Semi-lost in translation

In a burst of nostalgia, watched 1980s cop film La Balance, which now looks and sounds oddly like a Parisian hybrid of Taggart, Miami Vice, Les Ripoux and NYPD Blue, and was in fact directed by an American, Bob Swaim, who has both studied and worked in France. It includes several examples of 'tutoiement' being the subject of the dialogue, meaning it can be ignored only by missing out any attempt at translation on the pretext of the dialogue being too fast, or something equally feeble. The problem is in fact tackled fairly well, and only the switch from 'tu' to 'vous' and back again is not conveyed.

In one scene, the determinedly cool and hard-bitten detective stops a prostitute in the street as part of a plan to force her lover to become a grass (hence the title of the film). "Bon, écoute," he goes, and she icily snaps "On se tutoie ? On n'a jamais travaillé dans le même bordel ensemble, que je sache." The subtitles, constrained by the speed of the dialogue and those 30-odd characters per line, read "Listen, honey" and "So we're old friends, are we?" No space for any mention of working in the same brothel or working the same streets.

In another scene, which might now make viewers slightly queasy in that it's close to the complacent racism of Les Ripoux, the team pull in an Arab drug dealer. They are going in for the usual contemptuous 'tutoiement', so the dealer says "On ne tutoie plus les étrangers aujourd'hui, Monsieur l'inspecteur, c'est même écrit dans les journaux." This is translated by "You're supposed to respect foreigners nowadays. It says so in the paper." That works fine, in the context; that, or something like "You should show more respect..." or "You should talk to foreigners more respectfully..." or "You shouldn't talk down to foreigners..."

The ultra-cool cop, with his 'barbe de trois jours' and Miami Vice jacket, then switches to "Vous avez raison : il serait raisonnable de trouver un terrain d'entente", then grabs him by the lapels and shoves him up against the wall, with "T'as pas une petite affaire à nous balancer". The subtitles do nothing to convey the mock-respectful switch to 'vous' followed by a return to aggressive 'tutoiement'. Given more space, what could they have done? Add a 'Sir' for the 'vouvoiement', and a 'mate/buddy/pal' when he returns to 'tu'?

Before you ask:

- Miami Vice was Deux Flics à Miami
- Les Ripoux was Le Cop in the UK, My New Partner in the USA
- NYPD Blue became New York Police Blues, either because the abbreviation would have been impenetrable or because they didn't want anything which sounded like 'pédé' in the title
- Taggart, bafflingly popular with French TV audiences, is Taggart everywhere, even though the use of the same actor (Dominique Paturel) to dub Mark McManus as had previously done JR Ewing on Dallas was somewhat weird, even to those raised in neither Glasgow nor Dallas.


Sarkozette et cie

Many and entertaining will be the journalistic neologisms based on 'Sarkozy'. Female members of the cunningly constructed new cabinet have been dubbed 'Sarkozettes', a follow-up to the 'Juppettes' from Juppé's time as PM. Essentially a French equivalent of 'Blair's Babes', and every bit as belittling; see the ever-entertaining and ever-informative blog of the 'correcteurs du Monde':  Correcteurs du Monde.

Olivier Duhamel, in his radio column on France Culture (30 May), produced a positive flurry of neologisms — and of -ismes of all sorts, in fact — in his analysis of the new man in the Élysée. He described the new image-conscious regime as 'cette vidéocratie présidentielle qui commence'; well, 'videocracy' would work as a parallel neologism. Then he really went to town, first inventing 'le starkozisme' as a conflation of 'star' and 'Sarkozy' with the ending 'isme' to make it into a socio-political tendency or school of thought. To describe the new regime, after 'la rupture tranquille', he said "Le starkozisme est un jeunisme... Le starkozisme est un familialisme...

Le starkozisme est un exhibitionnisme", in an effort to convey the flavour of the jogging, swimming Sarkozy and his 'famille recomposée' ('blended family', in the Guardian last week). What are we to do with that? 'Starkozism is youth-obsessed, centred on the family/focused on the family/family-centred and exhibitionistic'?

He also added, no doubt thinking of Sarkozy dining at Fouquet's and being photographed with 'notre Johnny national', "le starkozisme est un pipolisme": "Starkozism is celebrity-obsessed". 'Pipolisation' has well and truly entered journalistic French; no reason why 'pipolisme' should not exist too. See several past and recent columns for 'people', 'pipolisation' and other such delights.
 

Dougal Campbell, French language tutor at Glasgow University
 
Please contact the author with any comments and similar amuse-gueule snippets of French, at D.Campbell@french.arts.gla.ac.uk