In our monthly French language column, intrepid Douglas Campbell scours the media and tracks down puns, drugs and greed at the Tour de France.

Calembour de France

Although it’s a discovery every bit as startling as the annual chassé-croisé traffic jams between July and August holidaymakers, the drug-fuelled nature of the Tour de France seems to surprise and shock certain British journalists every year. Not all of them, of course: The Guardian’s Richard Williams sensibly pointed out that cyclists have moved on from the brandy and cocaine of the early years to the amphetamines which killed Tom Simpson, and now to growth hormones, steroids and EPO.

Another essential feature of the Tour de France is the punning Libération headline, my favourite this year being “Le sang de Vinokourov a fait plusieurs tours”, which is a gem — punning on “mon sang n’a fait qu’un tour” (my heart skipped / missed a beat ) and on the fact that what he is accused of is blood-doping. Another Libé article explained the difference between re-infusing one’s own blood (“une transfusion autologue”) and the rather riskier (because more detectable) operation of getting a transfusion from someone else (“une transfusion homologue”); see Libé 24 July. The former is undetectable, yet “Vino” went for the latter; are hubris and self-delusion side-effects of blood-doping?

The Libé article talked of “le langage médical et désormais cycliste”, and it was this same attitude, the notion that the Tour now has more to do with medical science than with sport, that led Libé to take the unprecedented step of withdrawing from reporting the results of the race. Libération explained this decision in an editorial, saying that the race “n’a d’intérêt que pour quelques scientifiques en quête de nouvelles pharmacopées”.

If the event is essentially a testing-ground for new drugs, then it is logical not to report the results, and to decide that “seule la chronique judiciaire des perquisitions, interrogatoires et enquêtes mérite encore d’être contée”. All that is of interest now is the familiar round of investigations, and the social repercussions of the undeniable corruption of a key element of “le patrimoine de la France”. France-Soir took a similar step, solemnly announcing the death of the Tour de France. The death notice — an “avis de déces” edged in black — took up the entire front page on 26 July.

May I be simultaneously idle and vain, and quote myself, since pre-2006 columns are not in the “previous columns” archive? From 2001: “Wednesday 11 July: a wonderful headline on a report about the Tour de France. The random drug-testing of eight cyclists included not one single Belgian. It should have included at least one Belgian, since the wearer of the maillot jaune is normally tested automatically, plus the stage winner, and then six others chosen at random. The Flemish authorities chose eight at random, and none were Belgian. As Desproges might have said, ‘Étonnant, non?’ The Libération report includes several digs at the Belgians, jokes about EPO, chocolate, beer and potatoes, and a great headline: ‘Les Flamands n'ont pas de pot’. What's so good about it? On the surface, au premier degré, it's just saying, in more colloquial language: ‘The Flemish are out of luck’ or ‘Tough luck on the Flemish’. However, in the history of the Tour de France, ‘le pot belge’ was the deadly cocktail of amphetamines, heroin and anything else that was around to make supermen out of mere athletes. A ‘speedball’, in every sense... No speedballs amongst the Belgian cyclists, goodness me no. The very idea.”

Back to 2007, and there are traditions which still hold good. Chemically-assisted riders, great puns in Libé: “des valeurs sûres”, as they say. It’s reassuring that there are some things you can always rely on.
 

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Another -isme

So the Tour de France, iconic and typically French, is going to the dogs and to the drugs. Yet another example to feed the arguments of “les déclinologues”, those whose theory is “le déclinisme”. They are “doom-merchants”, specialists in gloom and pessimism, coming out with doom and gloom about the state and the prospects of France, but with a spurious air of weight and seriousness. The earliest example of “déclinisme” which I can find in Le Monde is in October 2003. More on this shortly.

 

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Greed is good

With only a slight sense of strain, sticking with the Tour de France because doping is part of the greedy all-consuming need to win, I was interested to see, in the Nouvel Observateur (19 July), “la rapacité est une bonne chose” offered as a translation of the celebrated “Greed is good” line from Wall Street, back in the news because a follow-up is on the way, and because of the vast sums involved in what the Nouvel Obs calls “les groupes de private equity”. They italicize “private equity” and gloss it with “fonds privés d’investissement en capital”.
 

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A brief word to finish

Staying with the law, because the Tour de France is now of more interest from the legal and medical point of view than as a sporting event, in a sense, here is a solution to a translation point which had bothered me briefly in the past, but not enough to make me look for very long.

Melville's 'Bob le flangeur'

I will need to watch the first series of Engrenages again (translated on BBC4 as Spiral) to see if I can find anything else for this, but it seems to me that we have a clear and good translation for the English slang for a lawyer — a “brief” — in the shape of “un bavard”, “un baveux” or (since it’s invariably a defence lawyer) “un débarbot”. “Débarbot”, with roots in “débarbouiller” (surely), is in the wonderful Méthode à Mimile, subtitled L’Argot sans peine, by Boudard and Etienne (p. 221) which is perfect for Tontons flingueurs-era slang as well as for hundreds of words which are still alive and well.

What prompted this? A recent Nouvel Obs article (19 July) about a high-profile lawyer, where the journalist felt the need to gloss “un baveux” with “un avocat en langage de voyou”. Well, this use of the word is hardly new; as well as watching Engrenages again, I must check up on some classic Jean-Pierre Melville films noirs (as we say in English), because both “baveux” and “bavard” are in the classic 1977 Larousse Dictionnaire du français argotique et populaire. “Bavard” seems to be earlier and more classic, “baveux” slightly more recent. Either one will do nicely for “brief”, if you ever find yourself having to explain EastEnders dialogue to a French visitor.
 
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

[Copyright Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd 2007]