I know I mentioned this in class as being inaccurate, but I wanted to actually talk about WHY more, since most of the people in our class (if not everyone) does not understand/speak French.
Lanham says: "D'abord la clarte," Anatole France exhorts us, "puis encore la clarte, et enfin la clarte"---clarity first, last, and always.
I cannot get past this "translation" because it is so incredibly inaccurate! The LITERAL translation of this quote is "To begin clarity, then again clarity, and finally clarity." That absolutely does not mean the same thing as "clarity first, last and always."
"Then again" is not a translation of "always," and so for Lanham to try to translate this French phrase to illustrate clarity, he is making a mockery of his own argument. I agree that it is bad to encourage students to write in a transparent manner, where their writing doesn't have a true purpose. However, without any sense of clarity, the argument makes no sense. He cannot argue that "clarity" is inadvisable when students should write with a voice. But while he is trying to find weaknesses in Anatole France's argument, he himself loses all credibility.
**For those of you wondering, or even if you don't really care, the correct way to say "clarity first, last, and always" would actually be "Premiere, enfin, et toujours, la clarte."
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Again, this is quite interesting. If you don't mind me asking, where/how did you learn French? My favorite author is French sociologist Jacques Ellul, but 60% of his stuff is untranslated, and I am wanting to learn how to read it.
ReplyDeleteI commend you on knowing french because if you did not bring that up in class I would have never known what it ment. I can't believe his translation was incorrect, I would like to ask him if he ment to do that on purpose or what? I guess we will never know. Kudos for you for translating his piece of work.
ReplyDeleteWow, I would hope that he knows that he translated that phrase wrong and he is banking on the fact that most people won't notice or know how to translate it. I agree with you...don't talk about clarity in a different language and translate it wrong!!
ReplyDeleteI studied French in school since I was in 7th grade, and I stuck with it in college. It's one of my minors. If you're wanting to learn how to read full texts, I suggest starting classes now, because I've been studying the language and how to analyze French literature for about 9 years now and I still have a lot to learn!
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