Pardon the French

In his report on the recent Rennes-Stabaek UEFA Cup qualifier, France Football‘s Fred Azilazian writes that, in the 36th minute of the match, Rennes striker Jimmy Briand “réalisait in petit festival”—a phrase which I’m assuming means something like the English idiom “put on a show.” As is the nature of idioms, “to put on a show” has lost its most literal sense to the native English-speaker; the French equivalent, however, is good fun for the American Enthusiast.

The word festival is very surprising and pleasing. It’s impossible—for me, at least—not to think of a merry-go-round. Even right now, typing this, I’m thinking of professional footballeur Jimmy Briand either assembling, or, at the very least, operating the various levers and switches of, a merry-go-round on le côté gauche of a Norwegian football pitch. And even though I’m pretty sure that a merry-go-round has only one relevant lever, this is how I imagine it, and thus it is so.

Some years ago, Verse magazine published a chat between Matthew Rohrer and Slovenian ubermensch Tomaz Salamun on the subject of poetry-in-translation. While accepted wisdom (and commensurate grump Robert Frost, more specifically) suggest that “poetry is what gets lost in translation,” Rohrer and Salamun ask, “What if it’s not?”

To illustrate their point, they invoke the case of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. For the American, it’s part of a familiar morality tale about how our first, and most dead, prez was unable to fib. To a Slovenian, however, who lacks any context for it, the image of George Washington inexplicably felling a shrub is both strange and funny. In this case, the opposite of the axiom is true: poetry is actually what’s gained in translation.

In my role as part-time ESL instructor—aka, moneymaker—I’ve derived some pleasure from the literal renderings of foreign language idioms. You want examples? Oh, I’ll give you examples.

The highlight here is clearly the Romanian baba şi mitraliera—that is, “the grandmother and the machine gun.” I guess the Romanians never met my grandmother! (Wocka Wocka.)