La Nuit Sacrée, by Tahar Ben Jelloun, is not for the faint of heart. The story begins, “Ce qui importe c’est la vérité,” and the author maintains this principle from beginning to end. Drawing from his experience as a professor of philosophy, the Moroccan writer takes a direct look at the issue of gender inequality from all directions. Naturally, themes of violence, jealousy, love, and hate surface quickly.

Although this is a sequel to his first major success, L’Enfant de Sable, La Nuit Sacrée can be enjoyed on its own. How could you not be drawn into a novel whose premise is a woman’s struggle with her identity after her father, who raised her as a male, dies? Particularly in a country where only men could inherit a family’s wealth, the difficulties are overwhelming and numerous.

In this case, our protagonist (formerly known as Ahmed) leaves home. She never really receives a new name, which forces you to consider the character as simply a person, rather than belonging to a particular gender camp. Although she refers to herself as a woman, she is unlike any of the women around her. She struggles with the various types of captivity femaleness brings, after what could only be described as a childhood of imprisonment within a lie. Ben Jelloun does not flinch from this conundrum, and the protagonist seems to emerge from everything stronger than your average person.

Dream-like situations and dream scenes recur often, building the emotional environment brilliantly. After such a bouleversement of one’s identity, anyone would feel as if they were in a dream (or nightmare). Scenes from reality interrupt introspection with petty fights, jealousy, and acts of senseless violence, adding to the sense of ungrounded confusion. Sometimes the real violence is so severe as to be unreal. But the protagonist embraces every experience as something previously out of her reach, saying, “Je n’avais pas envie de fuir, ni meme de résister… Je n’étais pas indifférente. J’étais curieuse.”

For all the darkness and chaos, La Nuit Sacrée is a compelling and magical tale. Everyone can relate to the struggles in some way—for who has never had an identity crisis? As you read through the harsh realities, you are pulled along, forced to practice a difficult characteristic: courage. By the last page, you will feel as if you’ve accomplished something important. You will have persevered alongside the protagonist. You will have prevailed.

Carolyn Yohn

Carolyn Yohn translates French and Hungarian legal and academic texts into English from her office in Northern California.

Have you ever had a lover?  Have you ever been a lover?  Or, perhaps a better question, is there someone who is the love(r) of your life?  Have you ever lived or dreamed a love so beautiful, so real, that it could not have possibly existed?  Are you haunted by memories of what was or what could have been?   Some nights, maybe only in your dreams, does that become your reality?  Do you wonder what love really is?  What it looks like?  How it smells?  How it feels?  Reading L’Amant (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras brings up these questions and more.  Written in 1984 and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, The Lover skyrocketed the already well-known Duras to international acclaim.  Its theme of forbidden but powerful love continues to resonate with readers today.

The Lover is the story of a poor, white, 15-year-old French girl living in French-colonized Indochina (present-day Vietnam) in the early 20^th century. She falls in love—or, if you don’t believe it’s love, has a torrid physical affair with—a rich, 27-year-old Chinese man.  China’s colonization over Vietnam has been shattered by the French, and those people remaining are permitted to stay, in part because of their wealth or contributions.  These two broken and resilient people come from vastly different worlds.  They could never connect.  Yet, here she is, alone.  He’s intrigued, she’s amazing.  Nothing could possibly come of this.  Or could it?

Could such a love be real?  Could a poor little abused white girl in colonized Vietnam really fall in love with an older, rich and powerful rich Chinese man?  Could he love her?  Is this just a form of prostitution? After all, he gives her money to give her family, and he enjoys a sexual relationship with his would-be colonizer, reversing, challenging, and twisting traditional roles of race, power, and gender. (This is a generalization, but traditionally, the Chinese were, and perhaps still are, hated by the Vietnamese.)

It is the story of love, yes, but also of survival and death: the girl survives her father’s death, an abusive family, the death of her beloved brother, and more.  And she loves.  She loves her French roommate at boarding school.  She loves her brother.  And then there is her lover.  Our protagonists have no names, which creates a kind of slippage, allowing the reader to enter the text in a way.  The open language, lapses, white spaces, and wide margins (in traditionally type-set editions) allow those who have been marginalized, those with no voices, to enter and speak.  In fact, Duras’s writing style, characterized as l’écriture feminine by noted French feminist Hélène Cixous, creates a cloud-like world where time loses meaning.

The language is deceptively simple.  The narrative, however, does not follow a linear train of thought.  Instead, the story weaves around an aged narrator whose face has been ravaged by time and alcoholism and who reminisces about her “true” self and the infinite incarnations of that self throughout her life.  The text invites the reader into her world.  We are there when her brother dies, when her best friend leaves to get married, when she is excited about school, when she remembers her mother singing.  It is fuzzy at first, and the reader is disoriented.  But let it go.  Go with it.  Let it wash over you like the waves along the Mekong.  Imagine the bustle and smells of the Cholen, the section of Saigon known as Chinatown.  Feel the warm sun and the cool shade of the lovers’ love nest.  You will be taken on an incredible journey into a world that explores the very nature of memory, love, power, betrayal, and reconciliation.

Truth is somewhat elusive in this powerful text.  In some interviews, Duras claimed the text was autobiographical, but the text is classified as a work of fiction.  There are contradictions in the text that always bother my students, but to me, these differences explore the concept of memory, how it changes, and how it works against us as time passes.  Our cherished memories lose part of their reality as we write them, rewrite them, and replay them in our attempts to relive them and hold on to them.  The truth is lost.  We can feel it slipping away sometimes, causing us to hold on tighter.  We attempt another revision or ignore any disparities until there is no longer an outside perspective.  We look in the mirror and no longer see the adult we have become; only we can still see the young girl or boy, perhaps naïve and ignorant in their world view but worldly all the same and ready to embark on an adventure.download film Walk with Me 2017 now

The narrator looks in the mirror and sees not the woman withered from age and trauma but her true self, herself at fifteen and a half.  I can too see this girl boldly crossing the Mekong on a ferry wearing her threadbare hand-me-down silk dress, a man’s pink fedora, her brother’s belt, and gold lamé high-heeled shoes.  The wind is blowing her braided hair.  Her face is warmed by the hot Vietnamese sun as water splashes against the boat.  Then she notices the black limousine, hiding the silhouette of a delicate Chinese man.

Their story is one that I recommend you read.  Be prepared for confusion, twists, and challenges.  Be prepared to have your memory stimulated.  Your past loves and lovers may come to mind as you navigate this beautiful and tragic world.  The text haunts me, in the best ways.  The last few pages, especially the last paragraph, always give me shivers.  My students do always not understand; most have not been or had lovers.  They have not been all-consumed.  They still like the text but they wonder.  They have questions.  As someone with some experience in life, I have some answers.  My answer is yes.

Gay Rawson

Dr. Gay Rawson is a professor of French with over 20 years of teaching, translating and interpreting experience.  Twentieth-century French literature is one of her many passions.

French is a language that makes liberal use of synonyms. Et pour cause. Synonyms add variety to writing.

But the French don’t seem to be content with simply using the occasional word having the same (or nearly the same) meaning as another in the language. They use these “lexical stand-ins” at every possible turn.

More accurately, many of these lexical substitutes are metonyms. A metonym is a figure of speech in which a person or thing is called by another name rather than its own. (Think about how many times you’ve seen l’Elysée used to refer to the French government.)

Consider a recent article I read about a French soccer player. In the span of 79 words, the writer referred to Charles N’Zogbia as Charles N’Zogbia, le gaucher, and l’ancien Havrais. (He used to play for Le Havre AC.)

In fact, instead of using only [player’s name] and a pronoun [il, elle] for variety, French writers invariably name the player by other means. These include the use of demonyms (le Francilien, la Bulgare) as well as position or ranking (l’ailier, la 2e mondiale).

Of course, we see this in English sports journalism, too—“the power forward,” “the LSU alum”—but my suspicion is that it’s a writing technique not used to the same degree as in French.

Politics is another realm in which synonyms are widely used. As you would expect, you see titles and positions used (both to provide information and to avoid the repetition of the person’s name), as in président le la CMP and le député du Nord. But you also see sentences like the following:

Aucune majorité n’étant dégagée sur ce point, l’élu a jugé vain de poursuivre plus avant la séance.

Can you think of a single English article in which you’ve seen the term “the elected [one]” used to refer to a politician?

Synonyms abound in financial writing—especially, it seems, in articles about the stock market. Take the English word “increase,” for example. You might see it used in an article about a stock index of a particular country. Read a French article about the same topic and you’re likely to see not only augmenter, but s’élever, en hausse, monter en flèche, prendre son essor, and perhaps s’intensifier, s’amplifier, se développer, and se multiplier.

Mais le comble ? In an article in Science & Vie magazine by French science writer Lise Barnéoud titled “Vers la fin des grands arbres,” les grands arbres are referred to in almost twenty different ways: as doyens de la nature, maîtres de l’espace et du temps, rois des forêts, and titans ligneux, to name a few. (You can read my post “18 Ways to Say ‘Large Trees’ in French” for the other phrasal synonyms that she uses.)

Unfortunately, I don’t have any data on “synonym density” between French and English. (Corpus linguists, consider that an idea for your next academic paper!) But I suspect that the French use synonyms, metonyms, and other lexical stand-ins more frequently than Americans.

Matthew Kushinka

Matthew Kushinka is a French-to-English translator and the owner of RedLine Language Services LLC, a company that offers translation, copyediting, and formatting services to commercial clients

If you have comments or links to other articles about this topic, please write me at matthew@redlinels.com. I’d love to see some numbers on the subject.

The week before we left Paris, my husband and I went to Boulinier on boulevard Saint-Michel and bought several boxes’ worth of two-euro paperbacks from the sale bins. We knew that finding books in French wasn’t going to be easy in the US, and as voracious readers, we stocked up like soldiers preparing for a siege and shipped them all tarif livres to my parents’ house in Oregon. We chose books at random: some classics, some we thought we’d heard of, maybe, and others that just had good titles or intriguing cover art. Now, nine years later, we’re still working our way through that literary plunder. One of my favorite recent discoveries from the pile is a best-selling 1978 memoir by Henri Vincenot called La billebaude.

 As a little boy, Henri Vincenot lived with his grandparents in rural Burgundy, which he proudly refers to as “the rooftop of Europe.” They taught him care and respect for the land, and for the flora and fauna that provided for them so richly. Young Henri is fed on potée au lard, bouilli (pot de feu), carpe farcie à l’oseille, boudin, paté, and poule en sauce blanche, all with plenty of fresh cream. He learns at a very young age how to butcher meat and take care of the farm animals. But he is also fascinated with the people that fill his world, from the local lord and his manor to a grandmother who can magic away eczema, to a beautiful cousin who is a wet nurse in Paris. The person he admires and idolizes most is his grandfather, “Le Tremblot,” an expert hunter and woodsman who knows the region by heart and whose skills are renowned by villagers and lords alike. Le Tremblot practices la chasse à la billebaude, an adventurous style of hunting based on taking chances and on knowing the land and the ways of its animals.

As a once-vegetarian and lifelong animal lover, I have never been interested in reading about hunting. And believe me, there are a lot of hunting scenes in La billebaude. But Vincenot’s enthusiasm and passion are hard to resist. His descriptions of the hunters’ efforts are detailed and colorful, and the in-depth understanding of nature that Le Tremblot shares with his grandson is so remarkable that I found myself drawn in scene after scene.

Vincenot also offers us a child’s point of view on other aspects of village life: the tall-tale stories told by Le Tremblot and his friends; neighbors joking and teasing as they help each other with the harvest or with repairs; the excitement of welcoming visitors to the village; the arrival of new machines and other suspicious innovations; the enormous, delicious traditional holiday meals; the solemn, otherworldly elegance of church. I felt like I too was five years old, taking it all in with wide eyes. And when young Henri, cursed with strong academic ability, is forced to leave Le Tremblot and his beloved village and forests behind for boarding school in the city, my heart ached for him.

To complete our transportation into the land of Vincenot’s childhood, La billebaude is filled with Burgundian words that even the hardiest, most experienced translators and interpreters may not recognize. Some of my favorites were piolé (freckled), les chauds-réfrédis (pleurisy), and les encolpions (magician’s tools). In the Folio edition, footnotes are included to help with most of these terms. But even the ones that forced me to stop reading and put my research skills to the test were fun, because they added so much regional and historical flavor to the tale.

Vincenot does have a tendency to slip into lecture mode, bemoaning our noisy, crowded and polluted industrial society and insisting that everything was better in the olden days. But having joined him in imagination as he tracked wild deer across the Burgundy hills, explored the rich forests of the Auxois region, and stuffed himself on delectable plats du terroir, I tended to sympathize with him. In fact, many of his beliefs fit right into current environmentalist thought. Others are a little harder to swallow, such as his comment that the women in his village were content with serving the men and staying in the kitchen, and were much happier than modern “emancipated” women. But on the whole his story made me nostalgic, not for my noisy, crowded and polluted life in Paris, but for a rough, sweet life I’ll never know, in a village that once existed in a quiet corner of France.

 

Arwen Dewey

Arwen Dewey lives in Seattle, WA where she works as a singer, actor and freelance translator specializing in the arts.

Je regarde regulièrement « La grande librairie », l’émission de François Busnel sur TV5 Monde. Ce journaliste invite des écrivains qui viennent de sortir un livre, de gagner le Prix Goncourt, etc. J’avais donc déjà vu Joël Dicker parler de son dernier roman, qui m’avait semblé intéressant.

Apparemment, Dicker est devenu une célébrité après avoir publié son premier roman (« La vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert »), paru en 2012. Ce grand succès en librairie, alors que son auteur n’avait que 27 ans, avait fait l’admiration de tout le monde. Peut-être pas tout le monde cependant, car dans Le Monde des livres, Eric Chevillard donne un avis non edulcoré à propos de Joël Dicker :
« L’ombre de Philip Roth plane au-dessus de cette laborieuse entreprise romanesque. Joël Dicker croit réécrire Pastorale américaine (Gallimard, 1999), mais il nous donne plutôt un nouvel épisode du Club des cinq honorablement troussé. »

J’ai la chance d’avoir une très bonne amie française qui me prête toutes sortes de livres. On échange des bouquins tout le temps. Nous sommes toutes les deux des lectrices toujours avides de bonnes lectures et constamment en quête de nouveautés dont nous espèrons nous régaler. Elle m´a donné cette fois, non pas le premier roman de Joël Dicker, mais Le Livre des Baltimore, paru l’année dernière. Je n’en attendais pas trop car je prefère les livres français qui me parlent de la France et de ce qui se pase en France, plutôt que la lecture d’un écrivain suisse francophone écrivant sur la Nouvelle Angleterre et l’Amérique. Pour cela, je prefère des Américains comme Jonathan Franzen ou Jeffrey Eugenides, ou même John Fante, qui est un grand écrivain.

Mais Joël Dicker a vécu et étudié aux États-Unis et connaît bien les endroits dont il parle dans son roman. Il est capable de créer un roman crédible qui est une espèce de polar. Ce n’est pas un « roman de plage », comme les trilogies de Katherine Pancol. Joël Dicker, lui, cultive le « Thriller ».

Grande a été ma surprise parce que l’histoire est vraiment intéressante et que Dicker sait très bien maintenir le suspense jusqu’à la fin. J’adore les livres qu´on a du mal à laisser de côté avant de s’endormir le soir. Celui-là en fait partie. J´ai donc décidé de chercher son premier bouquin et de le lire aussi.

J’ai toujours une longue liste de livres à lire, cela me permet notamment de maintenir mon niveau dans les langues que je connais. Je trouve que la lecture aide beaucoup à ne jamais perdre de vue la beauté et la saveur des mots. Le travail quotidien de la traduction de textes techniques arides et sans âme tétanise un peu nos sens. Parfois, j’ai même besoin d’un peu de poésie, mais pour cela, je lis en espagnol. D’autres fois, je copie et je collectionne des lignes particulièrement belles qui m’ont fait chaud au cœur et que je ne veux jamais oublier. La bonne lecture est très enrichissante, on traduit mieux, on découvre de nouveaux mondes, des modes de vie, des moeurs différents, etc. Le livre est une fenêtre ouverte sur les complexités intérieures et extérieures de la vie des gens. Mais je digresse.

Joël Dicker raconte une histoire de famille, en particulier le lien entre les cousins avec lesquels le protagoniste a fondé le « Gang des Goldman ». Au fil des flashbacks, le roman se construit autour d’un mystérieux « drame », qui forme le cœur de l’histoire. Des « twists and turns », il y en a beaucoup.

Il y a eu un bref échange sur la page Facebook de l’ATA French Division en ce qui concerne le style d’écriture de Dicker. J’ai vu des commentaires sur son « American feel ». Quelques-uns pensent que son français semble avoir été traduit de l’anglais. Je crois que Dicker est un auteur multilingue, comme beaucoup de Suisses, d’ailleurs. Peut-être que cela exerce une certaine influence linguistique sur son écriture, c’est possible. Ce n’est peut-être pas de la grande litérature, mais c’est incontestablement une lecture agréable et vivante, je dirais même dynamique.

Anamaria Argandona

Anamaria Argandona is an English & French into Spanish translator. She can be found on Twitter at @translates or www.spanishtrans.com.

Welcome to episode 6 of the French Language Division’s Continuing Education Series podcast. The main focus of this podcast is the craft of translation (English > French and French > English). In this episode, Dominique Jonkers of Jonkers & Partners and François Lavallée of Edgar and Magistrad join host Angela Benoit for the series’ very first translation slam!

The Podcast

SOUNDCLOUD: You may listen to all of the FLD’s podcast episodes online or download them from SoundCloud.

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The Source Text

The text dueled over (uh, translated) by Dominique Jonkers and François Lavallée was Nauru, a Sinking Feeling, an article from the New York Times, available here. The source text was in English and the translation was into French. Listeners who are looking for a challenge are invited to produce their own translation before listening to the podcast!

The Slammers

Here’s more about our special guests (and you can find each of their versions of the translation below):

DOMINIQUE JONKERS is a freelance financial translator (English and Dutch > French) and owner of www.jonkersandpartners.com, a translation boutique specializing in corporate and financial translations. He is not someone who fits easily into traditional molds. Dutch by birth and by mother tongue, he grew up a French-speaking Belgian surrounded by linguistic diversity. He began his career as a corporate banker, a notably international and multilingual environment. In 1997 as the Internet began to emerge, he made the switch to translation, harnessing an inborn talent to help define a new profession of “financial translator.”

A regular guest speaker on economic and financial translation at workshops and conferences, Dominique firmly believes that the French poet Boileau had translators in mind when he said that clear understanding leads to clear writing. In 2000 he created an online resource for freelance financial translators (https://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/financialtranslators/) that has done much to lift the level of professionalism in the field.

Dominique is a regular presenter at the specialized conferences organized alternately by SFT and ASTTI (Université d’été de la traduction financière). In 2011 he won the Société française des traducteurs’ Pierre-François Caillé Award for his Dutch to French translation of author and serial entrepreneur Leen Zevenbergen’s En morgen laat ik mijn baard staan, published in French as Brûle ta cravate et danse.

A member of both CBTI and SFT, Dominique also served as SFT treasurer and was a member of the SFT executive committee for several years.

FRANÇOIS LAVALLÉE, C. Tr., has been exploring the fascinating world of words and language for over 30 years as a translator, reviser, trainer, author, lexicographer…and as a reader.

After freelancing for 20 years, he was recruited in 2009 by Edgar, a Québec translation firm. He is now Edgar’s vice-president of training and quality.

The president of Magistrad, a professional development school for translators that he founded in 2006, François has also been teaching general, commercial and legal translation as well as revision at Laval University in Québec, Canada. He has acted as a trainer and speaker at various ATA conferences and at the “Translate in…” events since their inception (2009).

His practical translation guide, Le traducteur averti, has sold over 2,000 copies. He also penned two collections of short stories (Le tout est de ne pas le dire, 2001; Dieu, c’est par où?, 2006), a novel (L’homme qui fuyait, 2013) and a collection of fables in the style of La Fontaine (Quand la fontaine coule dans la vallée, 2007). His books can be found on the bookseller Renaud-Bray’s website (www.renaud-bray.com), among other places.

Since 2009, he has been distilling his “reviser’s tips” on Twitter (@Magistrad_Plus), several hundred of which were compiled, along with some of Grant Hamilton’s, in an anthology: Tweets et gazouillis pour des traductions qui chantent (Linguatech éditeur, 2012).

The Translations

Read our guests’ different approaches to the same source text below, but don’t forget to listen to the podcast to hear their lively discussion about their choices, what they enjoyed about each other’s work and the parts they found particularly challenging. (Click the images to enlarge.)

Have an idea for a new podcast episode  that addresses the craft of English > French and French > English translation? Contact us!

A freelance career offers the flexibility to work where you want, when you want, so it’s not surprising that many freelance linguists pursue the dream of living abroad.

Making this a reality requires careful planning and an understanding of immigration and tax laws in the intended country of residence. Nothing can replace expert advice – which anyone moving abroad should seek – but there are a few tax, immigration and practical considerations to keep in mind.

Tourism versus residency

A quick Google search will reveal a commonly held view that, so long as you are working for foreign clients and you receive payments only in your country of origin, you can happily freelance on a tourist visa. This sounds lovely – but is probably illegal as most tourist visas prohibit work of any kind.

On the other hand, immigration laws haven’t caught up with today’s mobile workforce. It’s unlikely that any immigration authority cares if someone checks business e-mails while on holiday. But somewhere, the line between keeping up with work back home and working in a foreign country will be crossed.

Choosing the right country

To establish legal residency in foreign country, an applicant must meet the qualifications for a specific visa – which differ dramatically from country to country. Eligibility for a visa depends on the applicant’s personal circumstances, but a number of countries provide opportunities for freelancers that don’t require massive capital investment. A few of these include:

• The Netherlands: The Dutch-American Friendship Treaty may offer self-employed freelancers the opportunity to conduct business and live in the country, with a low capital investment requirement.
• Germany offers non-EU freelancers a pathway to legal residency. This process must be completed once you are in Germany.
• Panama: If you are looking to live in a warm, Spanish-speaking country, Panama may be the place for you. The “Friends of Panama” visa offers residency to those employed by or owners of a Panamanian company.

Sometimes, a freelancer may be a “trailing” spouse or partner, which means that the family’s visa is contingent on the other partner’s employment. Many spousal visas do not grant a right to work. However, once legal residence in the country has been secured, a spouse or partner may be able to receive authorization to engage in freelance work, depending on the laws of the specific country.

Tax implications of working abroad

First, recall that all US citizens or permanent residents are subject to worldwide taxation, regardless of where they live, and must report worldwide income to the IRS.  Even the holder of a US non-immigrant visa may be considered a US “tax resident” and therefore subject to this requirement. Most countries, including the UK, Canada and Germany, do not impose this blanket requirement.

Of course, there is some relief from double taxation. The United States has entered into tax treaties with many countries, in an effort to limit double taxation. Any US person residing abroad should hire a qualified tax advisor who specializes in preparing tax returns for expats, to take full advantage of any available exemptions and tax credits.

Freelancers are also required to make social security contributions. These are often paid to the country of residence; however, US persons overseas may be covered by a bilateral social security agreement which creates a time-limited exemption to this requirement. Exemptions vary by country, so research is essential.

Reporting requirements under FBAR and FATCA

Two US laws create potential disclosure requirements for US persons residing abroad. First, the Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR) must be filed by all US Persons if their aggregate foreign financial account holdings – which may include securities accounts and life insurance policies – exceed a $10,000 threshold at any point during the year. Once this threshold is crossed, all accounts must be reported. Penalties can start at $10,000 per unintentional violation – so take this requirement seriously.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a separate provision requiring foreign banks to report accounts held by US clients to the US government. The reporting thresholds are higher than the FBAR, but together, they reflect the government’s intent to crack down on offshore tax evasion and money laundering.

VAT Filings

In many European countries, freelancers – including linguists – must charge VAT to clients within their country of residence. Upon registering to work as a freelance translator, most freelancers working in Europe must obtain an EU Community VAT number. In addition, they may be required to track VAT-exempt transactions within the EU, and submit a VAT tax return on a quarterly basis.

Health Insurance

Finally, if heading abroad for any length of time, proper health care coverage is essential. For short-term stays, travel insurance may be sufficient. However, for extended stays, legal residents may be eligible for national health care coverage in their country of residence. It is also wise to research private health insurance coverage – whether for full coverage or as a supplement to a national health plan.

Laura Eilers Tridico

Laura Eilers Tridico, CT, is an ATA-Certified French to English Translator, specializing in law and finance.

Welcome to the fifth episode of the French Language Division’s Continuing Education Series podcast. The main focus of this podcast is the craft of translation (English > French and French > English).

In episode 5, podcast host, Angela Benoit welcomes genealogy translator Bryna O’Sullivan (www.charteroakgenealogy.com) to talk about genealogy translation, the intersection between genealogy and history and terminology.

SOUNDCLOUD: You may access Episode 5 and other podcast episodes on SoundCloud here. On SoundCloud, you can listen to the episode in your browser or download a copy of this episode directly to your computer.

ITUNES: This episode and the entire podcast series are also available on iTunes here. On iTunes, you can subscribe or listen online. (Even if the link doesn’t show up on the iTunes preview, it is still there – simply subscribe.)

LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Ancestry: www.ancestry.com, which includes records from the Drouin Collection:  www.drouininstitute.com
• Family Search: familysearch.org

Here is Bryna’s 19^th century marriage record in original manuscript format as mentioned in the episode (and a transcription is provided below):

Transcription:

Mariage d’Antoine Charest et Marie Anne La Flèche Watch movie online The Transporter Refueled (2015)

L’an mil huit cent trente six, le deux février après la publication d’un ban faite au prône de notre messe paroissiale le dimanche précédent entre Antoine Charest fils mineur d’Antoine Charest, Ecuyer, Capitaine de Milice et de Marie Anne Marchand, de la paroisse de Ste Anne de la Pérade, d’une part et Marie Anne La Flèche fille mineure de Louis La Flèche, Ecuyer, coseigneur du Fief St Maurice et de Marie Anne Goubin Boisvert, de la même paroisse, d’une autre part, les parties ayant [ ?] dispensé de l’empêchement de consanguinité de quatrième au quatrième degré et les deux bans de Monsieur Cooke Vicaire général de Monseigneur l’Évêque de Québec au date du vingt-cinq Janvier précédent ne [ ?] découvert aucun autre empêchement ni forme d’approbation, Nous soussigné Curé de Ste Anne avons, de l’agrément de parents de part et d’autre, reçu leur mutuel consentement + leur avons donné la bénédiction nuptiale selon  la forme proscrite par l’Église en présence d’Antoine Charest, Ecuyer, père, de François Charest, frère de l’époux, de Louis La Flèche, écuyer, père […]

The deadline for presentation proposals for ATA’s 57th annual conference is March 4, 2016. The conference will be held in San Francisco, California, November 2-5, 2016.

Proposal submission is open to everyone. ATA membership is not required. You may submit multiple proposals, but a maximum of two proposals will be accepted per speaker.

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SOAP Notes: Getting Down and Dirty with Medical Translation. A Review of Erin M. Lyons’ presentation given at the 56th American Translators Association conference on November 5, 2015, in Miami, FL.

I attended this session out of personal interest as I used to do quite a bit of French/Italian to English translation of medical and hospital records early on in my career. However after some years I found that I preferred pharmaceutical translation which includes a wide variety of texts such as: informed consent forms, investigator brochures, clinical drug trials, packaging and labeling, and instructions for use, to name a few. I guess you could say I followed the advice of many ATA presenters over the years urging newbies to find their own niche and to specialize, specialize, specialize…

Erin Lyons, also a French/Italian to English translator, specializing in the area of medical and life sciences translation, gave a very thorough and quite captivating presentation on the nuts and bolts of the SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan) format used by doctors and how to better make sense of the scribbled notes, acronyms, abbreviations and unique language found in medical charts, lab reports and the like. Her stated objective was to help translators replicate the style and voice of healthcare professionals in their medical translations. In my opinion, she totally succeeded in accomplishing this goal.

She began by clarifying exactly what a SOAP note is and showed the audience a visual display of a typical medical record and its various sections therein: the subjective, objective, and assessment sections and the last section containing the doctor’s plan and the recommended next steps to follow.

The Subjective section contains the patient’s main complaint or a history of the current illness. In other words, it lays out the primary reason the patient is seeing the doctor or why the patient is in the hospital. Doctors endeavor to gather and record as much subjective information as possible in this section such as the illness’ onset, character, severity, duration, location, aggravating factors, etc.

The Objective section contains the information gathered by the doctor through observation or measurement primarily of the Vital Signs (height, weight, temperature, BP), or by performing a physical exam, lab tests, and recording any of the patient’s prescriptions.

The Assessment section contains the medical diagnosis and includes all possible and likely etiologies (causes) of the illness.

The Plan section contains the next steps to take per the doctor’s recommendation and may include the ordering of additional lab tests, radiological work-ups, referrals to specialist doctors, future appointments, patient monitoring, etc.

After that initial overview, Erin delved into the nitty gritty of the actual phraseology and terminology encountered in a SOAP note and the necessity of researching correct usage so as to best render the sentence and/or word into the target language. (In her example, the source language was French and the target was English). Erin gave attendees a very useful tip by providing the link to an incredible website: https://www.cms.gov/medicare-coverage-database/staticpages/icd-10-code-lookup.aspx where we can obtain the exact medical wording/terminology for almost any medical condition by entering a medical code or keyword in the search box. For example, from my home computer, I entered the word pulmonary in the search box and obtained a complete list of pulmonary-related ICD-10 Codes¹ and their precise code description. To name a few for the purpose of illustration, pulmonary mycobacterial infection (Code A31.0), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (Code J84.112) or congenital pulmonary valve insufficiency (Code Q22.2). This link and resource will save tons of time for the medical translator and was worth attending this presentation in and of itself!

Erin emphasized using the present tense in our translations even though the source may use the past or a mix of tenses and explained the necessity of handling acronyms appropriately as the target audience of our translation may not be a healthcare professional. She suggested we expand acronyms (d/c = diarrhea/constipation) but not attempt to translate the more complex or lengthy acronyms directly as this often results in total gibberish! (I know from personal experience!) She said identifying the type of acronym or abbreviation can help us in the translation process. For example, becoming familiar with Latin abbreviations such as h.s. = hora somni = at bedtime, or inversions of acronyms written in the source language medical report, IRM (French) for MRI (English), etc.

In the middle part of her presentation, Erin gave a review of the body systems which frequently appear in a SOAP note (for example, musculoskeletal, neurological, endocrine, and cardiovascular) and the doctor’s use of specific terminology when dictating or writing ROS (review of systems) notes. She gave attendees another very helpful link with numerous tools for understanding SOAP Notes in general: www.soapnote.org and specifically with regard to deciphering lab tests, a wonderful link to an index of medical glossary terms, conditions and their related lab tests: https://labtestsonline.org/map/gindex

A few final points offered by Erin were to remember to refer to the physician in the third person, even when the first person is used, to be succinct using plain language, not to embellish the text, and to use an appropriate register (formal) and medical terminology (often the Latin cognate). For example, abdomen vs. stomach, renal vs. kidney, thrombus vs. blood clot, etc.

In sum, SOAP notes are intended to improve communication among healthcare providers by using a specific notation system which is structured and organized. This highly structured system can provide the translator with clues on deciphering the medical terminology and acronyms found within the document. Since SOAP notes are universal, Erin advised it would be wise for translators to learn the preferred terminology, acronyms, symbols and shorthand associated with their specific source and language combination.

The link to her complete and very informative presentation can be found at: https://www.slideshare.net/ErinLyons/soap-notes-getting-down-and-dirty-with-medical-translation

¹ This refers to the 10^th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), a medical classification list by the World Health Organization (WHO). It contains codes for diseases, signs and symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances and external causes of injury or diseases.

Patrice Van Hyle

Patrice Van Hyle is a freelance translator and interpreter based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.