Author
Topic: New $100 note - Error?  (Read 8233 times)
admin
  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 78
« on: March 19, 2004, 09:19:43 pm »

To follow up on a side track from an existing thread:

Quote
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)
 

Login with username, password and session length