Jean-François Pelletier

GOOD SAMPLES OF BAD MISTAKES

There are silly mistakes. Take Angel's wonderful trilogy entitled "Beloved Bjoerling". The first album includes the Swedish tenor's rendering of the famous Manon aria "Je suis seul" (I am alone). However, the label lists the aria as being "Je suis soule" (I'm drunk). During working hours, Jussi? We recommend Capitol's excellent album "France's Formidable Montand". But we do not recommend the sleeve notes stating that the recitalist's hit "Mon pote, le gitan" (my gipsy pal) means in English: "My Darling, the Gipsy". Single-handed, bad  translation has turned Yves Montand into a homosexual. Simone Signoret won't like it...
	And there are serious mistakes. The Montréal daily Le Devoir carried, in its issue of September 9^th, 1965, an important Canadian National Railways advertisement tease-titled: "Légumes? Animaux? Minerais?" Our equivalent French parlour game not being called vegetable/animal/mineral as in English, the C. N. R. heading becomes pure gibberish. In 1967, the C. N. R. repeated this type of socio-linguistic mistake by seriously christening its new scale of train fares "Red, White and Blue" in English, and "Rouge, Blanc, Bleu" in French. The trouble being, of course, that French uses only the reverse colour sequence: bleu, blanc, rouge. The CNR's rouge/blanc/bleu is therefore neither meaningful nor memorable.
	In 1968, we find American Motors labouring that identical rouge/blanc/bleu mistake in the art and copy of its "Win a Javelin" promotion. We requested an explanation. The vice-president in charge of sales, Mr. Neil Gaskin, wrote back that 90% of the French Canadians "surveyed" either preferred the English colour sequence rouge/blanc/bleu, or didn't care one way or the other. Could it be that American Motors' survey sample was made up of the usual three secretaries, two janitors and one thoroughly bilingual tavern waiter?
	Then again, we should perhaps mention the silly pack of "Tigers" unleashed in French advertising by Imperial Oil, Procter & Gamble and their many imitators. You may put tigers in tanks and Tide, we shall continue using "lions". Further proof that English and French each have their own separate menagerie of colloquialism. If French needs to express themes and claims in its own sweet way, who are you to decide it shan't? In too many quarters, resistance to basic French requirements is untiring and strangely smacks of near stupidity or - to put it more gently - of intolerable contempt for the other person's language and culture. Come to think of it, there is a third explanation: blind faith in one's own superior judgement... 
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Reference : «The Trouble with Translation», document inédit produit par Publicité Pelletier Limitée, 1965, p. 2-3.