To follow up on a side track from an existing thread:
Hi, I am new here...
I have a question about the new 100.00 note:
On the back there is a poem in English which starts by " Do we ever remember that ..." but then it's translated in French "Nous souvient-il parfois..." . For those that speak french is that proper french? Isn't supposed to be Nous souvenons-nous parfois... is it an error??? I work at the bank and I had a few people complain about it today...
I contacted the lady who did the translation and this is her response:
Dear Mr. Wallis,
Not to worry, the complaints about the French Translation of Myriam Waddington's verse is open to "artistic license". "Nous souvenons-nous ? " is indeed the standard translation, but in this case, since I was translating poetry, I decided to use a literary turn of phrase, the impersonnal construction : "Il me souvient de...". It is used, for instance, by Alphonse de Lamartine in one of his most famous poems, "Le Lac" :
"Un soir, t'en souvient-il? nous voguions en silence:
On n'entendait au loin, sur l'onde et sous les cieux,
Que le bruit des rameurs qui frappaient en cadence
Tes flots harmonieux."
I congratulate your correspondants for caring about the quality of French everywhere and I hope this will put their mind at rest. I also hope that some of them will read Myriam Waddington's poems.
Sincerely yours,
Christine Klein-Lataud
Translator of Myriam Waddington (En guise d'amants, Éditions du Noroît, 1994)
