French Literature Night at Cornelia Cafe!

“Anatole Felde” at the Cornelia Street Café

Here’s a video of last week’s Cornelia Street Café bilingual performance of Anatole Felde by Swiss playwright Hervé Blutsch. The English translation was done by Bonnie, Brett, Yareli, and me!

 

French Night at the Cornelia Street Café

Join us tomorrow night at 6:00 at the Cornelia Street Café for another French Literature night, featuring a Hervé Blutsch play: “Anatole Felde.”

While our French friends were visiting, Bonnie, Brett, Yareli, and I translated the play from the French in a workshop with Donald Nicholson Smith.

Read more about French Literature nights at Cornelia, and check out some photos from the last French Night in February.

 

French night at Cornelia Street Café

Cornelia Street Café

One of the many events we attended with our French visitors was French Literature Night at the Cornelia Street Café. French Literature Night happens once every few months (the last one was in October) and features French literature readings, read in French and translated into English. In October, we read from our translation of Le Lapin/The Rabbit by Eric Chevillard.

This time, the theme of the evening was “Sons” and it featured translations by Brett and by Emily from our class. It was wonderful to see their work come to life in the readings. It was also a pleasure to be able to share this with our French visitors.

Brett and Emmanuelle Ertel (our program director/professor) read a short story by Carole Fives called “Anything to Please Him,” part of a collection called When Happiness Finds Us. It’s about a son who hopes to please his father but doesn’t get any approval from him.

An excerpt from Emily’s translation of The Truth about the Night by Véronique Olmi was the next work to be read, partly in the original French, partly in the English translation. This book is Emily’s thesis project; it’s a novel about a fat little boy who struggles to fit in and who likes to eat Nutella.

Lastly there was a reading from The Unbreakable Boy  by Florence Seyvos.

Afterwards we ate Thai food and chatted about translation with our French visitors. 🙂

French Night at Cornelia!

For more info: http://frenchculture.org/books/events/french-literature-night-cornelia-cafe

Chevillard! Chevillard! Chevillard!

So you may be wondering what we do in our Translation Workshops. In the beginning of the semester we all worked on the same pieces at the same time; the first pages of a novel, short stories, etc. Each of us would write a translation on our own and then once together we would work in small groups by comparing our translations and coming up with a single piece. Then, as a whole, we compared all of our versions to finally come up with one unified translation. Take for example Le Lapin by Eric Chevillard, a short story about a rabbit shaped car-seat headrest.

Here is an excerpt from the original French version:

Le Lapin

On fait de ces gadgets aujourd’hui. Celui-ci est une housse pour appui-tête de siège automobile décorée d’une tête de lapin brodée et surmontée de deux grandes oreilles en peluche. On sourit une fois peut-être.

Ça nous envahit, ces objets puérile, idiots, marrants. Tous les gorilles sont garnie de billes de polystyrène, désormais. Tous les éléphants nous versent du thé ou de la camomille. Trouvez-moi un koala sana bretelles, qui n’aura pas non plus une fermeture-éclair sur le ventre.

La cravate n’a rien perdu de son sérieux dérisoire en devenant cette bande dessinée. La chaussette digitée ne fait pas le quadrumane. La pantoufle encombrée de pattes ne sait plus marcher. Elle rampe. Elle se traîne. Nous vivons parmi ces gadgets comme de vieux enfants détraqués.

Celui-ci imite donc une tête de lapin et orné siège conducteur d’une petite voiture bleu, modèle courant.C’est une housse blanche sur laquelle sont brodés deux yeux ronds et une truffe noire. Et encore un grand sourire stupide.

And here is our final translation:

The Rabbit

We make these novelties, nowadays. This one is a car-headrest cover, decorated with an embroidered rabbit head, topped by two big, plush ears. Makes you smile once, maybe.

We’re invaded by these childish, silly, comical objects. All the gorillas are filled with polystyrene beads now. All the elephants pour us black or Chamomile tea. Find me a koala without shoulder straps, or a zipper on its belly.

Ties have lost none of their insignificant seriousness by becoming comic strips. Digitated socks do not give you primate abilities. Slippers encumbered by paws no longer know how to walk. They crawl. They drag themselves around. We live among these novelties like old, unhinged children.

And so, this one mimics a rabbit head and adorns the driver seat of a small, blue car, standard model. It’s a white cover, embroidered with two round eyes and a black nose. And a big, stupid smile.

This piece was definitely interesting to work on. As you can see, Chevillard has a very unique style. This style was further highlighted at French Literature Night at Cornelia Street Cafe, an event organized by Emmanuelle Ertel and Isabelle Milkoff, where excerpts were read from different works of Eric Chevillard in both French and English.

The night began with Isabelle Milkoff and Margaret George reading the first chapters of Prehistoric Times, followed by Philippe Aufort and Tom Radigan reading “Lecture with Slides” from The posthumous works of Thomas Pilaster, and the night ended with Bonnie, Brett, Victoria and Emmanuelle reading The Rabbit.

Isabelle Milkoff and Margaret George read the first chapters of Prehistoric Times

Philippe Aufort and Tom Radigan reading “Lecture with Slides” from The posthumous works of Thomas Pilaster

Bonnie, Victoria and Brett (L-R) on stage for their reading of The Rabbit

Emanuelle addressing the audience at ‘Chevillard! Chevillard! Chevillard!”

You can actually watch the whole thing right here!

It was such an awesome experience to be able to share our translation with the public, and also to hear other people’s translations. French Night was a really fun event for us students and our friends and family (even those who don’t speak French.) Stay tuned for details about the next French Night at Cornelia Street Cafe!