Le Chat et Ses Visions

One of my favorite authors of books for very young children is Arnold Lobel. I’m exploring the nuances of French by translating his award-winning collection of fables. This week’s effort: The Cat and His Visions (see the full series of translations here). As before, I did the first round of translation on my own (with reference works), and then edited it with the help of my teacher.

Version française (traduite par David Miller, éditée par Virginie Bordier)

Le Chat et ses visions

 « Quelle merveilleuse vision !», dit le Chat en marchant vers la rive. «Je vois un bon gros poisson sur une assiette en porcelaine, baigné dans un océan de jus de citron et de sauce au beurre.»
  Il se lécha les babines d’impatience.
  Le Chat fixa un vers sur un hameçon et jeta sa ligne dans l’eau. Il attendit que le poisson morde. Une heure s’écoula, mais rien ne se passa.
  « Encore une vision ! », dit le Chat. «Un poisson sur une assiette en porcelaine, entouré par un lac de jus de citron et de sauce au beurre.»
  Une autre heure s’écoula, et rien ne se passa.
  «Encore une nouvelle vision !» dit le Chat. «Un petit poisson sur une assiette en porcelaine, aspergé de jus de citron et d’un filet de sauce au beurre.» 
  Plusieurs heures plus tard le Chat dit «Une nouvelle vision m’apparaît. Un petit poisson tout maigre sur une assiette en porcelaine avec une minuscule goutte de jus de citron et une touche infime de sauce au beurre.»
  Après un long moment le Chat dit tristement, «J’ai une nouvelle vision en tête. Il n’y a aucun poisson. Pas de jus de citron, pas la moindre sauce au beurre. Je ne vois qu’une assiette en porcelaine, aussi vide que mon estomac.»
  Le Chat était sur le point de quitter la rive quand il sentit un tension dans sa ligne. Il sortit un bon gros poisson hors de l’eau.   Le chat rentra à toute vitesse et fit frire le poisson. Il le mit sur une assiette en porcelaine. Il le noya dans un océan de jus de citron et de sauce au beurre.
  «Quel dîner merveilleux !» dit le Chat.

Tout est bien qui se termine par un bon repas !

Version originale (par Arnold Lobel)

The Cat and His Visions

“What a glorious vision I see in my head!” said the Cat as he went to the riverbank. “I see a large, fat fish on a china plate, resting in an ocean of lemon juice and butter sauce.”
He licked his whiskers in anticipation.
The Cat put a worm on a hook and threw his line into the water. He waited for the fish to bite. An hour went by, but nothing happened.
“What a vision I see”, said the Cat. “A fish on a china plate, lying in a lake of lemon juice and butter sauce.”
Another hour passed, and nothing happened.
“I see a vision!” said the Cat. “A small fish on a china plate, sprinkled with lemon juice and dribbles of butter sauce.”
Many hours later the Cat said, “I can still see a vision. A small, thin fish on a china plate with a little drop of lemon juice and a tiny dab of butter sauce.”
After a long time the Cat said sadly, “There is a new vision in my head. I see no fish. I see no lemon juice and not a bit of butter sauce. I see a china plate. It is as empty as my stomach.”
The Cat was just about to leave the riverbank when he felt a sudden tug on his line. He pulled a large, fat fish out of the river.
The Cat ran home and fried the fish. He put it on a china plate. He poured a whole ocean of lemon juice and butter sauce all over it.
“What a glorious supper!” said the Cat.

All’s well that ends with a good meal.

Things I Learned

Rather than show you my original, unedited draft, and a comparison with the final French version, I thought I’d list some of the items in the final draft that were different in my original and what I learned from the change.

• One of the challenges in translating this work was capturing the diminishing grandeur of the visions. The size of the fish shrinks over time, but so does the quantity of butter sauce and the application of lemon juice. Also the level of enthusiasm with which each vision is announced “What a glorious vision!”, “What a vision!”, “I see a vision.”, etc. So I needed to do the translation not only at the word level or sentence level, but taking the whole story into account. I understood this without instruction, but didn’t always get the gradations quite right without editing help.
  
• «Un bon gros poisson»: The initial depiction “I see a large, fat fish” suggests using the adjectives «grand» and «gros». Adjectives involving size typically come before the noun, but when you have two of them it’s correct to put one before and one after. However «un gros poisson grand» just sounds clunky, and I knew it even as I dutifully followed the rule and wrote it. Better is «un poisson gros et grand», or just going with a single adjective «un énorme poisson». But we eventually settled on «un bon gros poisson». Here «bon» does not mean “good”, but rather serves to amplify, similar in English to the usage “David was good and ready to move on” vs “David was ready to move on”. The subject’s goodness is not in play here, it’s the intensity of the readiness.
  
• «Baigner», «noyer»: In the grandest of visions, the Cat sees the fish “resting in an ocean of lemon juice and butter sauce” and in the eventual reality the Cat “poured a whole ocean of lemon juice and butter sauce” over it. I didn’t like any literal translations of “resting in”, so in French I made the first one «baigné dans un océan …», which is literally “bathed in”. Once I’d done that, I doubled down on the ocean and water theme and made the second one «Il le noya dans un océan de jus …», which is literally “he drowned it in an ocean of lemon juice” rather than “he poured a whole ocean …”. I like using this sort of grammatical departure (drowning the fish in the sauce vs pouring the sauce over the fish) when it gives a better stylistic result, but I find it hard to keep in mind as a valid possibility. It takes more imagination. In any event, my editor very much liked both «baigné» and «noya».

• «Se lécher les babines» is a fixed expression that means “to lick one’s chops”. The word «babine» itself means the upper lip of an animal, or the lips in general, animal or human. Lobel’s original is “He licked his whiskers in anticipation”. We couldn’t find any great way to keep the specificity of “whiskers” while still using something that sounds right in French. My first draft used «Il lécha ses moustaches». While «moustaches» is the right word for a cat’s whiskers in other contexts, this expression sounded wrong in my editor’s ears. I decided to go with the more idiomatic «Il se lécha ses babines» and lose the whisker detail. I feel it’s a real loss, but don’t know a better solution.
  
• «Anticipation» in French has only some of the meanings of the cognate “anticipation” in English. It means “foresight” or “expectation”, but not with any emotion or positive sense of eagerness. The French «anticipation» would never be associated with giddiness as in English. A cat wouldn’t lick its lips in «anticipation», though it might bring an umbrella to a picnic in «anticipation». Thus my original draft «Il lécha ses moustaches avec anticipation» was faulty. We converted it to «Il se lécha ses babines d’impatience.» The French «impatience» encompasses the notion of eagerness quite well, but can also be used to capture frustration, fidgeting, or difficulty with self-control.
  
• «S’écouler» means to flow or to elapse. It’s the right verb to use with time passing: «une heure s’écoula». I originally tried the verb «dérouler» meaning “to unfurl” or “to unwind”. That works fine with a spool of thread, a reel of film, or a line of reasoning, but apparently not so much with the flow of time.
  
• «Entourer» means surround in a neutral or positive sense. A park surrounded by residential neighborhoods, a large gem surrounded by lesser stones in a ring, a child wrapped up in its mother’s arms. It also means “trimmed” or “garnished”, so is perfect for fish in a lake of butter sauce. I originally tried the verb «cerner» which mean something more like “penned in”, “nailed down”, “narrowed down” or “isolated” – something done by police or investigators – which doesn’t fit at all. This feels related to the English “discern”.
  
• «Saupoudré» is the adjective I originally thought of for the application of a modest amount of lemon juice: “sprinkled” in the English source. But «saupoudré» is exclusively for dry ingredients – its root is “powder”. One can’t use it for liquid. The right verb choice there is «asperger», which we ultimately chose. We also considered «arrosé», which would be more like “sprayed” or “spritzed” (literally “bedewed”).

• «Un éclaboussure» is certainly a moderate quantity of liquid that has spilled or transferred from a larger vessel and has spread out on a surface, so it’s not an unthinkable translation for “dribbles of butter sauce”. But «éclaboussure» has a strong negative connotation. It’s a splash, but it leaves a stain rather than adding a positive highlight. So it’s used with ink on a page, storm water kicked up by passing cars, scandal on a celebrity, and blood or guts in a violent encounter. When I learned this I proposed the alternate «un filet», which is a thin stream like from a faucet or a bottle of olive oil (separately «un filet» can mean “a net”). It’s a good fit for “dribble” or “drizzle” in cooking. I recently learned this usage from French Vocabulary Illustrated and was happy to put it to immediate use.
  
• «Goutte», «touche», «soupçon»: I wrestled a bit with good translations for “a little drop” and “a tiny dab”. I was tempted to use «soupçon» because I think of it as a canonical American affectation for describing small amounts of ingredients added to a dish, e.g. “Liven up your salads with just a soupçon of walnut oil”. But from what I can tell, this is used in French only when you want to indicate actual suspicion, either in the sense of a crime or in the sense of a guessing situation. You might use it to say there’s a hint of marigold in this white wine, but you wouldn’t say you added a hint of something, since you know you did it. So I went with «une minuscule goutte» and «une touche infime» (I originally had «minime» instead of «miniscule» and I struggle a bit with whether to put each adjective before or after its nown, but this is where we ended up).
  
• «tristement», «malheureusement»: I heard a radio article once in English about how the word “happiness” was originally closer to its sibling “happenstance” and “happen”. It was in this linguistic context that the phrase in the U.S. Declaration of Independence “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was written, and was striking. Happiness was a thing that arrived serendipitously, by chance. You would no more pursue it than you would pursue a shooting star. If you happened to encounter it, how nice for you. But it was not something that could be targeted or engineered. The French «malheureusement» describes an unfortunate state of affairs: we hoped to arrive on time, but unfortunately there was a traffic jam. It’s not an emotional state of a person, it’s a comment on events. So «Le Chat dit malheureusement» would be an observation that it was a mistake for the Cat to say this, and bad outcomes could have been avoided otherwise. In Lobel’s fable, the Cat is simply sad, and the sentence requires a different adverb: «Le Chat dit tristement.»

• Faire la pêche: many activities have their own specialized vocabulary and idioms. “… he felt a sudden tug on his line. He pulled a large, fat fish out of the river.” could be translated in many ways, but I wanted to get the technical vocabulary of fishing right. I ended up relying on the French WikiHow’s extensive article Comment Pêcher to arrive at «il sentit un tension dans sa ligne. Il sortit un bon gros poisson hors de l’eau». It only now occurred to me that the WikiHow article could have been translated inexpertly from English …
  
• «Faillir de» is a locution to express a bad thing that didn’t happen, but almost happened.: «J’ai faillir de rater mon train». I tried using it to describe the Cat’s nearly departing empty-handed: «Le Chat faillit partir la rive quand …». My editor rejected this with the explanation that «faillir de» carries a sense of suddenness. There must be some sort of crisis and climax, and «faillir de» introduces the calamity averted at the last moment. In this case, the Cat was not responding to anything acute, but had just made up his mind to pack it in for the day. «Le Chat était sur le point de quitter la rive quand …» captures this better.
  
• C’est terminé: The moral of the story in English, “All’s well that ends with a good meal” is parallel with the familiar “All’s well that ends well”. This chestnut exists in French too: «Tout est bien qui finit bien». But my editor rejected «Tout est bien qui finit avec un bon repas.» She couldn’t explain why exactly, but was confident that «finir» was not the right verb in this modified version of the saying, «se terminer» was much more natural. Thus «Tout est bien qui se termine par un bon repas !». One of the things I love about language and about translation is that there is often more agreement about what is right than about why it is right.