On Thursday, September 25th, the current French Translation class displayed our hard work and skills when we read our translations on stage at Cafe Cornelia. This soirée‘s theme was “supertitles,” and our selections of from David Thomas’s On ne va pas se raconter des histoires definitely fit the bill! The short stories, having titles like Pistolet à eau, Anniversaire, and Je me manquerai, contained themes of love, separation, and loneliness, all painted with David Thomsas’s unique brand of humor.
The audience found themselves laughing out loud at the little banalities of life that these stories highlight, as Professor Emmanuelle Ertel read the original stories in French, and her students (Amanda Islambouli, Sisi Betances, Dominique Bouavichith, Janet Lee, Grace McQuillan, Mark Iosifescu, and Carrina LaCorata) read the English translations that we’d each worked on and had reviewed by the class.
We were hardly the only stars of the night, as NYU’s French Translation Alumnus Victoria Sheehan and Isabelle Milkoff kicked things off with an alternating French and English reading of the wonderfully titled How to find love when you’re a fifty year old parisian woman and other crucial issues by Pascal Morin. We also had the pleasure of hearing Tom Radigan and Maxime Touillet read us alternating French and English passages of The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who Got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe that had us all howling with laughter at its ridiculous scenarios.
With these very super supertitles, the chuckles we all shared, and the great company over glasses of French wine, the night was nothing short of magical.
If you’d like to catch us next time, be sure to make it out to Cafe Cornelia in the West Village on December 18th at 6 o’ clock! The readings should no doubt be interesting, as the theme is Gay and Lesbian Contemporary French Literature.
French and the city 