoup de matériel dont j’ai besoin et que j’aimerais utiliser, que je ne trouve pas forcément. Et avec un petit peu de formation en linguistique, je me suis rendu compte qu’il y avait beaucoup d’aspects du français qui n’étaient pas forcément pris en compte dans l’enseignement. Donc j’ai exploré tout ça, et je me suis créé des ressources qui correspondaient à ce dont j’avais besoin. Ressources que j’utilise pendant mes cours.
Mais une autre des raisons principales qui m’ont poussé à développer tout ça, c’est qu’aujourd’hui le marché de l’enseignement des langues est très concurrentiel. Il existe des plates-formes qui mettent en relation des professeurs et des élèves, mais qui bien évidemment prennent des commissions au passage. Et la seule manière, en tant que professeur indépendant, en ligne, de trouver des élèves, eh bien, c’est de créer du contenu, de créer une communauté. Donc moi, j’ai choisi YouTube. J’ai tâté, beaucoup.
Au début, je ne savais pas véritablement sur quelle plate-forme concentrer mon attention, mais finalement, c’est YouTube qui a eu le plus de succès. Et un petit peu plus tard, j’ai créé un podcast, mais c’était principalement pour faire passer les utilisateurs de YouTube à un produit un peu plus sophistiqué, un petit peu plus développé que ce que je proposais sur YouTube.
Donc en fait, aujourd’hui, les réseaux sociaux et mon activité en parallèle de mon activité de professeur de français ont deux fonctions. Premièrement, créer du contenu nécessaire pour l’enseignement, et aussi attirer de nouveaux clients et me faire connaître et faire connaître mes aptitudes professionnelles à mes futurs clients potentiels.
Andie: Donc qui ? Qui sont les cibles pour toi ?
Jean-Baptiste : Alors en fait, j’ai deux cibles principales. La première cible, ce sont les étudiants qui apprennent le français, les personnes qui désirent apprendre le français, qui vivent à l’étranger et qui ont pour projet de venir s’installer en France. Ces personnes-là, souvent sont passées par des structures comme l’Alliance française ou des cours de langues à l’Université, ou parfois par des professeurs privés.
Et une des frustrations qu’ils rencontrent quand ils arrivent ici, c’est de réaliser que le français tel qu’il est parlé en France est assez différent du français qu’ils ont appris dans leurs cours. Et la raison en est que, aujourd’hui, les professeurs ont tendance à favoriser l’enseignement du français standard, qui est compréhensible et compris dans tout le monde francophone, que ce soit en Afrique, au Canada et en France. Plutôt qu’une variété plus régionale, plus locale du français, que ce soit le français parisien ou le français méridional comme on le parle ici, là où j’habite, dans le sud de la France.
Et donc, après avoir rencontré plusieurs apprenants qui se plaignaient de leurs difficultés à comprendre les films, à comprendre des séries, ou qui étaient parfois perdus quand ils communiquaient avec des personnes, j’ai décidé de proposer des cours spécialement pour ce public avec un point de focalisation sur le français plutôt oral, le français régional ou le français local.
Ça, c’est donc mon premier public, les personnes qui veulent venir s’installer en France.
Et mon deuxième public, c’est un public de passionnés. Ce sont des personnes qui aiment la langue française, qui aiment la culture française mais qui n’habitent pas dans une région où il y a des francophones. Et donc ils cherchent une personne avec laquelle discuter et mettre en pratique ce qu’ils ont appris en français.
Et c’est très intéressant parce que c’est une approche qui est assez différente d’un cours de français traditionnel. C’est à dire que généralement, avec ces personnes-là, je ne fais pas un cours à proprement parler, avec de la grammaire. Ça nous arrive de parler grammaire et de parler vocabulaire, mais très souvent, ce qu’elles cherchent, c’est plutôt une relation sociale, et donc on développe certains liens d’amitié. On parle beaucoup de la vie quotidienne, des passions des gens, ce qui les intéresse, ce qui les motive à apprendre le français.
On parle aussi beaucoup de stratégies d’apprentissage, pour amener leur niveau de français à un niveau supérieur, et puis voilà, arriver à alimenter la progression. Mais d’une manière générale, c’est une sorte d’expérience du français à distance.
L’objectif, c’est de se rapprocher d’un francophone, et de le faire dans des conditions, agréables, plaisantes, qui donnent envie de continuer à apprendre, et surtout qui donnent une justification à l’apprentissage.
Parce que si on passe sa vie à apprendre et à mémoriser du vocabulaire sans jamais le mettre en pratique, on peut avoir une certaine frustration qui se met en place, et ce n’est pas très bon pour pouvoir continuer.
Tandis que si on a une personne avec laquelle on a plaisir à discuter régulièrement, et bien ça pousse à avancer. On se rend compte des lacunes qu’on a, du vocabulaire qui nous manque et puis voilà, c’est une manière aussi de… C’est une expérience humaine ! On peut dire que c’est une expérience humaine aussi !
Andie: Donc les podcasts, les vidéos, tout ça, est-ce qu’ils rapportent de l’argent en soi, ou est-ce plutôt pour financer tes autres activités ?
Jean-Baptiste : Alors, je pense que, dans une certaine mesure, ça pourrait rapporter beaucoup plus que ça ne me rapporte pour le moment. Par exemple, le modèle économique sur YouTube, c’est principalement la publicité, une petite partie, mais la grande partie, ce sont les sponsors.
Donc quand on a une chaîne YouTube avec un très large public, on peut être contacté par des entreprises qui veulent qu’on fasse, nous, la promotion de leur produit pour un public spécifique. Ça n’a pas été mon choix.
La première raison est que, moi, je n’ai pas réussi à développer une communauté énorme. Quand je compare avec d’autres youtubeurs qui ont des chaînes YouTube, ils auront parfois 60 000, 100 000 300 000 1 million d’abonnés. Moi, avec mon modeste 8500 abonnés, c’est déjà beaucoup plus de personnes que certainement je rencontrerai dans toute ma vie, mais c’est très modeste par rapport à d’autres chaînes YouTube qui elles, doivent générer un trafic important et de la publicité, avoir des revenus publicitaires assez importants.
Donc je n’ai pas misé ma stratégie sur le modèle YouTube habituel. Mais en revanche, j’ai essayé de proposer une offre de valeur en parallèle de ma chaîne YouTube. Comme je le disais au début, l’objectif de ma chaîne YouTube, c’est de me présenter, de présenter mes solutions et d’attirer des personnes qui, se sentent en accord avec ce que je propose. Et donc généralement pour moi, le modèle économique, ce sont les cours que je donne.
Donc les gens me contactent pour prendre des cours. Et je suis en train de développer une collection de livres. Pour l’instant, il y a un seul livre qui est publié. Il y en a un deuxième en préparation et il y en aura bien d’autres après. Et les gens aussi sont amenés à découvrir mes publications et à en faire l’acquisition. Donc ça, ça fait une source de revenus pour moi.
Enfin, pour la partie podcast, et bien c’est aussi principalement un outil, un outil de promotion de mes propres services, puisque le podcast est proposé gratuitement sur les plates-formes d’écoute. Et jusqu’à très récemment, on ne pouvait pas faire de publicité sur les plates-formes de podcast comme iTunes ou Spotify. C’est très récemment que ça s’est mis en place.
Et donc, de la même façon, ça a été pour proposer du contenu de qualité, ou du contenu que j’espère intéressant pour mon public, et les amener ensuite à acheter des ressources complémentaires sur mon site internet, puisqu’avec chaque épisode de blocage, je propose des ressources spécifiques et éventuellement, voilà, réserver un cours avec moi.
Donc mon modèle économique n’est pas exactement le modèle idéal, si l’on compare à d’autres youtubeurs ou à d’autres influenceurs, mais moi j’ai pris, comment dire, l’étiquette de commerçant plutôt que celui d influenceur, et je fais la promotion de mon propre matériel plutôt que du matériel d’autres entreprises.
Andie: Donc comment arrives-tu à sortir de la concurrence ?
Jean-Baptiste : Oh ça c’est très difficile. [Rit], Comment j’arrive à sortir de la concurrence? Disons que, sur YouTube par exemple, c’est assez difficile de sortir de la concurrence car il y a un tel volume de contenu que j’ai envie de dire que tout a déjà été fait. On ne peut peut-être pas dire que tout a déjà été fait, mais énormément de choses ont déjà été faites.
Au final, c’est surtout la personnalité qui joue beaucoup sur, comment dire, le potentiel, sur la capacité à attirer un nouveau public ou pas. Certaines personnes seront parfaitement adaptées pour jouer un rôle social sur YouTube. Elles savent très bien faire le présentateur, l’animateur motivé et donc ça attire beaucoup de gens sur leur chaîne.
D’autres personnes ont choisi une autre stratégie, qui est de donner une vision de leur vie personnelle. On parle beaucoup de « vlogs », où ces personnes montrent leur vie quotidienne. « Venez cuisiner en français avec moi », « On part en vacances en français avec moi », « Je fais ma valise avec vous », etc.,
Et ni l’une ni l’autre de ces options ne m’ont convaincu. La première, où on fait un peu l’animateur, ça demande un peu de sortir de sa zone de confort, de faire un peu le clown et je ne sais pas toujours faire ça. Je crois que lorsque je suis face à un large public, j’ai du mal à « me lâcher » suffisamment pour être une personne assez drôle et une personne charismatique.
Alors qu’en face à face j’essaie de l’être beaucoup plus. En tout cas, j’essaie de rendre ça plus agréable pour les étudiants. Et je n’étais pas non plus prêt à renoncer à ma vie privée en montrant trop de choses que je considérais personnelles. Parce qu’il faut aussi savoir garder une distance entre sa vie privée et sa vie publique.
Jean-Baptiste : Donc la troisième option que j’ai choisie, c’est d’essayer de proposer du contenu sérieux, du contenu travaillé qui puisse apporter une valeur ajoutée qualitative au des apprenants.
Et donc, sur YouTube, je propose des petites capsules de grammaire pour aider les utilisateurs à modifier leurs habitudes de prononciation, ou certaines erreurs qu’on fait quand on apprend une langue, qui sont souvent des calques de la langue maternelle.
Et pour le podcast, j’essaie de proposer des conversations en français réel, c’est à dire des conversations qui n’ont pas été modifiées, ni adaptées pour un public d’apprenants, et de faire en sorte que le contenu soit premièrement intéressant, qu’il reflète certaines tendances de la société française actuelle. Et qui montre aussi des manières de parler qu’on ne présente pas forcément ailleurs, ou qui sont présentées d’une manière peut être un peu trop, je ne vais pas dire « simplistes », parce que ce type de vidéo est nécessaire, mais qui montre du français oral, mais à un rythme lent.
Et je partais du principe qu’il y avait tout de même un public qui a été maintenant habitué à écouter ces vidéos qui présentent les caractéristiques du français oral, mais lentement, qui étaient prêtes à écouter du français à vitesse normale.
Et que plus ces personnes s’habitueraient à écouter du français à vitesse normale, plus elles seraient à même de mieux comprendre les conversations en français quotidien.
Donc voilà, ça c’était un peu ma valeur ajoutée : essayer de proposer quelque chose de sérieux, du travail, comment dire, basé sur une logique linguistique, et pas seulement une logique de loisir ou de plaisir.
Andie: Donc tu as dit que tu préfères parler. Tu préfères travailler seul, mais est-ce que tu travailles avec une équipe ?
Jean-Baptiste : J’ai travaillé pendant un moment avec une équipe, surtout pour le lancement de ma structure. Parce que quand j’ai commencé, il a fallu que je crée un site internet, et j’avais toutes les questions légales à mettre en place. Puisque, aujourd’hui, on doit avoir une politique de confidentialité clairement définie, on doit avoir certains [critères]. Pour la partie cours que je donne il fallait aussi un cadre légal pour pouvoir définir dans quelles situations on pouvait annuler un cours, et combien de temps sont valables les leçons une fois qu’on les a achetés, etc.
Donc j’ai fait appel à une professionnelle.
C’était une amie à moi, qui justement était en train de finir un MBA en business et qui avait besoin d’un projet en création d’entreprise. Donc elle a fait son stage avec moi et ça nous a donné l’occasion de lancer l’activité.
J’ai beaucoup bénéficié de sa structure, de son organisation au niveau entrepreneurial, et on a beaucoup clarifié les procédures de travail au niveau de la relation client. Et ensuite, elle a repris sa vie professionnelle, donc on s’est séparés à ce moment-là.
Et il y a eu une période où, au début, j’avais vraiment beaucoup de choses à faire, et j’étais passé par une stagiaire qui, elle était en licence marketing et qui m’a beaucoup aidé aussi pour tout ce qui était communication sur les réseaux sociaux. Donc au début, quand je ne savais pas encore sur quel canal me concentrer, on avait ciblé Instagram, LinkedIn et YouTube comme chaînes de com comme ressources principales, pour pouvoir faire de la promotion.
Et on a eu du mal à trouver une stratégie qui fonctionnait. Mais ma stagiaire, qui était donc en licence, a testé beaucoup de choses. Elle a clarifié beaucoup de stratégies qui fonctionnaient ou ne fonctionnaient pas, et donc on a continué à travailler un bon moment après la fin de son stage. Et ensuite a eu un bébé et elle a arrêté de travailler le temps qu’elle s’occupe de son bébé.
Et finalement, comme moi de mon côté, les choses s’étaient beaucoup stabilisées, et puisque j’arrivais à reprendre le rythme correctement, et bien j’ai continué à travailler tout seul. Et ça, ça me convient très bien pour le moment.
Mais je pense que si, aujourd’hui c’était à refaire, je referais exactement la même chose, parce qu’on peut très facilement faire des erreurs, ne serait-ce que sur le cadre légal. Il vaut mieux ne pas se tromper. Donc je recommande vivement de passer par d’autres personnes.
Mais je crois que je ne suis pas le type d’entrepreneur qui serait capable de gérer une équipe. Je préfère bénéficier de ce qu’on appelle la « gig economy » qui est très facile à utiliser. Il y a beaucoup de plates-formes aujourd’hui qui permettent de faire appel à des professionnels d’un domaine spécifique pour un projet spécifique, et donc on leur expose ce dont on a besoin.
Ils nous filent un coup de main pour temporairement pour le projet en question, et puis après on peut continuer son existence comme ça. Donc, moi, en tant que petit autoentrepreneur, ça a été une véritable aide précieuse de faire appel à ces professionnels grâce à ces différentes plates-formes.
Andie: Et pour toi ? Quel est ton but ultime ? Quels sont tes projets ? Tu penses à monter une boîte genre Berlitz ?
Jean-Baptiste : [Rit] Je ne pense pas. Je ne pense pas parce que, moi, ce qui me motive dans mon travail, c’est de pouvoir communiquer avec les personnes avec lesquelles je travaille. Je vois certains de mes collègues, ou certains de mes homologues sur YouTube qui eux ont créé des plates-formes où ils mettent à disposition du contenu. Ils créent des communautés et finalement ils sont exclusivement à distance. Ils gèrent des forums, ils répondent aux questions sur des forums ou sur les réseaux sociaux, et ça leur convient très bien.
Je crois que moi, si je n’ai pas, à un moment, un contact en face à face avec une discussion de vive voix avec ces personnes, ce n’est pas ça qui me motive en fait, si je n’ai pas cette relation-là.
Donc pour l’instant, mon but est de continuer à donner des cours, et d’avoir des cours en face à face. Et je pense que c’est aussi quelque chose qui est très demandé par les personnes qui font appel à mes services.
Et mon autre but, c’est donc de créer cette collection de ressources, et d’essayer de travailler avec des instituts qui existent déjà, des écoles de langues, peut être les Alliances françaises, pour proposer du contenu qui permette d’aborder le français oral.
Plus spécifiquement le français oral de manière un peu plus structurée pour les étudiants. Plutôt que de leur dire « ah bah, parfois on dit comme ci, parfois on dit comme ça ». Il existe des règles de construction des phrases et de la syntaxe du français oral, et qui ne sont pas forcément bien connues du grand public.
Et donc si, avec les ressources que je crée, et j’ai quelques projets de ressources complémentaires que je pourrai ensuite commercialiser, à des formateurs et non plus à des apprenants, et bien d’essayer, de devenir une petite référence dans les ressources pour le français oral.
Andie: Donc tu enseignes le français, l’anglais et l’espagnol. Mais je sais en fait que tu parles plusieurs langues. Tu parles combien de langues en fait ?
Jean-Baptiste : Je suis démasqué ! [Rit] Alors les langues, effectivement, c’est ma petite passion. Alors on va dire, le chiffre, c’est à peu près douze langues, mais il faut relativiser : je ne parle pas toutes ces langues à un niveau de d’expert.
Je ne maîtrise pas toutes les langues que j’apprends. Les langues que je parle le mieux sont le français bien évidemment, puisque c’est ma langue maternelle, l’anglais, l’espagnol.
Ce sont des langues que j’ai étudiées à l’université. J’ai vécu dans ces pays, j’ai une bonne connaissance des cultures de ces pays. Donc voilà, j’ai un niveau suffisant dans ces langues pour pouvoir les enseigner.
Mais après, à titre personnel, les langues que je parle bien aussi sont l’hébreu, l’italien, le portugais, le chinois aussi. Il y a, ensuite à un niveau un peu moindre : le japonais, l’hindi, le malais, le thaï.
Voilà, je me suis intéressé à pas mal de langues. Et j’aime autant…, comment dire, comprendre la logique derrière ces langues, trouver des relations entre ces langues. Ça c’est ma grande passion : de voir comment on peut, à partir d’un mot français, trouver l’équivalent en italien, ou à partir d’un mot allemand comment on peut retrouver un mot en anglais.
Il existe beaucoup de passerelles entre les langues. J’adore chercher tout ça. Et donc il m’arrive parfois de passer beaucoup de temps à apprendre une langue mais, sans véritable objectif de communication. C’est juste pour le plaisir d’apprendre les langues. C’est seulement un travail intellectuel. Donc voilà, c’est ce qui me motive aussi : une démarche pour satisfaire un peu cette curiosité, pour comprendre les différents systèmes linguistiques.
Andie: Donc, pourquoi ne pas être traducteur ou interprète ? Parce que c’est le meilleur métier du monde.
Jean-Baptiste : [Rit]. Alors figure toi que j’ai eu une formation de traducteur et d’interprète quand j’étais en licence LEA à Paris. Et je suis parti une année en Erasmus en Espagne, et ma spécialisation pendant cette année d’Erasmus était traduction et interprétariat. Interprétariat de conférence. On a appris à utiliser les cabines d’interprétariat et à transcrire, interpréter des textes qu’on entendait au fur et à mesure.
Et la traduction, j’en ai fait beaucoup, aussi bien à l’Université qu’ensuite en boulot complémentaire. Même quand j’étais au Luxembourg, quand j’ai commencé à donner des cours, il m’est arrivé de prendre des cours de traduction à côté.
Mais il y avait deux choses. La première chose est que j’aimais beaucoup le travail de traduction à titre personnel, pour enrichir mon vocabulaire, pour enrichir mes connaissances, parce que les documents que je traduisais étaient souvent très intéressants.
J’étais amené à traduire des choses un peu loufoques parfois. J’ai travaillé pour une entreprise Internet qui écrivait des horoscopes. Donc j’ai traduit des horoscopes, j’ai traduit des thèmes astraux, j’ai traduit des divinations, et j’ai même écrit des horoscopes en anglais pour cette entreprise.
Mais comment dire ? Il y a un moment où j’ai été un peu frustré puisque, comme je te le disais précédemment, le travail un peu solitaire derrière l’ordinateur me va pendant une période, mais j’ai besoin de ce contact avec les personnes.
Et finalement, je crois que j’étais beaucoup plus satisfait en accompagnant des gens, en étant un peu coach motivationnel, pour des personnes qui apprennent les langues, plutôt qu’en faisant de la traduction.
Mais mon activité de traduction reste tout de même très présente dans ma vie quotidienne, puisque pour les ressources que je propose, aussi bien pour le podcast que pour les publications que je fais, il y a toujours de la traduction. Par exemple, mes vidéos sont proposées en français et en anglais.
Alors je dois reconnaître que pour YouTube, il est de plus en plus rare que je fasse moi-même la traduction : je passe par une traduction automatique qui est tout à fait satisfaisante.
Mais pour les ressources que je propose sur mon podcast, là, oui, je fais une traduction de qualité : je suis obligé de trouver des équivalents culturels, des équivalents linguistiques.
Donc en fait, je n’ai jamais véritablement arrêté de faire de la traduction, mais je ne la fais pas tout à fait dans le même contexte. Je ne la fais pas pour une autre entreprise, je la fais toujours pour moi et donc pour faciliter l’apprentissage à partir des ressources que je propose.
Andie: Tu as bien « encadré » la vie du traducteur : solitaire mais toujours intéressante.
Jean-Baptiste : Est-ce que, toi, tu apprécies ce travail solitaire de traduction ?
Andie: Pfffffffffff Non, pas trop [Rit].
Jean-Baptiste : Non [Rit].
Andie: Mais mon mari travaille à la maison maintenant aussi, donc c’est…
Jean-Baptiste : Je pense que s’il y a peut-être quelque chose qui me fait moduler ce que je viens de dire c’est que, pour l’instant, j’habite une petite ville dans laquelle il n y a pas forcément de structure pour les travailleurs indépendants.
Dans les grandes villes comme Paris, on trouve beaucoup d’espaces de « coworking », dans lesquels on peut aller travailler une journée ou même louer un bureau, pendant pour une longue période.
Et donc, dans ces cas-là, j’aurais peut être envisagé de faire de la traduction plus fortement, puisque je n’aurais pas été tout seul dans mon coin. J’aurais eu la possibilité d’avoir d’autres personnes, de voir d’autres visages toute la journée, et de satisfaire mon besoin de bavarder.
Mais ici, là où j’habite, il n’y a pas du tout de structure comme ça. Ou alors il faudrait que je fasse 1 h et demie de voiture, et là tu imagines que ce n’est plus du tout rentable de faire ça. Donc je pense que c’est aussi le contexte matériel qui ne se prête pas aujourd’hui au fait que je fasse de la traduction à plus grande échelle.
Andie: Bon. Donc, dernière question que je pose à tous mes interlocuteurs sur ce podcast : quel est ton conseil sur n’importe quel sujet pour nos auditeurs ?
Jean-Baptiste : Un conseil, sur n’importe quel sujet ? Mon conseil sur la vie ? Alors ça… [Rit]
Andie: N’importe quel sujet, l’univers [Rit].
Jean-Baptiste : Pas facile ça, pas facile ! Hum… Peut-être quelque chose. Une leçon de vie que j’ai toujours retenue… Allez, est-ce que je peux en donner deux ?
Alors le premier, c’est ma grand-mère qui me l’avait dit un jour. Elle m’avait donné une phrase qui était « On ne fait jamais l’économie d’un apprentissage, tout ce qu’on apprend pourra servir un jour. »
Et je me souviens très bien de ça, car elle m’a dit cette phrase quand j’ai commencé l’université pendant ma licence. C’était une licence trilingue, donc anglais, espagnol et suédois. Et ma mère m’avait regardé avec des grands yeux : « Qu’est-ce que tu vas apprendre le suédois, à quoi ça sert ? » Et bien, crois-le ou non, tous les boulots que j’ai eus au Luxembourg et avant le Luxembourg, quand j’ai terminé mes études, c’est parce que je parlais suédois que je les ai eus.
Donc finalement ça a été utile d’apprendre cette langue-là. Et donc j’ai toujours retenu que, même si on a l’impression que ce qu’on fait n’a aucune utilité, ou ça ne sert à rien, et bien on trouvera toujours un moment, que ce soit dans un contexte social, un contexte professionnel, ou même pour créer des relations cérébrales pour comprendre quelque chose un peu mieux, on finira pas s’en servir.
Et le deuxième conseil, c’est mon papa qui me l’a donné : c’est que c’est toujours bon de mettre son intelligence au service de sa paresse. C’est à dire que quand on est paresseux, mais quand on aime quand même bien profiter de la vie, et qu’on n’a pas forcément envie de passer toute sa vie au travail, et bien ça demande un effort organisationnel supplémentaire pour trouver des manières de travailler qui soient peut être plus efficaces, de créer des automatismes pour ne plus avoir à tout faire d’un seul coup, soi-même à la main. Donc voilà, il faut arriver à chercher des stratégies de travail efficaces pour pouvoir ensuite profiter de l’existence à côté. Je ne sais pas si ça servira, mais ce sont mes leçons de vie.
Andie: C’est une bonne philosophie. Donc moi j’ai étudié, ce n’était pas des études formelles, mais j’ai étudié le suisse allemand.
Jean-Baptiste : Ouais…
Andie: Donc tu peux parler d’une langue pas très utile…
Jean-Baptiste : Pas très connue…
Andie: Non, mais mon premier boulot dans la traduction, c’était être gestionnaire de projet dans une agence de traduction. Et justement la propriétaire était suisse et a noté sur mon cv que j’avais étudié [le suisse allemand]. J’ai fait un tandem pendant trois jours avec une fille à la fac. Mais oui, elle a noté que j’ai étudié la Suisse allemand et elle a dit, « Ah oui, tu aimes vraiment les langues ? Tu appartiens vraiment au monde des langues. »
Jean-Baptiste : Oui, je sais que toi aussi tu as cette passion pour les langues et tu m’avais dit que tu apprenais le cantonais aussi, c’est ça ? Ou c’était le mandarin ?
Andie: Le mandarin, le russe, l’arabe et l’allemand.
Jean-Baptiste : Oui, tout à fait. Donc toi aussi tu as cette curiosité à satisfaire, j’ai l’impression ?
Andie: Ah oui, oui. Bon, merci d’être venu, Jean Baptiste.
Jean-Baptiste : Je t’en prie, avec grand plaisir. Merci beaucoup pour l’invitation.
Andie: Merci.
Andie: This concludes our episode for today. You can subscribe to the Continuing Education Series Podcast on Soundcloud or iTunes, by searching for Continuing Education Series. You can contact the FLD at Divisionfld@atanet.org. Visit our web site at www.atanet.org/divisions/fld or get in touch with us on social media. This is Andie, signing off, thanks for listening and À bientôt!
Last year, the French Language Division (FLD) of the American Translators Association organized a series of virtual coworking sessions for the 2023 rentrée. They’ve been such a hit that the FLD has continued to host them ever since. But what exactly is virtual coworking? If you struggle with accountability, are craving a connection with colleagues, or just need to set aside time to finally check that pesky task off your to-do list, you may want to consider joining our next session. Let me tell you why.
What is virtual coworking?
Virtual coworking is very much what it sounds like. A group of people meet on an online meeting platform for a set period of time to work on an individual task of their choosing. Participants do not work on projects together; rather, they each work separately on something they’d like to make progress on that day. The purpose is multifold:
Provide a structured environment where everyone can hold each other accountable
Boost productivity while fostering a sense of community
Enjoy time with colleagues you might not otherwise get
It’s such a popular model that you can even pay to do it. Thankfully for FLD members, these coworking sessions are completely free. What’s more, your coworkers will all be fellow French translators and interpreters!
What happens during the FLD virtual coworking sessions?
The FLD virtual coworking sessions start with a five-minute check-in where we all introduce ourselves and briefly state what we’re going to work on. Then, we work uninterrupted for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, and work again for another 25 minutes. During the work periods, everyone is muted, but attendees can keep their cameras on for extra accountability.
The sessions end with a five-minute wrap-up where we share what we worked on and answer an optional question. In past coworking sessions, these have been questions like, “what are your goals for the year?” or “what is a helpful resource you recently discovered?”
What should I work on during a virtual coworking session?
The beauty of coworking is that you can work on anything you want! Some of the tasks past participants have worked on include:
Marketing
Accounting
Finally responding to that email
Tracking down and following up on unpaid invoices
Working on an ATA conference presentation
Drafting and issuing a quote
Personal tasks, like scheduling a doctor’s appointment (they don’t always need to be “work” related!)
And last but not least, writing this article
Coworking sessions are a great opportunity to tackle tasks you’ve been neglecting or ones where you find yourself getting easily distracted. However, you are also free to work on regular day-to-day work in the virtual company of your peers.
What are the benefits of virtual coworking?
I attended nearly all of the coworking sessions organized in 2023 and found them to be very beneficial. To me, the main benefits of coworking are:
Accountability
Since we all state our goals at the start of the sessions, there is an extra dose of pressure to accomplish them. I find that if I verbalize a goal to others, I am much more compelled and likely to actually do it. The Harvard Business Review agrees!
Focus
Working in the company of others makes it harder to give in to distractions. You don’t want to be the only one “procrastinating” when you can see everyone else working! You probably won’t be checking your phone, finding something else that needs doing around the house, or getting distracted on social media, which means you actually make progress toward your goal.
Productivity
These coworking sessions are structured into short bursts of time, ideal for accomplishing things you’ve been dragging your feet on. Working against the clock can also make certain tasks more palatable and attainable. For example, instead of the looming, intangible concept of, “I will work on marketing today,” you can work on marketing for the duration of the session and maybe even set a more tangible goal (like “I will send three marketing emails”).
Connection with FLD colleagues
These coworking sessions are also a chance to check in with all your fellow FLDers. And it’s a nice break from the isolation of work-from-home life.
The connections don’t have to end when you leave the Zoom meeting, either! During the sessions, I discovered two French translators who also live in Chicago. I’ve met up with one for coffee and have plans for an in-person coworking session with the other.
How do I sign up?
Attendance is open to all FLD members. The FLD aims to host one coworking session a month. Stay tuned for the next one!
Elizabeth Eckardt is a French and Spanish to English translator based in Chicago who has been translating since 2014. She is ATA-certified in both language pairs and has an MS in translation from New York University. She specializes in medical, legal, and official document translations. For more information, visit elizabetheckardt.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.
As freelance translators, marketing and prospecting are part and parcel of the job, whether we enjoy them or not. Regular, consistent investment can make a big difference in your workflow and keep your pipeline flowing, so you can worry less about dry spells.
In this article, you’ll learn more about French pôles de compétitivité and how researching the ones relevant to your specializations could help you do more targeted marketing and expand your client portfolio.
First things first: what is a pôle de compétitivité, or competitiveness cluster?
Competitiveness clusters were devised by the French Directorate General for Enterprise, or DGE, in 2004 to encourage growth and job creation in flourishing markets. DGE cluster policy objectives include fostering R&D, developing and implementing new technologies, and strengthening innovation ecosystems. Clusters were set up to help businesses strengthen their innovation muscles and overcome market challenges. Designed to be regional hubs bringing companies of all sizes, research labs, and training establishments together according to common denominators like core business or sector, strong networks between top clusters have helped encourage more collaborative R&D.
Cluster members benefit from guidance as they grow and develop, enhancing the value of their products, services, or processes and helping them launch new ones onto the market. National and local authorities are closely involved in clusters, which are firmly embedded in their local landscapes—with many hosted on business park campuses and in public buildings.
How can competitiveness clusters boost my direct client marketing efforts?
Using cluster member directories can help you save time sifting through search engine results pages to build your target company list—making them a critical element for maximizing the time you invest in your marketing. And with a message template at the ready, you’ll be able to tailor your pitch and reach them more quickly (and effectively).
In addition, many cluster websites have news pages with posts and articles that provide interesting information about smaller companies that may not have a person handling their marketing and communications full-time yet. They can also be a good way to learn about upcoming events and opportunities to meet people in the cluster. When companies are in their early stages, the founder/CEO may also be the main salesperson—and end up running the booth at a trade show or conference.
How do I conduct research on pôles de compétitivité in my areas of specialization or interest?
If you don’t find what you’re looking for among the ones listed there, or after you’ve identified French competitiveness clusters that you’d like to follow, you can always expand your search to professional associations and unions. Use keywords like ‘syndicat+profession X,’ ‘association d’entreprises du secteur Y,’ ‘centre de recherche (universitaire) industrie Z,’ and so forth in your favorite search engine. I pulled up a couple well-known examples, such as GIFAS, the French aerospace industry association, and La French Tech, for startups. Last but not least, reading a well-crafted email from you about your excellent translation and English writing skills could also make French PR professionals’ eyes light up!
And don’t forget about overseas departments and territories. The Cap Energies cluster is one example that has active groups in Guadeloupe and La Réunion, though it is based in Aix-en-Provence. Speaking of DROM, or département et région d’outre mer clusters, Qualitropic focuses on the bioeconomy. Mayotte, another overseas department, happens to benefit from quite a strategic location. There, the ADIM international cluster aims to reach countries in Eastern Africa and as far away as the UAE.
To broaden your scope beyond France’s borders, you might also find it worth your while to consider European clusters in other Francophone countries. Expanding your search to a broader geographic area could bring you more diverse results. You can use the EU Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP) map-based search tool to find names and websites. Who would have thought that Luxembourg has its own maritime cluster? Another surprising find for AV translation and creatives is the media industries Twist cluster in the Walloon Region of Belgium.
Putting your favorite French clients’ company registration codes to work
I will share one more technique based on the French company registration system that can help you identify new potential prospects. When a business is registered, its legal representative must select an APE or NAF code that corresponds to its core business from the INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) classification system. Its website has a search tool based on this classification system, also available in English. You can browse them to find a few NAF codes for the sectors you work in. Here is an example of how it works (translated by yours truly):
Let’s say you run a convenience store. To determine the APE code for your core business, here’s the classification system you would follow:
Section: G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles
Division: 47 Retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles
Group: 47.1 Retail sale in non-specialized stores
Class: 47.11 Retail sale in non-specialized stores with food, beverages, or tobacco predominating
Sub-class: 47.11C Mini-markets
The APE code for your convenience store is therefore 4711C.
Here’s my step-by-step guide to using NAF codes to find new prospects:
Step 1: Select one or more NAF codes. For translators and interpreters in France, the code is 7430Z.
Step 2: Go to verif.com and enter the NAF code into the search engine. When I enter the code for translators and interpreters to search for companies in the Bouches-du-Rhône department/PACA region, I found over 3,000 registered with this as their core business, including my own!
Alternative: If you do not know the NAF code, you can also type in the name of a company and find out which code is used on its profile page. Then, go back to the search engine and enter the code and any other parameters to create your own list. If you want to search for your clients’ competitors in another region, be sure to select the relevant region from the dropdown.
Step 3: Use your sleuthing skills to find the company website, LinkedIn page, or employee profiles to locate a point of contact and email address. If you like, you can also pay for verif.com to compile lists of companies for you using this basic data.
Step 4: Add companies of interest to your list.
Step 5: Modify your message template to fit the company you’re contacting. Don’t forget to put a reminder in your calendar to follow up!
Some final thoughts
To avoid going down rabbit holes, marveling at the many new companies you discover, I find it helpful to set some parameters for my marketing time and quantify goals.
For example, if I want to spend one hour developing new leads, I can break up my time as follows:
15 minutes – Search for five new companies using a relevant NAF code on verif.com.
15 minutes – Peruse company websites to evaluate whether they might need my services.
15 minutes – Identify three people to contact at those companies and try to find direct email addresses or their LinkedIn profiles.
15 minutes – Send personalized emails or direct messages to the contacts whose information I was able to find.
I hope this article has given you new ideas for drumming up new potential leads and reinvigorated your direct client marketing plan!
If you have had luck doing something similar in the US, Canada, or elsewhere, the À Propos team wants to hear from you! Contact the À Propos editor, Ben Karl, at ben [at] bktranslation [dot] com with your ideas or submission.
Amber Marcum Combaud is an ATA-certified French to English translator specializing in corporate and brand communications (including CSR), academic translation and editing, and certified translation of official documents. After obtaining her B.A. in French and Linguistics from the University of Virginia, she became a translator in 2007. She completed the professional certificate in Translation program offered by New York University in 2010. Since 2016 when she began freelancing, she has served a wide range of corporate clients, translation and communications agencies, as well as local businesses and individuals seeking to expand their horizons abroad. Amber lives and works in Marseille, France, where she is always pleased to connect with colleagues in person and virtually. Drop her a line directly amber [at] amc-communication [dot] com or find her on LinkedIn.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
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Episode 20: Interview with Ruth Simpson
Andie Ho: This is Andie Ho, host of the continuing education series, a podcast produced for the members of the French Language Division of the American Translators Association, offering educational content about the craft of French-to-English and English-to-French translation and the division.
A brief comment here, my dog, Huckleberry, makes a cameo in this episode with his signature howl, so if you hear some background noise, that’s him saying “hi,” to everyone.
Today we’re joined by Ruth Simpson, a freelance French-to-English translator since 2008. Ruth is based in France, currently, and she specializes in beauty and cosmetics and wine and spirits. She has a diploma in wine and spirits, which I’m very excited to talk about, is a qualified member of ITI, with certified translator status, and, apparently, is a keen musician, as well. Very multitalented. Welcome today, Ruth.
Ruth Simpson: Thank you so much! Multitalented, I don’t know. I certainly like to try lots of new things. Um, so, yeah, that’s… I love playing all different instruments. I’ve got ukuleles, I’ve got a violin, and I love singing, as well, so, yeah, my husband would probably say not so multitalented, just “multi-interested.”
AH: Well, isn’t that the prototypical translator? Interested in a little bit of everything?
RS: Yeah, yeah probably. That’s true, yeah.
AH: So, let’s dive right in. The main thing I wanted personally, selfishly, to talk to you about today is your specialization in wine. Now, I translate for the food industry, but I specifically do not translate wine, because it is, as I’m sure you’re going to tell me, is its own deal.
RS: Um, right.
AH: I’m sure it’s a specialization, a dream specialization for many people. How did you get into it?
RS: Well, both of my specializations, cosmetics and wine, both could seem like dream specializations to a lot of people, but they really do all involve urgent translations, demanding clients, tricky words, just like everyone else’s specialist fields. So, wine, and cosmetics also, come under the variate umbrella of what I like to call whipped cream or fluff translations, um, they’re very much in the nonvital category when you compare them with, like, the important work done by medical translators or legal translators, and that has the benefit of taking the pressure off mentally, but you’d be surprised, actually, how many cosmetic brands take lipstick as seriously as they do a drug trial, as the pharmaceutical industry would take a drug trial.
Um, well, how did I first get into wine translation? I was working in Paris doing English teaching. I was actually working at L’Oréal’s luxury product division, which is how I got into cosmetics translation, and my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband, he was also working in Paris in advertising, but he had a family wine estate in Chablis, and he knew that at some point in the future he was going to take on the wine domain, the wine estate that belonged to his family. But we were still living in Paris at that point, so the Burgundy countryside was pretty far away from our thoughts. One thing, he’d decided he’d had enough of the métro-boulot-dodo lifestyle, and he decided to start a year-long training course in a specialist college near Chablis, and so, I went down to three days a week in Paris, and two days a week in Chablis, and I created my business and began contacting agencies, and, from that point, I was working just in cosmetics.
I eventually took an interest in wine when I moved here more permanently in 2009, when I had my first child, and I was struggling to keep up with conversations at the dinner table. My husband’s family and the friends we’d made here got to talking about wine, and I couldn’t follow along. I was a bit struggling with the vocabulary, and I didn’t really understand what was going on. I’d always enjoyed drinking it, like lots of people, but I didn’t quite know how to get to grips with the technical and more descriptive vocabulary. That was in French, let alone in English, so in neither language. I researched some qualifications in the field and I wanted to do the qualification in English, so I found the WSET, which is the Wine and Spirit Education Trust. Um, so, that’s how I first got into specializing in wine was through my family connection with my husband and my qualifications with the WSET.
AH: Okay, well, so that kind of answers my next question about which came first, the chicken or the egg, the wine or the translation.
RS: Right. The cosmetics definitely came first, because that was, for me, the most obvious choice, having spent… I spent four years working in the offices of L’Oréal’s luxury products division, so I was working with marketers and people… people… coming into daily contact with the English of the beauty industry. And so, that really gave me a big jumping off point for setting up as a freelance translator in that world.
AH: So, tell me more about this wine and spirits diploma that you obtained. How did you find out about this diploma, what did it involve? What kind of people take this diploma, and what all did you learn?
RS: Um, well, I learned so much. How I got into was, when I contacted… I contacted the WSET and I explained my situation. I’m living in Chablis, starting to become a bit familiar with the world of wine, and they suggested that I start at their Level 2, which is what they call the intermediate level. The intermediate level is a short, three-day course in London, and that… it was very quick to do; it’s quite accessible, then I was encouraged to move on to the Level 3, the advanced course, which is five days, in London again, and then, after that—this is about a year-long time span between the two—I was encouraged to do the Level 4 diploma, which is a very, very different beast. The diploma is two years long, well, the one I did was two years, and it involved four week-long classroom sessions split up over the two years, and a dissertation on a subject, and lots and lots of three-hour exams, and tastings, as well. So, it was very, very intense for those two years, and my son was only, I think, eighteen months when I started, so that was a very full-on time, as well as translating full-time by then. Um, the people doing the course with me were all wine enthusiasts, obviously. Lots of them were from Majestic, which is a UK-based wine merchant. Some of them were retirees, they just wanted to learn more. There was a journalist, there was an Italian winemaker there, too, and people working for other wine merchants. So, lots and lots of different backgrounds. But not one single translator except me.
AH: So, actually, I was going to ask, um, did that help with any networking? I mean, did any of your classmates end up, you know, being sources of work for you?
RS: Yeah, that’s a good question. Uh, it could have been, couldn’t it? But it actually wasn’t, no. I didn’t… I kept in touch with, I would think, three or four people from the course, one, especially, who came to visit me in Chablis, and we’re good friends, but, uh, actually, no work came from that initial training period. But after that it was a different story because, um… Shall I go on to say what I developed after that?
AH: Please.
RS: So, I developed some training courses for different associations. It actually started out as a tasting session at the end of a Wordfast conference. I did an hour of a brief A to Z of the year in the vineyard, then some tasting exercises for the people, just as a fun end to one of the days of training with Wordfast, and that was picked up by another association, the MET—Mediterranean Editors and Translators Association—who asked me to develop it into a sort of half-day workshop, which I did, and then ITI, the… another association, picked up on that, and afterwards it developed into a full day, so all of that, um, just from a very short, hour-long, fun, tasting session, it developed into quite a serious few rounds of specialist wine translation training for other translators, and that did sort of establish me as a specialist wine translator, and then I started getting work, yes, references from other translators and people in the wine business who noticed that I was offering those training courses.
AH: Okay, so indirectly then.
RS: Um, yeah, indirectly. Nobody actually, at the course, said, oh, I want you to translate something that I’ve been asked to do, but certainly, as a result, yeah.
AH: All right. I just want to point out to our listeners that this is networking at its finest. It’s not always about direct connections, but about one thing leading to another, so…
RS: Absolutely. Yeah, and in those training courses that I gave, I was often asked, “Yes, but how do we get into wine translation,” and I’ve probably done five or six sessions of training, including cosmetics, as well. I also do a cosmetics training course for other translators, and, at the end, or in feedback, people will often say, “Well, how do I do it, though? How do I get into it?” It’s so different for everybody. All I can do is say what I did and how it worked for me, and that’s the only advice I can give, because I can’t give you a list of people to contact, obviously. Um, so, that’s… It’s sometimes quite frustrating because I really want to help people, but I don’t quite know how to go about doing that, other than telling them to look for themselves.
AH: Yeah, there’s not a single pathway to success in freelancing, which is both wonderful and devastating, I find [laughter].
RS: Yes! That’s true! Yeah, and actually, the very best client that I’ve ever had is a publishing house which led to six books, which is a whole other story, but I met at a party, I met someone at a party, who ended up being my very best client, so, it’s a strange world. [laughter]
AH: All right, I’m just writing this down. If I want six book deals, I should go to parties and drink wine.
RS: That’s right! Yes! Six books [laughter] That’s the exact advice I would give. Yes, six book deals. Go to a party. And talk! Talk to people. But that is a good piece of advice. Always talk to people about what you do because you never know when it’s going to be really, really useful.
AH: Absolutely. That’s a really good point, yeah, always, I always try to drop in conversation what I do, just to plant seeds.
RS: Yeah, absolutely!
AH: So, back to your courses, um, everybody thinks about the wine tasting aspect of learning about wine, but did you learn about technical aspects? What else did you learn? It couldn’t have all been fun and games, or we’d all be doing it, right?
RS: Oh, no. No, it really wasn’t fun and games. And, especially, it was quite a convivial atmosphere, and we were there for a week, and we were all in London, and we did sort of have a few evenings out, so I can tell you that tasting vodka at 9:00 a.m. on a hangover is really not for the fainthearted. [laughter] But, uh, that wasn’t a particularly technical session, but there were very, very technical sessions. Um, it covered viticulture, so, all about growing grapes, how grapes are grown, how to prune a vine. Or in different places they have different pruning techniques, so that can be quite a struggle to remember all the different places and all the different pruning techniques. So, here in Chablis we have a pruning technique called the Guyot, which is just one cane or two canes with a double Guyot, and in a place, for example, such as Beaujolais, they have another form of pruning, which is called gobelet, which is more like, the vines are grown like a bush, rather than like a single cane, so all of that technical aspect has to be covered. And that’s just in France, the differences there. And the course covered the whole world, so there were more than a few different pruning techniques to remember. Then you’ve got the chemistry of vinification, of fermentation, all of that, so you have your history and your geography of viticulture; you’ve got your chemistry in vinification, and then your creative writing in the tasting, tasting notes… how to write an objective tasting note, which is quite difficult at first because, as you can imagine, there is a big difference between, “Oh this wine tastes great,” and “This wine is high in acid, low in alcohol,” etc., etc. You really have to learn how to do an objective tasting note. And then, all the vocabulary to do with marketing and how to sell a wine, as well, and the food pairing, so there’s a lot, a lot, a lot to learn.
AH: Okay, I’m starting to see the similarities between translating wine and translating cosmetics because it seems to me that both seem very light, and like a daily item we can all relate to, but can be surprisingly technical, as well. But then, there’s still the transcreation/creative aspect.
RS: Absolutely. That’s so right, and it actually has quite a lot of cross-over, especially in terms of, I mean, very specifically in terms of when you’re writing a tasting note and describing aromas, and you’re describing the perfume, it’s so similar. There’s a lot of cross-over there. But, absolutely, in cosmetics you’ve got the chemistry part as well, and the medical, almost medical side to it, if you’re dealing with the cosmeticovigilance, the people working on side effects of cosmetics, that can be very, very chemistry based, just like vinification, and yeah. So, there’s lots of cross-over there.
AH: So, what do you find to be some of the hidden challenges of translating wine, then? Is it the creative aspect, or the technical aspect, or something else?
RS: I think that depends on the translator. For me, it’s not so much the creative writing part, because I love a bit of whipped-cream, as I said, fluff translation. I love that. For me, it’s really knowing your stuff. So, when you’re translating wine, you really have to have a full grasp of the whole process. I’ve got a great example for you. I had a text, I have texts, several, regularly, in French, that say things like “Le vin est ensuite fermenté dans les fûts ou dans les cuves,” which can seem to be quite a straightforward sentence. But when you look at it, you think, they’re saying that the wine is fermented. You don’t ferment wine unless it’s the second refermentation. You ferment juice, or must. So, you have to know that, at this point in the production process that you’re writing about, this is when you’re dealing with juice, and not proper wine, so you then… I always flag this up, and I always say, look, this is a problem, because we’re not fermenting wine, we’re fermenting juice, and they regularly come back to me and say, “Oh yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. We’re going to change the French” because it’s wrong. So this is when the original source text is not written by the producer, obviously, it’s written by a communication agency, or a journalist or some other nonspecialist, not by a wine journalist, I’d like to think that they never would write something like that, but definitely some kind of communication agency writing things like that that don’t seem to be wrong when you read them, but then when you know the process, they are wrong, and you really have to flag it up, and that just creates immediate added value. As a translator you’re very valuable because you can improve the source, as well.
AH: All right, you are validating my decision not to translate wine, because, clearly, I don’t even know what I don’t know. [laughter]. I would never have picked up on juice versus wine. Wow.
RS: Well, I mean, when you’ve seen it once, and you’ve realized it once, then after that it’s very easy. And, you know, there aren’t a hundred examples of that. I’m not constantly finding errors in people’s texts, but there’s actually another challenge I could talk about, which is knowing when not to translate. Um, there are some words in the world of wine which have to stay in the source language quite frequently, and that’s often the case when you’re dealing with French. You’ve got words like terroir, which is the whole environment around the vineyard, not just the land, the soil, but also the weather, the exposure, the slope, which direction the slope is facing, all of that can be called terroir. And there’s also a stage in the champagne making process which is called prise de mousse, which is often left in French. Um, again, going back to the pruning techniques, Guyot is left in French as well. But you can find that out yourself by looking at a bit of target language information if you go to winery websites based in California or Australia you can find those terms left in the French or even used in French on those websites.
AH: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I know, obviously a lot of this stuff comes from the French, um, terroir, I feel like a lot of people know, even if you’re not a wine connoisseur, but some of those other terms you mentioned… does it take a bit of a wine connoisseur to know them, or is it really that widespread in English?
RS: That’s a good question, because you have to think about your audience, as well. It’s really when you would be using a word like prise de mousse, you would think, well, is the audience going to understand that. So that would be a case of, well, let’s look exactly at who it’s aimed at, and then we’ll see if it’s people that are supposed to understand those terms, then let’s leave it. But maybe you could add a simple explanation to the sentence, like “prise de mousse-comma-the period in the production process in which the champagne forms its bubbles,” something like that. But, yeah, I think know your audience.
AH: Yeah, now that I think about it, you’re, obviously you’re right. That’s very key. I’m thinking about my mother, who doesn’t know the difference between red and white. [laughter]
RS: Oh, okay! That’s more of a problem [laughter]
AH: And then, you know, a true wine connoisseur, who I’m, you know, they can get pretty pedantic and persnickety sometimes.
RS: [groan] I know, I hate that though. In the beginning, when I do my translation in the wine industry workshops, one of my first slides is a snob, a wine snob, and I put a big red cross through it, and say there’s no wine snobbery. It’s a specialism just like anything else. And just because it has this reputation doesn’t mean it has to be dripping with snobbery. And that’s really—getting back to the objective tasting notes—that’s really the… what you can use as your foundation. Its… You’re not saying it’s good or bad. You’re not saying “You know this” and “I know that,” it’s “Is it high in acid or low in acid?” “Is it… Can you smell cherry, or can you not smell cherry?” And this is how you can eradicate that snobbery that is rife, yeah.
AH: So, I want to go back to this 9:00 a.m. vodka tasting [laughter]. So, your diploma is in wine and spirits. Do you actively translate for the spirits industry, as well?
RS: Yes, yes, yes. It is… It could be said to be a separate field, but, at the end of the day, it’s still fermentation, and then the distillation part. So, it’s just a new… it’s an added extra onto the process. With wine, yes, you’re only dealing with grapes, and with spirits you’re dealing with all manner of raw materials, but there is a lot of cross-over again. Talking about cross-over, there’s a lot of cross-over with wine and spirits. Um, I think there’s probably less focus on the production process when you’re dealing with translating materials for the spirits industry. They tend to be big-brand clients rather than small producers. Like the wine industry… a lot of small producers doing their own websites, whereas spirits tend to be big brands doing their marketing campaigns, so the emphasis is more on their image. Um, spirits translations, I find them to be more creative, more journalistic in style, and they focus on experience around the spirit, rather than how it’s made. When I first started out, I did a lot of translating for Cointreau, the spirits brand, the orange liqueur, and that was a really fascinating mix because they did talk about their production process, but it was always the same thing: sweet and bitter oranges and the distillation and everything. It was a lot of boilerplate text for that. But there were all these different experiences with, like, star mixologists coming in to Paris, and there was a campaign with Dita Von Teese, and there was a lot of really creative opportunities there, which is quite… very different from viticulture in rural Burgandy. [laughter]
AH: Huge generalization here: would you maybe say that wine is for nerdy introverts and spirits is for extroverts?
RS: Oh, no. Definitely not.
AH: Okay
RS: No, [laughter] no, you have to look at the… just think some of the big California brands like Screaming Eagle and some of the Australian… like Penfolds in Australia. These are no shy violets. I mean, they’re big brands with a lot to say. So, yeah, no, definitely not. But there’s probably a little more subtlety in wine, um, than there is in spirits because spirits generally taste the same every year. Um, probably I’m generalizing there. I think Hennesy and… would disagree with me because that’s the… cognac changes year to year and there’s a lot of difference there, but generally, big brand spirits taste the same every time, every year, and wine is, obviously different each vintage, so that’s a big difference there.
AH: So, um, what are some misconceptions from fellow translators about what you do. I mean, clearly, I have stuck my foot in a couple of them, but, what do people assume about, um, about your job?
RS: I think one of the misconceptions is that there is some of elite group of people that have been born into this wine specialism, and they can’t possi… and other translators can’t possibly permeate into that world, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Um, I know I do have the advantage of my husband being a winemaker, but I really did start out from scratch when I decided to contact WSET, and I was 35 at that point. I was… you know, I wasn’t an enfant du pays as they say around here. Um, I mean, it doesn’t do me any harm, admittedly, that my company, my freelance company has its address in Chablis. I live in Chablis. But it’s really not impossible to learn a specialization from scratch. I mean, doesn’t everyone learn their specializations? Nobody is born specializing in medical, for example. So, I think that’s one of the misconceptions, is that it’s only for this restricted group of people who already know everything about it. That’s really not the case.
AH: That’s comforting. Um, I have another friend who works in wine. She’s a buyer for a major retailer here in the United States, and it seems like the more you get into wine the less snobby you are about it. It’s the people like me who don’t know anything about it who assume that it’s a very highfalutin sort of career, but, um, she’s very ecumenical about it, you know.
RS: But I think when you really love something, then you want everyone to share in it, so you obviously break down all those snobbery barriers when you want to share your passion and your fascination with something. Um, definitely, I don’t know why it’s the case. I think it’s to do with maybe wine waiters or sommeliers in the 1980s perhaps smirking at people when they don’t order the correct wine. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me, but maybe it’s because it’s being paired with fine food in this sort of rich, elite atmosphere. Maybe that’s why. But it’s a shame.
AH: All right, so my New Years’ resolution is to drink more wine and just enjoy it.
RS: Yeah, exactly! Just enjoy it, which is also a question you can ask yourself. Once… If you are translating or if you’re working in the wine industry, you could do your objective tasting note, but then at the end of the day, is it… do you enjoy it? Is it nice? Is the taste pleasant? And that is where the pleasure comes from, so, I think you should definitely, yeah, try more wines. And, what I don’t like is when people say “Oh, I don’t like red wine,” or “I don’t like white wine.” It’s like, have you tried a selection, because they are so different. You really try all different ones, and then decide. I mean, nobody likes… not everyone needs to like everything in the world, but definitely reds can be heavy and powerful and… heavy, whereas they can also be light and fruity and—crunchy almost—if you’ve got this red cherry kind of strawberry flavors coming through with… it’s perfect with some fruit salad even, which you’d never… a snob would never say that, right?
AH: All right, so, um, a couple final questions: we touched on your translation of cosmetics, but you also translate for personal development, which is very interesting. Are there, just very quickly, so, um, give me a brief overview of that, and then tell me about any overlaps between cosmetics and wine and spirits and personal development.
RS: Um-hmm. Well, personal development got started because I had a contact who was working at Dannon, the yoghurt and dairy, lots and lots of different products, company, and Dannon organized this seminar, which is twice yearly, three times yearly, called Eve, and it’s all about… it’s for women, and they invite a majority of women with some men, so that the men feel like what it’s like to be in the minority, and it’s all to do with daring and taking the first steps and breaking through the glass ceiling, and ways of doing that, and that… they publish lots of different articles on their blog to do with resilience and, uh, well, all different feminist issues, and I’ve been lucky enough to translate for them for several years now. The cross-over there is really… not a lot of overlap between cosmetics and personal development there, but also, the books that I’ve been translating, that started out with a person development book, as well, called Nudge Management, all about how you can make small changes in a business environment to change people’s behavior. So, some would say manipulation, but I like to say nudge. Um, so this is, for example, sticking a little fly on a urinal to keep men’s aim clear and keep mess off the floor. So that’s would be an example of a nudge, and that book was all about bringing those kinds of initiatives into business to improve efficiency and that. And employee satisfaction as well. So, I mean, that’s just a brief overview of my personal development translation. But that varies a lot.
AH: All right, [laughter]. Sorry, I’m still getting over the fly in the urinal.
RS: [laughter]
AH: Maybe we’ll call it incentivization and just working with people…
RS: “Incentivization,” I like that. Yeah [laughter].
AH: That’s hysterical. All right, well, final question: Is there anything else you want people to know about you, about your work, about the world.
RS: I would say, don’t be scared to specialize because it’s really rewarding when you get recommended for a job from someone who has heard about you but you don’t know, that’s a really lovely seal of approval. Um, if you manage to become the translator that springs to people’s minds when they think of an area, then that’s definitely a time that you’re doing something right. Also, I’ve found that sharing knowledge is a wonderful thing, giving workshops to other translators really did set me up as a reference, as I said earlier, in those areas. Um, and, yeah, they brought me more work and, you know, contrary to what you might think, it’s really not about creating competitors because I know a lot of translators would hesitate to give training because they’re like, well, if they know how to specialize in that industry, then I’m going to get overtaken. But it really isn’t the case. I haven’t found that to be the case at all. Quite the opposite. People see you in a more authoritative light when you’ve been a tutor for them. Um, so, yeah, what else would I like people to remember, is, uh, try wine. Try all different kinds of wine and don’t be scared of the wine world.
AH: All right. Words of wisdom from the Queen of Wine herself. Pay attention, guys.
All right, well, thank you so much, Ruth, for your time today, uh, excuse my dog in the background. He’s mad that he’s penned up right now, and…
RS: That’s fine. It’s real life.
AH: Thank you so much for your words.
RS: And thank you for listening to me. Thank you.
AH: This concludes our episode for today. You can subscribe to the continuing education series podcast on Soundcloud or iTunes by searching for continuing education series. You can contact the FLD at divisionFLD [at] atanet.org, visit our website at www.ata-divisions.org/FLD, or get in touch with us on social media. This is Andie Ho signing off. Thanks for listening, and à bientôt.
Ruth Simpson has been translating professionally since 2008 in the fields of wine & spirits, beauty and personal development and holds the MITI certification from the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. She lives on her family’s wine estate in Chablis and is a graduate of the WSET Level 4 Diploma in wines and spirits. Before moving to Chablis, Ruth was an English trainer at L’Oréal’s Luxury Division in Paris, facilitating workshops and tutoring business and marketing professionals. She has a degree from the University of Warwick in the UK, and in addition to studying French, she spent her time there singing with the chamber choir and musical theatre society. Also a keen scuba diver and violinist, Ruth started playing the ukulele in 2019 and has begun to suffer from UAS, ukulele acquisition syndrome. You can follow her on Twitter at @ruthinchablis.
ATA Podcast host Andie Ho is a certified French to English translator specializing in the food industry. She earned her M.A. in translation from Kent State University and is now based in the Houston area. She currently serves as the ATA’s French Language Division administrator. You can follow her on Twitter at @JHawkTranslator or email her at andie [at] andiehotranslations [dot] com.
Transcribed by Joan Wallace. She has been a full-time freelance translator for nearly 30 years. She holds ATA certification from French to English and Spanish to English, and also translates from Thai to English. She works primarily in medical and pharmaceutical translation, although she occasionally wanders further afield, including an ongoing collaboration with a historian involving
French-English translation of 19th-century handwritten documents. She is based in Madison, Wisconsin. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/joanwallace.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
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Episode 15: Translating Toponyms
Angela Benoit: Hello and welcome to the continuing educational series, a podcast produced by the French Language division of the American Translators Association, produced as a benefit for our members and those interested in joining us. Our series strives to offer educational content about the craft of French to English and English to French translation, and about our division. I am your host, Angela Benoit.
It is my pleasure today to welcome a very special guest, André Racicot. André is a retired English to French translator, editor, terminologist, and trainer for the Translation Bureau of the Government of Canada. He focused on the translation of foreign geographical names. He’s published a List of Names for Countries, Capitals and Inhabitants in 2000 that was integrated into the style guide of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. You can visit him on Twitter or contact him through his website, and we will publish the links to his Twitter account and website on the blog post that accompanies this episode. André, bonjour et bienvenue. Merci d’avoir accepté notre invitation aujourd’hui pour parler des toponymes.
André Racicot : Bonjour. Oui. Alors ma spécialité, en quelque sorte, lorsque j’ai œuvré au Bureau de la Traduction pendant presque une trentaine d’années, c’était justement de traduire les toponymes. Et j’en ai fait en quelque sorte une vocation.
Angela Benoit : Et quelle est la chose que vous avez constatée par rapport aux toponymes et à leur gestion, à leur prise en charge par les dictionnaires grand public et spécialisés pour les traducteurs que nous connaissons tous.
André Racicot : J’ai constaté assez rapidement que les dictionnaires français comportent de nombreuses insuffisances. Quand vous regardez la partie « Noms communs », habituellement, les dictionnaires essaient de vous ouvrir le chemin, d’aller au-devant des difficultés. Par exemple, « chausse-trappe », on va vous préciser qu’il y a une graphie avec un p et un autre avec un double p. Pour les noms composés, on va généralement indiquer la forme plurielle parce que les règles sont assez difficiles parfois à saisir. Mais quand vous allez dans la partie « Noms propres », et que vous cherchez des noms, d’État, de pays, de ville et tout ça, on entre dans une zone floue. On dirait que les dictionnaires ne veulent pas du tout nous aider et font en quelque sorte un service minimum. Et pourtant, on s’attendrait au même service, si on veut, du côté des noms propres.
Angela Benoit : Et pourtant, nous traducteurs, sommes amenés à chercher des toponymes parfois obscurs, peu connus, dans des endroits reculés que nous connaissons mal. Donc, est-ce que vous pouvez nous parler un petit peu plus de la façon dont nous allons approcher ce problème ?
André Racicot : Oui, c’est ça. Ce qui arrive, c’est qu’il y a des noms très, très connus, évidemment, et ceux-là ne posent pas vraiment de problème. Mais si vous cherchez le nom d’une province mexicaine, d’une région en Afghanistan ou en Suède, qu’importe, très souvent, le genre grammatical n’est pas indiqué et même s’il est indiqué, c’est sous une forme raccourcie, nom masculin, nom féminin. Et le problème, c’est que ça ne dit pas tout : loin de là. Ça laisse beaucoup de choses dans l’ambiguïté. Bien entendu, quand on parle de toponymes très connus, « le » Nicaragua ou « la » Polynésie, il n’y a aucun problème. Mais je me rappelle qu’il y a une trentaine d’années, lorsque je travaillais à Radio-Canada, on cherchait désespérément le genre grammatical d’Iran et d’Israël. Et ça ne se trouvait pas dans les dictionnaires. Et on sait très bien qu’Israël ne prend pas d’article et l’Iran en prend un. Et on trouvait ça assez aberrant que Le Larousse et Le Robert ne soient pas plus explicites à ce sujet-là. Et le fait de préciser qu’un nom est masculin ou féminin, ça règle une partie du problème. L’autre partie du problème, c’est, un, l’article. Est-ce que ça prend l’article ou pas ? Bon, tout le monde sait que pour Cuba et Haïti, ça n’en prend pas.
Mais quand on arrive à des entités plus exotiques, c’est beaucoup moins clair. Et l’autre problème, c’est une petite parenthèse, c’est le gentilé, le nom des habitants. Si vous allez voir la Grèce vous découvrez que le gentilé, c’est les Grecs, évidemment. Or la forme féminine de Grec, tout comme pour la Turquie, les Turques, elle est irrégulière. Avec Grecque, G-r-e-c-q-u-e, tandis que Turque, une Turque, T-u-r-q-u-e. Et ça pose un problème, le féminin, parce qu’il y a des formes qui ne sont pas si claires que ça. Vous avez le Kenya par exemple. Les habitants, c’est des Kényans, Kényanes. Et la question qui se pose est : « est-ce qu’on double le ‘n’ en français ? Et là encore, ce n’est pas précisé. Il faut se reporter à la section « noms communs ». Allez voir kényan ou grec pour voir enfin la forme féminine. Alors là encore, les dictionnaires ne font rien pour nous aider. Au contraire, ils nous forcent à fouiller à gauche et à droite pour y arriver et réunir tous les renseignements. Et ça ne devrait pas du tout être comme ça.
Angela Benoit : Oui, effectivement, il faut qu’on fasse quatre recherches pour trouver un nom, un nom, ou un adjectif. On perd beaucoup de temps.
André Racicot : Perfectly, oui. Effectivement.
Angela Benoit : Parlez-moi du cas de la Grande Bretagne : on en a discuté en préparant cet épisode. C’est un cas qui illustre beaucoup de points de ce problème. Dites-nous en un petit peu plus.
André Racicot : Ouais, ben, c’est ça la Grande Bretagne, c’est un pays qui est proche de la France. Et quand on parle de traduction des toponymes, je pense qu’on pourrait y revenir tantôt, ce qu’on constate, c’est que les toponymes qui sont le plus souvent traduits sont ceux des régions proches de la France, soit des pays avec qui la France a eu des rapports rapprochés, si on veut. La Grande Bretagne, c’est un pays qui est proche de la France, c’est de l’autre côté de la Manche. Il y a eu la conquête normande en 1066, le français est devenu la langue de la couronne britannique, et il y a eu un mélange des deux langues entre la langue populaire, qui était le vieil anglais, et la langue française, ce qui fait que les deux langues ont beaucoup de points communs.
Il y a énormément de faux-amis entre l’anglais et le français, et l’anglais est une langue germanique qui est extrêmement francisée, beaucoup plus francisée que l’allemand ou le néerlandais. On a même dit que l’anglais, c’était en quelque sorte du néerlandais brodé de français. Il y a eu, on le sait, beaucoup de tensions entre la Grande Bretagne et la France. Il y a eu la guerre de 100 Ans, il y a eu une espèce d’antagonisme entre les deux. Je pense, moi, que les deux peuples français et britannique s’admirent mutuellement mais n’osent pas trop le dire. Et l’un dénigre continuellement l’autre. En tout cas, bon, finalement, il y a eu un rapprochement avec l’Entente Cordiale en 1904. Les deux pays ont lutté côte à côte contre l’Allemagne.
Pourtant, malgré cette évidente complicité historique, il y a très peu de toponymes en Grande Bretagne qui ont été traduits. Et ça, c’est assez curieux. Oui, dans les grandes villes, vous avez Londres et Edimbourg. Mais si vous cherchez dans les autres villes, Manchester, York, Birmingham, Cambridge, Oxford, il n’y a pas de traduction. Il n’y en a aucune en fait. Et en ancien français, Westminster s’appelait Ouestmoutier. Mais évidemment, ça fait très longtemps que ça a disparu. Et quand on regarde les régions, il y en a très peu. Il y a l’Angleterre, l’Écosse, Pays de Galles, la Cornouailles avec un s, et l’Irlande du Nord. Mais quand vous regardez les grandes régions, vous avez les Highlands, les Highlands, parfois appelées Hautes Terres, mais c’est très rare.
Mais le reste, le Yorkshire, le Kent, le Dorset, là encore, il n’y a pas de traduction. Et en fait, c’est plutôt l’anglais qui s’est beaucoup inspiré du français. Je l’ai dit tantôt l’anglais est une langue très, très francisée, et vous avez des appellations à Londres qui sont assez amusantes parce que, en réalité, elles viennent du français. Alors, par exemple, si vous allez dans Hyde Park, vous avez Rotten Row. C’est un non-sens, une route pourrie. À quoi ça rime ? Bien, c’est une déformation du français route du roi, tout simplement parce que Hyde Park était un domaine royal au Moyen-Âge. Vous avez Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly, à quel mot français ça vous fait penser_00:47:28_ Pas évident ?
Angela Benoit : À laPicardie, peut-être ? Je dis ça complétement en l’air.
André Racicot : Non, des peccadilles, ma chère. Donc, c’est le rond-point des peccadilles parce qu’on vendait toutes sortes de breloques à cette époque.
Angela Benoit : D’accord…
André Racicot : Alors, Picadilly. Pardon ?
Angela Benoit : La ligne a sauté un petit peu, allez-y, je vous écoute
André Racicot : Oui, une autre appellation à Londres, vous avez Elephant and Castle. Et ça, il faut vraiment se gratter la tête. C’est une déformation de Infante de Castille. Alors là, on voit que l’anglais a été beaucoup influencé par le français. Et ce qui est assez amusant de nos jours, c’est qu’on a des mots d’ancien français qui sont passés en anglais et qui reviennent en français. Je vous donne l’exemple du tennis. Le tennis, ce n’est rien d’autre que le jeu de paume français. Donc, on peut dire en forçant un peu que les Français ont inventé le tennis. Et au jeu de paume, quand vous tendiez la balle à l’adversaire, vous disiez tout simplement « tenez. » Et tennis vient du Français tenez. Évidemment, les Britanniques ont développé le sport que l’on connaît aujourd’hui et par rebond, le mot tennis est revenu en français pour désigner un type de chaussure athlétique. Alors vous avez des mots comme ça qui ont voyagé un peu d’une langue à l’autre. ? Mais il n’en demeure pas moins, pour résumer le cas de la Grande Bretagne, qu’il y a finalement en Grande Bretagne au niveau de la toponymie, il y a très, très peu de traductions.
Angela Benoit : Intéressant. J’aurais jamais imaginé pour tennis, mais c’est finalement une petite partie de ping pong que ce mot a fait entre les deux pays.
André Racicot : C’est ça.
Angela Benoit : Passons ensuite au prochain thème, le changement d’aspect en traduisant un toponyme ?
André Racicot : Oui, oui. Le changement d’aspect, oui. Ce qui arrive, c’est qu’il y a des appellations qui sont, qui ont varié un petit peu dans leur traduction, c’est à dire qui ne sont pas tout à fait pareilles en anglais et en français. Je vous donne quelques exemples. Vous allez comprendre assez vite. Si on parle par exemple du Straight of Dover en Angleterre, on ne dirait pas le Détroit de Douvres. Il n’y aura pas une traduction intégrale de l’anglais. On ne suit pas la démarche de l’anglais. Et en français, ça s’appelle le Pas de Calais, et on voit que la façon, le référent, si on veut, en anglais, c’est évidemment Dover, Douvres, et en français, le référent devient un mot français, qui est Calais.
On voit un petit peu le même phénomène avec Bay of Biscaye, qui en français devient le Golfe de Gascogne. Alors on voit que le référent a changé. Le référent est français, tandis que, à l’origine en anglais, le référent est d’Espagne. La notion de Bay devient en français un Golfe parce qu’il y a une certaine différence en français entre une baie et un golfe. Un golfe, c’est beaucoup plus gros. En anglais, on ne semble pas faire la nuance. Un peu comme river, qui peut être un fleuve ou une rivière. On a Bay of Bengal, ça devient en français le Golfe du Bengale. Le même phénomène pour Channel of Corfou, qui devient en français le Détroit de Malte et non plus Corfou. Là, voyez non seulement unCanal; Channel ici, devient unDétroit parce qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une construction humaine, donc, on ne peut pas parler de Canal comme on parle du Canal de Suez ou du Canal de Panama. Mais ici, on aboutit à un détroit.
Angela Benoit : C’est incroyable le nombre de questions qu’on se pose, pourrait se poser ou qu’on ne se pose pas en regardant les cartes d’Europe, que pourtant ’on a tous l’habitude de consulter. Passons ensuite aux noms des pays qui changent, justement. Qu’est-ce que vous pouvez nous dire à ce sujet ?
André Racicot : Ouais, c’est ça. Il y a beaucoup de noms de pays qui ont évolué et souvent c’est à cause de la décolonisation. Dans les empires français et britannique, les empires coloniaux, ce sont des [inaudible] au 20ème siècle, ce qui fait que la Rhodésie, par exemple, a adopté un nom plus authentique, si on veut, qui n’est plus d’origine britannique et s’est appelée Zimbabwe. Il y en a une autre partie qui a pris le nom de Zambie. Le Sud-Ouest Africain, bon, nom très occidental est devenu la Namibie. C’est une ancienne colonie allemande. Le Zaïre, l’ancien Congo Belge, est devenu maintenant La République Démocratique du Congo. Et ce qui est intéressant, c’est que tous ces changements d’appellation sont assimilés en français, sont acceptés. Il n’y a personne qui va se mettre à parler de La Rhodésie à la place du Zimbabwe.
Là où ça devient intéressant, c’est d’observer du côté français une certaine réticence vis à vis de nouvelles appellations. Par exemple, la Macédoine, qui est une région de Grèce mais aussi un ancien État yougoslave, a finalement adopté l’appellation Macédoine du Nord, pour ne pas fâcher les Grecs. Ça va passer sans problème dans les dictionnaires, ça va. Mais un cas patent de résistance, c’est La Biélorussie. Lors de l’effondrement de l’empire soviétique, il y a une quinzaine de républiques qui sont devenues des états souverains. Et La Biélorussie a changé son nom officiellement aux Nations Unies et s’appelle maintenant Le Bélarus, qu’on aime ça ou pas. Ce qui est assez curieux, c’est que les dictionnaires français ne semblent pas avoir pris en compte ce changement de nom. L’entrée principale est toujours Biélorussie, et ils disent en biélorusse /Bjélarus/. C’est comme ça que ça se prononce. Alors c’est assez curieux parce que l’appellation Bélarus n’est pas très, très usitée en français, alors qu’en anglais on accepte plus volontiers les changements de noms et on parle beaucoup plus souvent du Belarus en anglais. Alors il y a une espèce de résistance française devant certaines appellations qui sont traditionnelles et qu’on emploie depuis des siècles.
Et là, je vous amène en Inde : Bombay, qui s’appelle maintenant Mumbai; Calcutta, qui est devenue Kolkata; et Madras, qui est devenue Chennai. Les appellations indiquées par les Indiens, adoptés par les Indiens, et qui sont des changements de nom officiels sont reprises dans les médias anglais. Mais en français, si vous ouvrez un dictionnaire, vous avez encore l’entrée principale à Bombay, Calcutta et Madras. Et ce n’est que récemment que j’ai pu observer dans la presse française, et ça englobe la francophonie, aussi bien le Canada que l’Europe ou l’Afrique, que le terme Mumbai semblait se glisser peu à peu dans les textes français. Alors qu’il s’agit bel et bien d’un changement de nom officiel. Alors ça, c’est un phénomène qui est assez curieux où on voit qu’il y a peut-être un certain traditionalisme en français. On abandonne moins volontiers certaines appellations qu’on est habitué de voir, même si le nom officiel d’un État ou d’une ville a changé.
Angela Benoit : Et vous dîtes, juste pour la petite, juste pour faire l’essai pendant que vous nous présentiez le cas de la Biélorussie, ou de Bélarus, et de Bombay ou Mumbai. J’ai pris la liberté de taper rapidement Larousse et Bombay, Mumbai pour voir ce qu’il en sortait sur internet. Eh bien, je vais vous lire la définition.
André Racicot : Oui.
Angela Benoit : C’est L’Encyclopédie Larousse, qui nous dit ça. Depuis 1976, son nom officiel en langue marathi.
André Racicot : Oui.
Angela Benoit : Je ne sais même pas comment le prononcer, est Mumbai, mais la ville est encore souvent désignée sous son ancien nom de Bombay. Donc, même Le Larousse essaye de faire perdurer l’ancien nom. C’est à se demander pourquoi. J’avoue que je ne m’étais jamais posé la question, mais il faudrait effectivement qu’on se mette à utiliser Mumbai comme tout le monde.
André Racicot : Oui, pour ce qui est du Larousse, je tiens à dire que c’est peut-être le dictionnaire le plus fiable pour l’exactitude des graphies, les bonnes appellations et Le Larousse, généralement, reflète assez bien ce qui se dit dans la francophonie quant aux graphies et aux termes employés. Donc, vous voyez que Le Larousse hésite encore à abandonner Bombay.
Angela Benoit : Oui, et pour le cas précédent, effectivement, l’entrée est sous le nom de Biélorussie.
André Racicot : Hum. Ouais, ça ne me surprend pas du tout. Je ne pense pas que ça va changer demain matin.
Angela Benoit : Et sur cette fiche lui-même, on ne fait même pas mention des deux noms, c’est à dire qu’il précise seulement qu’en Biélorussie et en russe, Bélarus, anciennement Russie Blanche, mais rien de plus. On ne fait pas mention du dit nouveau nom.
André Racicot : Non, c’est incroyable et ça fait quand même depuis 1991, je pense, que le Bélarus a adopté ce nom-là. Et encore, une génération plus tard, on s’en tient à la Biélorussie.
Angela Benoit : Oui, c’est dingue ça. Et bien passons au sujet suivant : l’attribution d’un genre grammatical à des toponymes non traduits. Je vous avoue que c’est un problème auquel j’ai été souvent confrontée parce que j’ai fait beaucoup de traductions dans le tourisme et l’hôtellerie. On parle beaucoup de grandes villes, de petites villes, de petits villages, de petites régions. Et la question du genre grammatical se pose systématiquement.
André Racicot : Oui, j’ai peut-être deux exemples à vous donner. Il y a cette région du Mexique qu’on appelait le Chiapas, qui a été, qui a défrayé les manchettes il y a déjà un bon bout de temps. Quand vous regardiez dans les éditions antérieures des dictionnaires, il n’y avait aucun genre grammatical. Donc, on était laissé dans le vide. Est-ce qu’il faut dire le Chiapas, la Chiapas, est-ce qu’on met un article, est-ce qu’on n’en met pas ? Là encore, le lecteur francophone était dans le flou. Depuis lors, les dictionnaires sont devenus un peu plus précis et on vous indique généreusement maintenant que c’est un nom masculin. Mais encore là, la question de l’article se pose. Et justement, j’ai consulté LeRobert et LeLarousse hier. Et il faut aller dans le corps du texte pour arriver à trouver si effectivement on dit le Chiapas, et dans un paragraphe, on voit qu’on dit le Chiapas. Et ça me ramène à la situation dont je parlais tantôt, de se battre avec ces dictionnaires.
Je vous donne un autre exemple comme ça. Vous avez Bahreïn, qui est un émirat, Bahreïn, on a dit que c’était un nom masculin et on entend souvent le Bahreïn, or Bahreïn ne prend pas d’article, mais ce n’est pas indiqué dans les dictionnaires. Et là encore, comme Chiapas, il faut aller dans le corps du texte pour trouver un endroit où on va dire « Bahreïn est situé à l’est de la péninsule arabique ». Et l’autre problème que ça amène, le fait de ne pas préciser si on met l’article ou pas, c’est que ça a des répercussions sur devinez quoi ? Les prépositions !. Alors, si je vous dis Bahreïn, qu’est-ce qu’on dit, à Bahreïn, au Bahreïn ou en Bahreïn ? Et vous hésitez probablement, comme tout le monde, parce que ce n’est pas clair.
Angela Benoit : Et j’ai une pensée émue pour nos collègues qui sont interprètes et qui doivent décider dans l’instant sans pouvoir consulter un dictionnaire, sans pouvoir se retourner et demander à un collègue, [??], du coup parce que j’ai hésité et parce qu’on est en train d’enregistrer un épisode, je ne saurai quoi vous répondre.
André Racicot : Eh bien voilà, voilà. Si je vous avais dit Guatemala, vous m’auriez répondu tout de suite au Guatemala, si je vous avais dit la Tasmanie, vous m’auriez dit en Tasmanie. Mais voilà, avec Bahreïn, comme il n’y a pas d’article, on hésite. Et même pour des toponymes connus, comme Cuba, on dit à Cuba, mais quand vous arrivez à Haïti, est-ce qu’on dit à Haïti ou en Haïti ? Et là, c’est un autre problème, on n’est pas sûr et il n’y a pas un dictionnaire qui va vous donner la solution. Et en fait, les Haïtiens disent en Haïti. Pourquoi ? Parce que c’est un h qui n’est pas aspiré. Et à ce moment-là on a tendance à faire la liaison. Mais ce n’est pas évident. C’est pas écrit nulle part. Alors, ce qui n’est pas clair pour Bahreïn, ce qui n’est pas clair pour d’autres toponymes, vous imaginez bien que, quand vous abordez des régions inconnues et qu’on ne précise pas le genre grammatical, la tendance lourde que j’ai pu observer, c’est de mettre le masculin.
Prenons par exemple une région de Suède, le Småland, le dictionnaire, je pense, nous dit que c’est un nom masculin. Mais notre tendance naturelle, c’est de mettre un article, tout simplement. On est porté à ne pas mettre d’article quand il s’agit du nom du Nil par exemple, ce qui est justement le cas de Cuba. En ce moment-là, on ne met pas d’article. Mais là encore, ce n’est pas clair, clair dans les dictionnaires. Allez-vous perdre dans LeGrevisse pour essayer de trouver des règles et Grevisse va observer une certaine tendance pour telle chose, une tendance contraire pour autre chose. Et cela, on est un peu laissé dans l’expectative. Alors là encore, même Le Grevisse ne vient pas vraiment régler la question. En fait, ce n’est pas clair du tout.
Angela Benoit : Ça ne nous facilite pas la vie tout ça. Passons ensuite à la translittération des toponymes venant de langues ne s’écrivant pas en caractères romains. Nous avons notamment parlé, pendant la préparation de cet épisode, du russe ?
André Racicot : Oui bon, la translittération c’est un terme un peu scientifique et probablement que ça ne dit pas grand-chose au lecteur, à moins justement de s’être mesuré à la langue russe, si je peux parler ainsi. La translittération, qu’est-ce que c’est ? En clair, c’est qu’il y a beaucoup de langues qui ne s’écrivent pas en caractères latins. Il y a divers alphabets dans le monde. Le russe a adopté l’alphabet cyrillique et il y a le géorgien, le thaï, le coréen qui ont des alphabets distincts. Le problème, c’est que les noms russes…
Angela Benoit : [inaudible].
André Racicot : Oui.
Angela Benoit : Il faut bien, pourtant, il faut bien qu’on puisse en parler en français de ces endroits. Il faut qu’on puisse les écrire aussi.
André Racicot : Ben c’est justement ça. Alors si vous parlez, c’est parti de la langue russe, évidemment. C’est écrit en cyrillique. Il faut donc écrire des noms russes en français, en anglais, en polonais, en hongrois, et ainsi de suite, en alphabet latin. Et l’exemple le plus évident que je puis vous donner, et qui montre qu’on ne transcrit pas les sons de la même façon d’une langue à l’autre, c’est le cas de Vladimir Poutine. Qui est un cas éclatant, si je peux dire, parce que si vous lisez la presse française, vous allez lire P-o-u-t-i-n-e, ça se dit /Poutine/. On reproduit le son russe, /Poutine/. Mais quand vous arrivez en anglais, si vous lisez la presse anglaise, vous allez être un peu surpris de lire P-u-t-i-n. Alors on voit tout de suite qu’on ne peut pas prendre la graphie à l’anglaise de Poutine et la mettre dans un texte français, on aurait Putin. C’est un cas…
Angela Benoit : C’est un peu gênant.
André Racicot : C’est un peu gênant, oui. Peut-être qu’on aurait une note diplomatique de l’Ambassade de Russie. Mais bon, ce phénomène-là ne touche pas uniquement le président russe. En fait, tous les noms russes s’écrivent d’une manière différente en anglais, en français, en allemand parce que les sons ne sont pas transcrits de la même manière. Je vais me concentrer sur trois sons, le son /ch/, le son /tch/ et le /j/ français. Le son /ch/, si vous avez Chostakovitch, vous allez dans—chez un disquaire francophone et dans l’ordre alphabétique il sera à la lettre C, C-h-o, parce le son /ch/ en français s’écrit c-h-o. Mais si vous allez chez un disquaire anglais, il sera à la lettre H, parce que le son /ch/ c’écrit sh, ce qui veut dire que Chostakovitch en français et en anglais, ce qui n’est pas tout à fait de la même façon, et le son /tch/ à la fin sera écrit t-c-h en français et c-h en anglais. Et ça c’est un cas qui est assez flagrant. Et ça touche aussi les écrivains, les personnalités. Tolstoï va s’écrire o-ï en français, mais pas o-y comme en anglais parce que, en français, on lirait /Tolstoi/. De la même manière, Dostoïevski, Pouchkine, P-o-u-c-h-k-i-n-e en français, mais en anglais est P-u-s-h-k-i-n. Le e muet en français évite de dire /Pouchkin/ comme on écrit Lénine, Staline et ainsi de suite. Ce qui veut dire finalement que le russe, mais aussi l’ukrainien, le biélorusse et tout ça, et l’ensemble des langues de l’ancien empire de Russie, et plus tard de l’empire soviétique, par tradition, en français, on va les translittérer selon une graphie française. Ce qui veut dire que, ce que vous lisez dans un journal anglais, ce n’est pas écrit de la même façon que dans un journal français.
Pour les traducteurs, ça pose un sacré problème. En Europe, on est très, très conscient de cette question-là. Il y a une tradition francophile en Russie qui fait que, en français, on a toujours mis un certain soin à écrire leurs noms, les noms russes, correctement en français. Mais au Canada français, c’est une problématique qui est largement ignorée. Les rédacteurs, les journalistes ne semblent pas du tout conscients du phénomène, ce qui fait que, bien sûr, ils vont écrire Poutine correctement pour ne pas se ridiculiser. Mais quand c’est des noms plus obscurs, un général russe ou bon un porte-parole de l’ambassade, ils vont souvent reprendre la graphie anglaise sans se poser de questions. C’est d’ailleurs ce qu’a fait Radio-Canada il y a quelques jours avec le président ukrainien Porochenko, qu’on écrit avec un sh à Radio-Canada au lieu d’un ch. C’est des erreurs qui sont très courantes au Canada, mais en France par exemple, ce n’est pas une chose qu’on va faire. Ce n’est pas le genre d’erreur qu’on va commettre, tout simplement.
Alors pour les traducteurs, ça devient compliqué parce qu’on traduit de l’anglais au français. Et ce qui arrive, c’est que les traducteurs vont lire des noms russes écrits à l’anglaise, et il va falloir les retransformer de façon à ce qu’ils aient une graphie française. Or, il n’existe aucun moyen d’y parvenir, sauf une table de translittération que j’ai créée quand j’étais au ministère des Affaires Étrangères du Canada. Et cette table-là part d’une graphie anglaise d’un nom russe et la transforme en graphie française. Cette table-là se trouve maintenant dans le guide du rédacteur de l’administration fédérale au Canada. Et c’est le seul outil, à ce que je sache, qui permette de faire cette conversion. Parce qu’autrement, si vous cherchez des documentations sur la langue russe, on va vous montrer comment Pouchkine s’écrit en cyrillique et comment on doit l’écrire en français. Mais nous, on ne part pas du cyrillique, on part d’une graphie anglaise. C’est un problème très particulier.
Angela Benoit : Oui, effectivement. Passons du russe, passons au cas particulier du chinois, qui présente lui aussi des difficultés auxquelles les traducteurs francophones vont devoir se confronter…
André Racicot : Oui, le chinois, c’est un cas très, très particulier. On sait que c’est une langue écrite, en idéogrammes, donc c’est pas du tout des caractères latins. Pendant longtemps, il y a eu un système de translittération qui s’appelait le Wade-Giles et qui aboutissait en français à certaines graphies et à d’autres graphies en anglais. De sorte que les noms chinois, un peu comme le russe, s’écrivaient de manière différente, que ce soit en anglais, en français, en allemand ou dans d’autres langues à caractères latins. Au début des années 70, je pense que c’est en ’72, les Chinois ont décidé d’adopter le système de transcription pinyin, qui uniformise les graphies dans les langues occidentales, ce qui signifie que dorénavant, par exemple, Mao Tsé Toung doit s’écrire exactement de la même manière en allemand, en français ou en anglais. C’est ce qui fait que le nom du président chinois Xi Jinping s’écrit de la même façon dans toutes les langues.
Évidemment, ça va faciliter la vie des rédacteurs occidentaux, mais ça va entraîner des transformations assez spectaculaires de noms très connus. Et ici, on ne parle pas uniquement des noms de lieux. Vous avez le fameux Pékin,Beijing, qui est apparu justement à cette époque-là. Et on pourrait presque parler d’antagonisme chez les francophones parce que là encore, c’est le même phénomène qu’avec Mumbai ou laBiélorussie. Les francophones ont gardé l’appellation Pékin, alors que du côté anglophone, on a adopté Beijing. Et ce n’est pas une faute en soi de parler de Beijing en français, c’est le nom de la ville, mais là encore, c’est une appellation qui s’étend sur des siècles. Pékin, on veut la conserver. La ville de Nankin devenue Nanjing, et Canton, méconnaissable, qui s’écrit maintenant G-u-a-n-g-z-h-o-u, ça se prononce probablement quelque chose comme /Guanjou/ ou /Guanzou/, je ne sais pas trop. Mais toujours est-il que cette graphie-là a changé, et encore une fois dans les dictionnaires français, les entrées sont toujours à Pékin, Nankin, et Canton.
Ce n’est pas uniquement les toponymes qui sont affectés par ça. Les noms de célébrités, les noms de personnes ont vu leur graphie changer de façon assez radicale : Mao Tsé Toung, qui s’écrivait en trois mots en français, s’écrit maintenant deux mots, et Mao s’étaient toujours de la même façon, mais le Tsé Toung est devenu Z-e-d-o-n-g. Donc moi je lis /Zedong/. Le philosophe Lao Tsu en deux mots devient Laozi, L-a-o-z-i. Et là, le problème aussi, c’est que c’est la prononciation. Je me suis adressé à un spécialiste quand j’étais aux Affaires Étrangères. Il me disait que finalement, les graphies du pinyin ne sont pas vraiment phonétiques, que des lettres peuvent changer de prononciation selon qu’elles sont précédées par une lettre ou une autre. C’est un petit peu comme le français avec le s qui devient z entre deux voyelles. Ces graphies-là finalement sont assez déroutantes, et il faut savoir exactement comment les prononcer. Donc, oui, uniformisation des graphies, c’est plus sain. Mais pour ce qui est de la prononciation, ça demeure toujours aussi mystérieux malheureusement. Et le chinois ? C’est un cas particulier parce que les autres langues asiatiques, le japonais, par exemple, le thaï, on a tendance à translittérer vers l’anglais.
La translittération ce n’est pas une loi universelle, on l’applique surtout pour les pays de l’ancien empire soviétique. Mais quand on a des noms au Pakistan, en Inde et tout ça, la tendance lourde, c’est de translittérer vers le français. Et même certains noms russes n’y échappent pas. Les vedettes de sport, par exemple, comme Maria Sharapova, si elle avait joué au tennis dans les années 30 ou 40, en France on aurait écrit C-h-a-r-a-p-o-v-a. Or aujourd’hui on l’écrit avec le Sh, qui est évidemment une translittération vers l’anglais. Et vous avez un autre joueur de tennis, Andreï Roublev, écrit à l’anglaise, Andrey, c’est d-r-e-y. Et en français, ça devrait normalement être d-r-e-ï; et Roublev, R-o-u-b-l-e-v, on écrit R-u-b-l-e-v. Alors on voit déjà qu’il y a des petits accrocs comme ça dans le monde du sport. Bon, le cas le plus aberrant, puisqu’on peut poursuivre un peu sur la translittération des noms, c’est évidemment Benjamin Netanyahu. Alors je suppose…
Angela Benoit : Oui, effectivement.
André Racicot : Oui. Alors je suppose que vous l’avez entendu couramment. BenjaminNetanyahu, c’est ce qu’on lit dans beaucoup de journaux, et ce qui est assez curieux, selon les sources que vous lisez, son nom parfois devient Benyamin. Dans Le Petit Larousse, on écrit bel et bien Benyamin. Comment ça se fait qu’on épelle Benjamin ? Alors, c’est un autre cas et c’est peut-être le cas ici le plus aberrant, le Premier Ministre israélien, normalement son nom devrait être translittéré, donc Benyamin parce que c’est comme ça qu’il s’appelle, et Le Larousse donne justement cette graphie-là. Comment ça se fait qu’on écrit Benjamin partout ? C’est parce que Monsieur Netanyahu a étudié aux États-Unis et probablement qu’il a simplifié son nom. Il en avait marre de l’épeler et on aboutit à Benjamin et non pas à une translittération, mais bel et bien à une traduction. Et ça, ça ne se fait pas. On ne traduit pas les prénoms ni les noms de famille des personnalités. Par exemple, Albert Einstein, je ne dirai jamais Albert la Pierre. La chancelière allemande qui porte le très joli nom de Angela, personne ne va l’appeler Angèle Merquel par exemple. Alors comment ça se fait qu’on traduit le nom de Netanyahu ? C’est une aberration. Et comme si cela ne suffisait pas, pour en rajouter, Netanyahu est orthographié de différentes façons, parfois avec le n-é, parfois avec le y-a-h-o-u, donc translittération à la française. Et parfois, c’est une graphie anglaise sans accent aigu, y-a-h-u, qui se prononce /Netanyahu/ en anglais, alors c’est un cas assez déroutant.
Angela Benoit : Effectivement. Et juste pour illustrer votre propos, j’ai essayé de trouver des exemples sur internet pendant que vous expliquiez ce cas, et je vous avoue que c’est un petit peu le bazar. On a un accent du côté du [journal] Monde, ou on ne l’a pas du côté de—qu’est-ce que j’ai fait là—on ne l’a pas du côté de Wikipédia, enfin personne n’arrive à se mettre d’accord, que ce soit au sein de l’Hexagone ou de la Francophonie de manière générale. Passons…
André Racicot : Ben, si vous permettez une petite remarque là-dessus, c’est qu’internet, évidemment, ce n’est pas une source qui est très fiable lorsque tout le monde écrit n’importe quoi. Alors quand vous cherchez une graphie exacte, il faut regarder très exactement quelle est la source parce qu’autrement… Ce qui s’écrit dans Wikipédia, n’importe qui écrit dans Wikipédia, et ce ne sont pas toujours des graphies très fiables. Il y a des fautes de grammaire. Je peux vous donner un exemplaire très très rapide du mur des Lamentations à Jérusalem. Pour ce qui est des majuscules, le français a des règles particulières pour les majuscules, et dans ce cas-ci, il faudrait mettre Lamentations avec la majuscule et mur en minuscule. Si vous cherchez dans internet, vous allez voir toutes les combinaisons possibles : deux majuscules à Mur et à Lamentations; pas de majuscules du tout; majuscule à Mur, minuscule a lamentations. Alors lancer une recherche dans internet, c’est comme regarder dans Paris-Match ou dans la presse populaire, voir comment on écrit tel mot en disant, « Ah oui, tiens bon, celui qui sort gagnant cette semaine, c’est telle graphie. Je vais prendre celle-là, ça doit sûrement être la meilleure », ça veut absolument rien dire. C’est pas fiable.
Angela Benoit : Oui. C’est vrai, c’est vrai. Je continue de regarder d’autres liens. On a vraiment de tout. Que ce soit du côté de la presse française, belge ou canadienne, on a vraiment toutes les graphies que vous avez présentées, comme quoi prendre une décision quand on est traducteur et qu’on est devant ces noms de personnalités, c’est vraiment quelque chose de compliqué.
André Racicot : Effectivement.
Angela Benoit : : Notre dernier sujet pour aujourd’hui, c’est le pluriel des toponymes, avec ou sans s. Qu’est-ce que vous pouvez nous dire à ce sujet et comment est-ce qu’un traducteur peut tenter de commencer à réfléchir à ce problème ?
André Racicot : Je n’ai pas compris la question. Voulez-vous répéter ?
Angela Benoit : Pardon c’est les toponymes avec ou sans s, le pluriel. C’est le dernier sujet qu’on avait choisi aujourd’hui.
André Racicot : Oui, le pluriel. C’est un problème assez épineux. Ça renvoie au fait que les règles de grammaire en français ne sont pas toujours très claires, et qu’elles ne sont pas appliquées uniformément. Que vous avez des bons auteurs qui vont choisir une graphie, d’autres auteurs vont plutôt choisir telle graphie et que très, très, très souvent, les grammairiens eux-mêmes ne sont pas capables de faire l’unanimité sur une question. Le pluriel des toponymes, c’est justement un cas patent. Et celui qui me vient tout de suite à l’esprit, c’est les Amériques. Il y a un changement d’appellation ici qui est assez intéressant, et donc je pense qu’il vaut la peine d’en parler. Jadis, on disait l’Amérique. L’Amérique, c’était clairement un continent. Et l’appellation, les Amériques, est apparue en français depuis quelques décennies sous l’influence de l’Américain. Pourquoi ? Parce que les Américains appellent leur pays America. C’est une forme raccourcie du United States of America et le terme Amérique, pour désigner lesÉtats-Unis, est devenu de plus en plus utilisé en français. Bon, ça date pas d’aujourd’hui, on peut penser à Tocqueville, de la Démocratie en Amérique, et il ne parlait pas du continent, il parlait des États Unis. Toujours est-il que, comme disait Gabriel García Márquez, vous, les Américains, votre pays n’a pas de nom : les États-Unis de quoi ? Qu’est-ce que vous êtes, vous êtes [inaudible] ? Toujours est-il qu’abusivement on a transformé le mot Amérique pour désigner les États Unis, un peu comme si, pour l’Europe, on appelait les Allemands, « les Européens ». Je ne pense pas que les Européens seraient très contents, mais c’est ce qui s’est passé en Amérique.
Alors l’appellation « les Amériques » s’écrit tout naturellement avec un s. Je dis tout naturellement parce qu’il y a une certaine logique. On écrivait les Flandres avec un s, par exemple. Mais quand on veut ajouter un pluriel à d’autres toponymes, on avait les Allemagnes. Aujourd’hui, on a les Corées et les Irlandes. Il y a une certaine logique qui prêche en faveur d’un s au pluriel. L’ennui, c’est que les grammairiens ne s’entendent pas à ce sujet-là. Beaucoup condamnent le s en disant c’est un nom propre et on n’a pas d’affaire à mettre un s.
Ça se défend en partie. Si vous prenez le nom des dynasties, vous allez vous rendre compte que très souvent, on va mettre un s, comme « des Bourbons ». Je pense qu’on met un s par exemple. Alors pourquoi on n’en mettrait pas à Corée ? La question reste à poser. Et là encore, le traducteur est obligé de regarder, de fouiller dans les dictionnaires, dans des ouvrages de difficultés de la langue pour constater, soit qu’on est catégorique d’un côté ou de l’autre et que les ouvrages se contredisent, soit qu’on va faire des nuances. Certains auteurs disent ceci, d’autres font cela et ainsi de suite. Et LeGrevisse est plein de cas comme ça, où des règles de grammaire qui apparaissent bétonnées finalement sont battues en brèche par des membres de l’Académie française qui, dans leurs livres parfois ont même fait des fautes d’accord de participe passé. C’est incroyable ! Alors ça montre que tout ça n’est pas si solide qu’on peut le croire.
Quand on arrive avec les villes, quand on parle des villes, là, c’est beaucoup plus clair, on ne met pas de s. On peut dire par exemple que Jérusalem est divisée en quatre quartiers principaux. On pourrait dire les quatre Jérusalem. On ne mettra pas de s. Jadis, il y avait deux Berlin. On n’a pas mis de s non plus. Alors tout ça reflète une certaine incohérence du français. Et on pense que les règles sont très, très claires. Mais très souvent l’usage, lui, fluctue et c’est très déroutant pour la personne qui traduit, parce qu’elle doit prendre une décision assez rapidement, n’a pas le temps de compulser les encyclopédies, les dictionnaires à n’en plus finir, et que malheureusement, souvent, c’est un peu des choix personnels qu’on finit par faire dans ces cas-là. Personnellement, moi j’écris les noms propres avec des s. Quand je lis les deux Corées, je mets un s et c’est comme ça. Et je suis sûr qu’il y a des gens qui ne seraient pas d’accord avec moi là. Alors souvent le traducteur, il est forcé de faire certains choix qui pourraient être contestés par son réviseur, par le client qui n’aime pas telle graphie et ainsi de suite… Et souvent un client qui en sait beaucoup moins que lui sur la question de la langue.
Alors, tout ça pour dire qu’il est important d’avoir des sources qui sont très fiables. Au risque de me répéter, je pense que LeLarousse donne un bon aperçu de l’usage en français. Il a des graphies beaucoup plus exactes pour les noms étrangers que LePetit Robert, qui a parfois des graphies un peu déroutantes. Mais quand on va dans internet, c’est [important] d’aller sur des sites qui sont crédibles, par exemple, mon blog, ça peut une très bonne source pour ce genre de problèmes.
Angela Benoit : Des problèmes qui, je pense, ne finiront pas de poser des questions, des difficultés, des interrogations pour les traducteurs. Mais en tout cas, cet aperçu très, très riche que vous venez de nous donner, je pense, donne à notre public, à nos auditeurs, des pistes pour commencer à se poser plus de questions sur les toponymes, à se demander comment est-ce qu’on les traduit, où trouver les informations et les réponses à leurs questions. Et sur ce, à propos de cela, j’aimerais revenir sur votre, alors je n’ai que le mot anglais, je ne sais pas si vous l’avez traduit, mais la Listof names for countries, capitals and inhabitants.
André Racicot : Oui. Oui
Angela Benoit : Si nos auditeurs veulent la consulter, où peuvent-ils la trouver ?
André Racicot : Oui, c’est la Liste des noms de pays, de capitales et d’habitants. Elle est bilingue, évidemment, et elle a été éditée par le gouvernement du Canada en l’an 2000 et elle a été reprise par le ministère des Affaires Étrangères du Canada. On peut la consulter en allant tout simplement faire des recherches dans la base de données Termium, du gouvernement fédéral. C’est très facile à trouver sur Internet. Vous cherchez un nom de pays, un nom de région et vous allez avoir le contenu de la liste, qui contient des prépositions, qui précise si on met l’article ou pas. Quand il y a élision de l’article, par exemple Afghanistan, on va préciser que c’est « nom masculin », et il n’y a aucun dictionnaire qui vous donne les prépositions comme je l’ai dit tantôt. Et il y a des appellations que l’on voit parfois dans la presse française, la République Tchèque par exemple et le Centrafrique. Il n’y a pas d’entrées dans les dictionnaires, c’est incroyable. Ce sont des surnoms, mais ils sont employés régulièrement. Alors vous devez savoir que la Tchéquie, c’est la République Tchèque et que le Centrafrique, c’est la République Centrafricaine. Dans cette liste-là, il y a des renvois vers les appellations plus officielles, évidemment.
Angela Benoit : Eh bien, juste pour s’amuser, j’ai tapé très rapidement Mumbai dans Termium et contrairement au Larousse, j’imagine que vous savez avant même que je dise quoi que ce soit, comment est organisée la fiche, à votre avis, qu’est-ce qui sort quand je tape Mumbai dans Termium ?
André Racicot : Oui, c’est ça [inaudible]. Dans Termium, justement, on a intégré un certain nombre de renseignements, un certain nombre de recherches, mais il y a aussi des terminologues qui ont alimenté cette liste-là. Souvent, les terminologues ont une approche assez rigoureuse en disant, bon, qu’est-ce qu’on dit officiellement ? Qu’est-ce que j’ai vu à gauche et à droite ? Personnellement, je pense qu’on devrait dire Mumbai, puisque c’est comme ça que la ville s’appelle. Alors, j’ai fait un autre ouvrage qui s’appelait Le Lexique des noms géographiques, qui malheureusement n’a jamais été édité, mais qui comprend 5 000 entrées de toponymes qui se traduit de l’anglais au français. Cette base-là, ce lexique-là, il a été en grande partie intégré dans Termium. Alors, pour des appellations plus ésotériques, on peut trouver également des informations dans Termium.
Angela Benoit : Et là, vu que je l’ai sous les yeux, la fiche Mumbai de Termium précise et est beaucoup plus conforme à la réalité. Elle précise que Mumbai est le nom correcte et officiel, que Bombay est une ancienne désignation et que malheureusement…. puisque, qu’est-ce qui s’est passé là ? « Bombay : nom remplacé par «Mumbai» en 1995; par contre, le nom «Mumbai» est encore fréquemment utilisé en français »». J’aurais cru qu’ils disent le contraire. Mais bon, il est justement beaucoup plus proche de la réalité, en fait.
André Racicot : Oui, c’est ça.
Angela Benoit : Cet exercice de comparaison que je voulais faire avec LeLarousse, vu qu’on en avait parlé tout à l’heure.
André Racicot : Oui, l’ensemble des recherches que j’ai faites sur les toponymes, souvent ça décrivait un peu la réalité, et je pense que c’est dans cet esprit-là qu’il faut faire des recherches. Dans mon blog, justement, je traite de ce genre de questions, de traductions, de toponymes, le fait que beaucoup de noms de villes, par exemple aux États-Unis, ont été défrancisés. Par exemple, des villes comme Détroit portaient l’accent aigu dans LeLarousse 1934 de ma mère. Aujourd’hui, il y a plus d’accent aigu, et LeLarousse, il y a quelques années, a rétabli les graphies françaises de villes bel et bien fondées par des Français comme Bâton-Rouge, par exemple; Saint-Louis, on écrit maintenant dans LeLarousse avec le trait d’union; Bâton-Rouge qui a reçu son accent circonflexe et le trait d’union alors que ces graphies-là avaient disparu des ouvrages français, ce qui est vraiment triste parce que ce sont des appellations françaises. Et même New York, qui est anglais, oui, portait un trait d’union jadis et n’en prend plus. Et cette anglicisation, elle touche aussi bien d’autres toponymes. Par exemple, on écrivait Nouvelle Dehli dans le Larousse de ma mère.
Aujourd’hui, on dit NewDelhi. La ville de Vilnius était i-o-u-s. Dans la graphie francisée aujourd’hui, ça s’écrit Vilnius, et il y a beaucoup d’autres appellations comme ça. Et dans les recherches que j’ai faites, je fais des liens avec des anciennes graphies françaises. Alors tout ça peut être trouvé dans internet, tout le fruit de mes recherches et également dans mon blog. Et ceux qui choisiront de me suivre dans Twitter c’est aussi le genre de problème dont je traite, et avec des références aux derniers articles publiés dans mon blog. Alors ça permet de suivre facilement mes réflexions sur la langue française.
Angela Benoit : Et on précisera les liens de votre blog et de votre compte Twitter dans la publication qui accompagnera cet épisode d’ailleurs. C’est sur Twitter que nous nous sommes rencontrés, un outil que je trouve fantastique pour les traducteurs. On trouve plein de trucs et de conseils, d’astuces, de questions, d’interrogations qu’on se pose, on essaie de s’entraider et de trouver des réponses. Et je suis vraiment ravie d’avoir fait votre connaissance sur cette plateforme et d’avoir pu enregistrer avec vous cet épisode aujourd’hui.
André Racicot : Mais je vous remercie beaucoup de m’avoir invité. Ça a été un plaisir et un honneur de participer à cette conversation.
Angela Benoit : Merci beaucoup, André.
André Racicot : Au revoir.
André Racicot : J’ai la petite conclusion à faire, j’ai oublié de vous prévenir, la conclusion.
André Racicot : D’accord.
Angela Benoit : De la FLD, parlons en langue anglaise parce que nous sommes rattachés à la American Translators Association.
André Racicot : Bien sûr, bien sûr.
Angela Benoit : Donc, nous allons conclure en disant que this podcast is produced by the French Language Division of the American Translators Association. Our current Administrator is Jenn Mercer. Our Current Assistant Administrator is Andie Ho. You can subscribe to the continuing education series podcast on Soundcloud at Soundcloud.com/ATA/FLD or on iTunes by searching for the words continuing education series in the iTunes Store. You can contact the FLD at dividisionfld@atanet.org or you may visit our website at www.ata/divisions.org/FLD, and make sure to capitalize those three letters at the end, FLD. You may also get in touch with us on social media. This is Angela Benoit, signing off. Thank you for listening. À bientôt.
Angela Benoit is an interpreter and translator based in Ottawa, Canada. You can find her on her website, LinkedIn, and on Twitter.
André Racicot is a retired English to French translator, editor, terminologist, and trainer from the Translation Bureau of the Government of Canada. He holds a master’s degree in political science and a certificate in German studies. He focused on translation of foreign geographical names. He published a List of Names for Countries, Capitals and Inhabitants in 2000. This list was integrated into the style guide of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. You can find him on Twitter at @AndrRacicot or contact him through his website.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
To make our Continuing Education Series Podcast more accessible and searchable for FLD members and the general public, we are now offering transcriptions of our episodes right here on À Propos. Many thanks to our volunteer transcriptionists, who are credited at the bottom of each transcription. If you’re interested in helping us transcribe podcast episodes, email divisionFLD [at] atanet [dot] org.
Elizabeth Eckardt is a French and Spanish to English translator based in Chicago who has been translating since 2014. She is ATA-certified in both language pairs and has an MS in translation from New York University. She specializes in medical, legal, and official document translations. For more information, visit 
Amber Marcum Combaud is an ATA-certified French to English translator specializing in corporate and brand communications (including CSR), academic translation and editing, and certified translation of official documents. After obtaining her B.A. in French and Linguistics from the University of Virginia, she became a translator in 2007. She completed the professional certificate in Translation program offered by New York University in 2010. Since 2016 when she began freelancing, she has served a wide range of corporate clients, translation and communications agencies, as well as local businesses and individuals seeking to expand their horizons abroad. Amber lives and works in Marseille, France, where she is always pleased to connect with colleagues in person and virtually. Drop her a line directly amber [at] amc-communication [dot] com or find her on 
